Pop-cultural poetics and politics of the invective: Enfreakment and minstrelization as formations of the invective mode (L)

• Subject Area: European and American Literary and Cultural Studies
• Term: from 2017 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 317232170

This American Studies project wants to shed light on the connections between invectivity and popular culture. It is chiefly interested in the roles that invective dynamics play in and for US American popular culture—asking where and how they figure in its formal repertoires, which roles they play for its transformative dynamics, and how they shape its sociocultural effects. In the upcoming phase of its work, the project wants to carve out the mobility and the reach that characterize the invective as a mode by examining two exemplary formations of this invective mode that have been particularly influential and enduring in a US context: ‘enfreakment’ and ‘minstrelization’.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres
• Subproject of: SFB 1285: Invectivity. Constellations and Dynamics of disparagement
• Applicant Institution: Technische Universität Dresden
• Project Heads: Professorin Dr. Katja Kanzler; Dr. Stefan Schubert, since 7/2021