Democracy in the US and across the world faces complex challenges. Social, economic, and racial divisions are driving political and cultural polarization. Gaps are widening between people and power, and internal and external authoritarian movements are directly challenging the nature of pluralist democratic societies and cultures.
Within that context, the geopolitical borders and boundaries of pluralist democracies are being contested, redrawn and remade. At the same time political and cultural changes around questions of race, class, ethnicity, and gender are transforming the landscape of borders within different democratic societies, and are redefining our understanding of democratic identity and resilience.
The 2023 Salzburg Global Seminar American Studies Program focused on the contestations and renegotiations of boundaries beyond the nation-state, and how they are changing the representation of democratic pluralism. The program also looked at the ways in which American Studies as a discipline has engaged with borders, boundaries and lines of demarcation as tools of disenfranchisement and exclusion, and what that engagement might suggest for other contexts and societies.
During this years´ program our participants debated crucial questions:
The program, from 19-23 September 2023, included an intergenerational, international, and inclusive group of approximately 50 academics, policy makers, journalists, artists, and activists.
The program was designed around speakers, round tables, and discussion groups, and included diverse and intersectional representation. The program aimed to:
As Salzburg Global Seminar celebrates our 75th anniversary and the internationalization of the field of American Studies, we seek to contribute to a better understanding of what the next 75 years of American Studies should be, what it needs to focus on to remain relevant in a changing world, and how American Studies can best uphold and support democratic systems and their evolution toward ever greater pluralism, inclusion, and representation.
We invite you to watch the 2023 Ron Clifton Lecture in American Studies. This lecture was inaugurated in 2018 to recognize the long service of the late Ron Clifton to the field of American studies at Salzburg Global Seminar.
This year marked the 76th edition of the Salzburg Global American Studies program, and the 2023 edition of the Ron Clifton lecture was given by Tracey Meares, the Walton Hale Hamilton professor and a founding director of the Justice Collaboratory at Yale Law School.
Watch the full lecture below:
During this program, we also held the 2023 edition of the Ithiel de Sola Pool Lectureship on the Impact of Communications Technology on Society and Politics, which was established in 2003 through the generosity of Dr. Pool’s wife, Jean Mackenzie Pool. Ithiel de Sola Pool, born in 1917, was a pioneer in the development of social science and network theory. Dr. Pool served on three faculties of Salzburg Global Seminar sessions: Session 45, American Society, in 1956; Session 77, American Foreign Policy, in 1962; and Session 203, Development, Communication and Social Change, in 1981.
This year's Ithiel de Sola Pool Lectureship on the Impact of Communications Technology on Society and Politics was delivered by Robert Putnam, the Malkin Research Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University.
Watch the full lecture below: