John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies

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John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies
Category: University institute
Carrier: Free University of Berlin
Legal form of the carrier: Public corporation
Facility location: Berlin
Subjects: History Political Science Economics Literary Studies Cultural Studies Sociology
Areas of expertise: North American Studies
Management: Frank Kelleter, director and spokesman
Homepage: [1]

The John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies (JFKI) is an interdisciplinary research institution of the Free University of Berlin , which specializes in the North America region and is one of the most renowned institutes at the FU. At the same time, as an interdisciplinary research and teaching institute, it is the largest and most important of its kind outside of North America.

In 1955, as part of the founding of the West Berlin University, a new Berlin America Institute was established , which was converted into an inter-faculty institute in 1963 by the political scientist Ernst Fraenkel in order to enable academic specialization in the USA and Canada . It was named after John F. Kennedy , the 35th President of the United States , who was assassinated in the year the institute was founded .

The six departments of the JFKI reflect the character of the interdisciplinary approach. Despite independent subject areas, it connects the culture , literature , history , politics , economics and sociology of North America. In the meantime, research and teaching have also been carried out on the linguistics and geography of North America at JFKI. Although Mexico is geographically part of North America, it is less considered by the JFKI, as the Latin America Institute of the Free University of Berlin has a specialized department.

The institute's scientific library comprises over 750,000 media units. It represents the largest collection in the field of North American studies in Europe in terms of subject spectrum and scope. The library therefore also has a supra-regional service function in the interlibrary loan system of the specialist libraries . The focus of the collection corresponds to the institute's departments and includes the areas of the USA, Canada and the English-speaking Caribbean . Since 1975 the library has looked after the collection focus on North American newspapers in the special collection area plan of the German Research Foundation . Since 2011, this focus has been converted to the special collection area 7.261 - North American Newspapers in the system of the distributed national research library . Holdings of the Philological Library of the Free University of Berlin complete the offer. Because of its importance, about 30 American scholars from abroad visit the JFKI library every year for research purposes. The institute supports this with a scholarship program.

With funds from the Excellence Initiative, the JFKI's concept for a graduate school based on the North American model, one of only two humanities projects in the graduate school category, has been financed with around one million euros annually for five years since October 2007. The Graduate School of North American Studies aims to examine the challenges of the ideal of freedom in the North American present. Ulla Haselstein is the director of the Graduate School of North American Studies . In 2012, funding under the Excellence Initiative was extended by five years.

Professors

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.jfki.fu-berlin.de/graduateschool/team/Vorstand/kelleter/index.html
  2. ↑ http://www.jfki.fu-berlin.de/information/history/seite_2.html#konzept
  3. ↑ Archive link ( Memento from December 4, 2008 in the Internet Archive )

Coordinates: 52 ° 27 ′ 26 ″  N , 13 ° 17 ′ 32 ″  E