Transnational popular culture – Europe in the long 1960s (POPKULT 2)

The research group from the ��ͷ��versity of Saarland and the ��ͷ�� has enter its second phase (2021-24) with 10 new topics on popular culture.

The project at a glance

Start date:

01 Sep 2021
Duration in months:

48
Funding:

DFG / FNR
Principal Investigator(s):

Andreas Fickers

Machteld Venken

Valérie Schafer

Sonja Kmec

Dietmar Hüser (external)

Clemens Zimmermann (external)

Christoph Vatter (external)

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The history of popular culture has long had a difficult academic reputation in many continental European countries, unlike in the ��ͷ��ted States and the ��ͷ��ted Kingdom. This has changed somewhat over the past two decades: popular cultural products, phenomena and practices are now an accepted part of contemporary historical research, and popular culture is included to a greater or lesser extent in recent writings on the history of the 20th century.
Nevertheless, the potential of popular culture as a tool for social and political change is still underestimated, and many relevant topics have yet to be sufficiently researched. This is particularly the case for transnational and Europe-focused research.
The project “Transnational Popular Culture – Europe in the Long 1960s” aims to fill obvious historical gaps in the field of transnational popular culture, to underpin theoretical debates with empirical case studies and to demonstrate the added value of a transnational approach as opposed to single-country analyses. The project involves several popular culture studies (e.g. on fans, postcolonial pop cultures, advertising, tourism, etc.), all of which look beyond national borders and encompass multiple countries, cultures and societies.
The various subprojects are supervised by professors from Saarland ��ͷ��versity and the ��ͷ��. The project is led by Professor Dietmar Hüser, who is also the project spokesperson. After a first phase (2018-2021), the research group is now in its second phase (2021-2024), with new themes, project leaders and researchers.

“Transnational popular culture – Europe in the long 1960s” is supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) in Germany and the National Research Fund (FNR) in Luxembourg.