fields

• America as a symbol of deep changes and debates on its own existence in Europe
• An open concept of americanisation: selected appropriation and daily usage by groups and individuals
• Added value of a coherent transnational and european tempo-historical perspective
• Focus put on intra-european exchange process in order to create interdependences
• Interaction between national and transnational
• National differences in treating transantional popular culture with simultaneous european convergences through experiences, debates and shared reflections

• Question the relevance of popular culture in historical preoccupation
• Explanatory power of change in the balance of power
• Social and polito-cultural dynamic of change in phenomenons of transnational popular culture
• DDifferent political models of the “popular”
• ‘foreign attribution’: indirect politisation through public reactions and forms of resistance in politics, sciences, media, association, churches, etc.
• ‘self-interference’: immediate politisation through socially or politically critical messages, consciously written in popular cultural articulations
• ‘Eigen-sin’: ‘voiceless - discreet’ through informal impacts of popular arts, opening up horizons and widening possibilities for actions

Problematisation of intergenerational process of negotiation (aesthetical norms, political values, family patterns) in concrete locations (family, clubs, etc.)

• Focus put on communities where one lives the experience of popular culture, affected by specific consumption modes, gender and socio-cultural backgrounds
• Role of ‘generational objects’ - e.g. transistor radios, as transnational indicators of a generation build a posteriorri
• Comprehension of the process of the formation of generations as discursive constructions in which time horizons (past, present and future) are negotiated individually and collectively

• Differences between age groups, social classes, races/ethnicities, cultures and genders
• Intersectional overlaps and dynamics
• Empowerment and growing awareness of diversity
• Growing questioning of established hierarchies
• (post)colonial references and intersectional tensions
• Rupture and solidification of gender stereotypes through sexualisation – intersectional
• Media representations of cultural alterity (demarcations, attributions, appropriations)

• Relative conception of mass
• Mainstream and avant-garde in close interaction
• Avant-gardes as catalysts of cultural changes in popular cultural media (process of hybridisation, questions of aesthetical monopolies)
• Focus put on creative potential of popular cultural phenomena and on creative appropriation processes from consumers
• Double-perspective on popular cultural media of the avant-garde and of the mainstream

• Locations, spaces and places as central categories of cultural and media analysis: challenge all the limitations of communication at the age of transnational media flows
• Great relevance of flows and transfers of media products and concrete social spaces where they are appropriated (youth clubs, family living rooms, etc.)
• Significance of local references and local imaginations that are often part of popular media products
• Interaction between media professionals (such as movies enthusiasts) and avant-garde artists in social spaces outside of their field.
• Necessity to adapt media products to national, regional and local cultures and languages, that are rarely similar on a global scale

• Systematic analysis and reflection on intermedia references in mass media ensembles: for each theme a particular attention to individual media is paid (radio, TV, comics, movies, etc.)
• Role of media in the construction of popular cultural identities, e.g. the mediality of the long 1960s as a central theme of sub-projects
• Relevance of the concept of package/”dispositif” as analytical category to sharpen the sense of technical & material dimensions, content & aesthetics, and perception, strongly linked to media
• Semio-pragmatical use of package/”dispositif” to support the constituent meaning of “spaces” in media uses and to historically capture processes of localisation

• Rise of television as a new media alongside media consumer practices of multimedia uses
• Growth of domestic familial practices (TV) and uses of mobile media (transistor, tapes, turn tables)
• Whole of media as a reference system and its amplification effects
• Dialectic of event and seriality as a question of specific temporality of transnational circulation and processes of media offers appropriation
• Interaction between events and series: “serialisation” of events and “eventualisation” of series
• Focus put on historical interpretation of popular culture offers

• Komplexe und spannungsreiche Beziehung zwischen Kultur und Ökonomie
• Wechselseitige Durchdringung von Popuärkultur- und Marktsphäremie
• Zusammenspiel von Kreativität, Aneignung und Kommodität in der Populärkultur
• Ökonomisierung der Kultur in die Kultur-und Medieninstitutionen, sowie in künstlerische Milieus, Sub-und Gegenkulturen
• Kulturalisierung von Produkt konomien wie auch für eine Kommodifizierung von Kultur.

• Translokale und transregionale Prozesse der Populärkultur in den langen 1960er Jahren
• Mikrohistorisch orientierten Forschungsperspektive
• Räume als Produkt menschlichen Handelns und Wahrnehmens, als Medium und Voraussetzung für Geselligkeit und Gschichtlichkeit
• « Zwischenräumen » : kulturellen, religi sen und/ oder ethnischen Übergangsgebieten
• Politische Konzeptualisierung von Regionen wie Elsass-Lothringen oder die 1958 begründete deutsch- niederländische Euregio historisch