30th Conference of the Post-Graduate Forum

Abstract

The thematic focus of our conference, “Challenges of the Post-Truth Era in American Studies,” brings to the fore the important critical work of our interdisciplinary and transnational field in times of misinformation, propaganda, filter bubbles, and a lack of media literacy. Not only the United States but also across the Atlantic have political elections and their aftermaths caused turmoil in all spheres of social, cultural, and economic life. The meanings and uses of such controversial terms as “truthiness,” “fake news,” or “post-truth” (voted as words of the year by Merriam-Webster in 2006, Macquarie Dictionary Australia in 2016, and the American Dialect Society in 2017 respectively) continue to shape current discourses in the media and on social networks around information policies, propaganda, and sensationalism that highlight the historic and contemporary circumstances of democratic processes as well as its literary and cultural representations in a diachronic manner.