FOR 2475:  Transnational popular culture - Europe in the long 1960s

• Subject Area: Humanities
• Term: since 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 285228642

The envisaged research group aims at the comparative and transnationally orientated exploration of european popular culture in the long 1960s, thus exploring in many ways new scientific territory. Unlike existing studies which are mainly limited to a particular nation-state, "Populärkultur transnational" correlates several countries, cultures and societies with each other: A - consistently applied - transnational approach allows to uncover similarities and differences, mutual dependencies and close relations of the examined processes and phenomena, while at the same time illustrating the advantages of an approach committed to the study of historical comparison, transfer and interdependence over single-case analyses. The subprojects dealing with music and radio, youth culture and youth media, comics and amateur films, quiz shows and children's television series are designed with view to synergy effects and closely intertwined, not only thematically, temporally and territorially, but also communicatively by way of various internal online platforms and data management programs. Taken together, the subprojects allow to investigate a wide and significant range of pop cultural phenomena in Western Europe and its densely interacting subspaces. Notwithstanding the relevance of transatlantic entanglements in the post-war decades the project insists on confronting common understandings of a unilateral americanisation of western european societies with the paradigm of europeanisation. Europeanisation by means of popular culture is described as a complex story of asymmetrical interdependencies underlining exchange and entanglement, while taking into account delimitations, asynchronicities and fragmentations. Despite its transnational approach the common research agenda will by no means neglect national dimensions and framings of cultural exchange, particularly as the project focuses on the processes of appropriation in terms of transformative reception, selection and the attribution of meaning in the receiving cultures. Thematically, the subprojects are connected through a repertoire of shared leading questions and concepts. These concepts - introduced at the beginning: "American & European", "The Cultural & the Political", "Generation & Generationality", "Social Diversity & Transversality", "Places, Spaces, Locality", "Dispositive, Mediality, Media Ensemble", "Event & Seriality" - constitute the starting point for reflections on how to explore complex and dynamic phenomena of transnational popular culture beyond schematic perceptions. In addition to the specific findings of the subprojects the research group as a whole will for the first time present a panorama of european transnational popular culture of the long 1960s, which is thematically wide, conceptually innovative and empirically substantiated.

• DFG Programme: Research Units
• International Connection: Cameroon, Gabon, Luxembourg, Senegal, Togo

Projects

• Anti-heroes of the Desamericanization? - The bandes dessinées of the Franco-Belgian school as actors of the popular cultural Europeanization of the comic culture in the long 1960s (Applicant Majerus, Benoit )
• As Malefiz became Barricade - transnational board games’ history of the 1960s and 70s (Applicant Zimmermann, Clemens )
• Coordination Funds (Applicant Hüser, Dietmar )
• Entertainment without Frontiers - Representing and Performing Other Cultures in German, French, and Spanish TV Shows of the 1960s (Applicant Hüser, Dietmar )
• "European youth-mass-media-ensemble" - Transnationality and entanglement of popular youth culture in Western Germany, France and Great Britain, 1964-1974 (Applicant Zimmermann, Clemens )
• Everyday life of the riot - The transnationality of French and West German rural communities in the 1960s (Applicant Hüser, Dietmar )
• Fairgrounds in border regions - A transnational history of the Luxembourgish city funfair (Applicant Venken, Machteld )
• "From dance band to cover band" The ball as popular rural site of amusement and musical socialisation (Applicant Fickers, Andreas )
• "From fairytales to lifeworlds" - European Children's Film Series in the long 1960s (Applicant Zimmermann, Clemens )
• From 'popular‘ to ‚populär‘ and back - the European folk revival from the 1950s to the 1970s from a transnational and transregional perspective (Applicant Zimmermann, Clemens )
• Hit-Pirates? Radio Luxembourg and Europe n°1 as transnational actors of commercial entertainment in the long 1960s (Applicant Fickers, Andreas )
• "Hold the future in your hand" - Advertising for radios, television and record players in Luxembourg, Germany and France in the 1960s (Applicant Schafer, Valérie )
• "Music field Europe" - Entangled franco-german history of popular music within transatlantic and inner-european dynamics of exchange during the long 1960s (Applicant Hüser, Dietmar )
• "Old fans" and "new fans"? - Fan cultures in West European football of the long 1960s: a transnational comparison of structures and trends in West Germany, France and Italy (Applicant Hüser, Dietmar )
• Postcolonial Popular Cultures in Belgium, Germany and France. Representing Sub-Saharan Africa in the Mass-Media-Ensemble of the Long 1960s in the Context of Decolonization (Applicant Vatter, Christoph )
• The Indian Ocean as Dream Destination - Popular Cultural Discourses of Tourism in the Context of Decolonisation at the Onset of Long Distance Tourism (Applicant Kmec, Sonja )

• Partner Organisation: Fonds National de la Recherche
• Spokesperson: Professor Dr. Dietmar Hüser