Editorial Note

It certainly feels odd to publish a journal of North American studies called In Progress in 2025. In the wake of the second Trump presidency and countless related, perpetually escalating emergencies, talks about various forms of regress – of a recession, of democratic backsliding – dominate the news cycle. North America, this is the implication, is no longer progressing. This brings us back to the guiding question of our last issue’s editorial note: What does it mean to progress? More precisely, what does and did progress entail for the continent we study: North America? Critical theorist Gurminder K. Bhambhra uses postcolonial and decolonial theory to unmask the violent history of the term progress. She points to the catalysts of climate change as but one example of “activities that have been labelled progressive and yet have had deeply detrimental consequences” (81). Bhambhra further argues that historical progress, as a narrative, emerged “through the connected and entangled histories of European colonization” (81). Accordingly, narratives that regard the current sociopolitical moment as a shift from forward to backward motion fall short. This current issue of our journal is then truly about progress – not as a vision of constant betterment, but as an ongoing project that impacts, regulates, and structures life in North America. The contributions in our Academic, Independent, and Open Sections speak to troubled times by troubling time, by carving out changes or continuities and responding to them. Our new issue continues the objective of In Progress – showcasing excellent graduate work in North American studies – by tackling a kaleidoscope of issues, in a wide range of textual formats, from a multiplicity of vantage points.

The Academic Section includes five original peer-reviewed articles exploring different aspects of North American Studies ranging from literature to film, media, and societal issues. In the first article, Anne Bertram writes about Sofia Coppola’s film adaptation The Virgin Suicides (1999) that is based on Jeffrey Eugenides’s novel of the same name. Bertram examines how the five teenage Lisbon girls are imprisoned by a controlling oppressive mother and a passive father, focusing on the Lisbon family home as a site of oppression. In the second article, Harishnavi Sriskanthan examines the ongoing violence and injustice in the American judicial system by analyzing ghostliness and the remnants of slavery in Jesmyn Ward’s novel Sing, Unburied, Sing from 2017. She delves into the three narrative layers within the novel and elaborates how they portray the prolonged form of slavery in the modern United States. In the next article, on Steve Lawrence’s queer underground photography magazine Newspaper (1968-1971), Jia Shen Lim draws on Marshall McLuhan’s media ecology and explores the concept of the mosaic as a pattern of disconnected but interrelated pieces and the notion of the antienvironment as an operative strategy to counter the dominant media environment. The following article is by Julian Wichert, who studies seriality in the three trailers of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie (2023). Wichert discusses how techniques of serial narration, which expose parts of the film’s plot in subsequent trailers, ensure viewer engagement and participation. The last article in the academic section is written by Laura Landgraf and analyzes three articles about U.S. school shootings – at Columbine High School (1999), Sandy Hook Elementary School (2012), and Perry High School (2024) – that were published in the New York Times. Landgraf argues that the rhetoric in these articles has changed over time thereby desensitizing the public and ultimately normalizing school shootings as part of U.S. American life.

The “In Focus” section, a new sub-section of our Academic Section, comprises a collection of academic articles on the topic of gentrification by students from the University of Freiburg. Adam Hollstein works with Mary Louise Pratt’s concept of the contact zone and compares the shopkeepers Sal from Spike Lee’s film Do the Right Thing (1989) with Fadi from Ivy Pochoda’s novel Visitation Street (2013) in order to discuss the special role of shops as conflict spaces and contact zones within neighborhoods that are facing gentrification. In the second article, Jacob Edmund Hovde applies Jacques Derrida’s concept of hauntology to the televisual representation of urban change in Showtime’s limited series The Curse (2023). He shows how the television show engages with the lingering presence of the settler colonial past, thus foregrounding cultural displacement and erasure which, as Hovde argues, tend to be obscured in gentrification narratives. And finally, Kieu Jenny Vi explains the interconnectedness between food and gentrification in her analysis of the FX television show The Bear (2022–). Tracing the transformation from Italian sandwich shop to gourmet restaurant, Vi explores how this kind of retail gentrification affects the neighborhood and characters in the show. Taken together, these three articles provide a panorama of analyses across different media that sheds light on the timely and highly contested topic of gentrification.

In our Independent Section, this issue features two video essays and two podcasts. As part of the Independent Studies module, the seminar “Videographic Criticism” was held by Prof. Dr. Kathleen Loock in the summer term of 2024. The video essays are outcomes of the seminar, which focused on the topic climate change. Tina Pahnke examines a comedy about the serious issue of climate change. Tina discusses how the movie Idiocracy (Mike Judge, 2006) deviates from established customs in order to avoid climate change denial. Next, Evelyn Teresa Johnson analyzes The Day After Tomorrow (Roland Emmerich, 2004), an apocalyptic movie about the disastrous and irreversible effects of climate change which had a great impact worldwide informing people about the issue and its consequences. We also introduce two podcasts which students created in the seminar “Making a Podcast,” taught by Dr. Felix Brinker in the summer term of 2021 and 2023. The first podcast, “But did you know about?,” is centered on Calypso Rose, the first female calypso star, and her notable contributions to Trinbagonian society in terms of changing perceptions and norms around women and feminism together with slavery and colonialism through her inherently feminist songs. In the second podcast, “Climate Chronicles,” climate change is regarded both as a collective and individual experience. These two approaches could result in the creation of inspired works such as books and films in relation to climate change.

In this issue of In Progress, we have dedicated our Open Section to two thematically distinct yet intellectually resonant explorations: a collection of educational manifestos and a comparative analysis of human- and AI-written poetry. The manifestos gathered here stem from Dr. Abigail Fagan’s “Critical Pedagogy” class (taught in the winter term of 2023/2024) and offer a diverse, deeply engaged, and often intimate set of reflections on education, pedagogy, and the transformative potential of critical thought. Nathalie Rennhack challenges the passivity often assigned to students, calling for a reimagining of educational spaces as collectives where both students and teachers share responsibility for critical engagement. Lisa Born critiques the rigid hierarchies of the school system, drawing from thinkers like Foucault, Parsons, and Simpson to advocate for a more holistic, culturally responsive pedagogy grounded in respect and student agency. Lena Schroeder explores the emotional and political dimensions of teaching, arguing for a pedagogy based on consent, care, and humility, while resisting rigid educator-student binaries. Christine Poljanskij centers hope as a radical educational practice, showing how it can resist the silencing effects of standardized, banking-style education and ignite collective action. The anonymous author of the next manifesto shares a powerful autobiographical account of navigating racialized educational spaces in Germany, emphasizing the importance of Black feminist and decolonial thought in creating liberatory learning environments. Niklas Zabe, in turn, advocates for “depth education” over mastery, drawing from Vanessa Machado de Oliveira to critique transactional learning and call for more imaginative, student-centered classroom practices. Together, these manifestos push the boundaries of what education can be, proposing models of pedagogy that are dialogical, affective, and grounded in both theory and lived experience.

Alongside the educational manifestos, this issue of In Progress features a timely and thought-provoking literary experiment titled “Words from Wires,” which explores the creative boundaries between human and artificial intelligence through poetry. Conceived by Aenne Dirks, Annabel Grothstück, and Niklas Zabe, the project responds to recent studies claiming that AI-generated poetry is not only indistinguishable from, but often rated more favorably than, human-written verse. With nine prompts – ranging from abstract concepts like “Spirituality” and “Reflection” to more tangible themes like “Fruit” and “Forgotten Object” – human poets including Farah Salaheddin, Seren Brockway, Philipp Kemeter, Lola Dekhuijzen, Nientke Peters, Aenne and Evke Dirks, Annabel Grothstück, and Niklas Zabe composed original poems based on personal experience and creative intention. These are juxtaposed with AI-generated responses from ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot, which were given the same prompts but no stylistic guidance. The accompanying critical reflection by the project’s initiators probes the ethical, aesthetic, and philosophical implications of machine-authored literature, asking not simply which poems are “better,” but what values, experiences, and assumptions underpin our responses to art.

This latest issue of In Progress is the result of a collaborative effort between our editorial board and students who participated in the course "Editing a Scholarly Journal" taught by Felix Brinker and Kathleen Loock during the Winter term 2024/25. Among them, Farima Fallah and Philipp Kemeter, already members of the editorial board, contributed their experience and insight to the class, working well with other participants – Lara Depping, Aenne Dirks, Elaheh Ghasemi, Maja Grieschek, Annabel Grothstück, Celina Hebel, Dalia Jameel, Kristina Mathias, Daaje Oldewurtel, Farah Salaheddin, Nina Wilhelm, and Niklas Zabe – gained hands-on experience with academic publishing, participating in every step of the editorial process, from selecting submissions to editing and proofreading their peers’ work. The guidance and support of our general editors, Felix Brinker and Kathleen Loock, were essential in shaping the issue and steering it to completion. We also warmly welcome the newest members of the In Progress editorial team, whose presence and perspectives we are confident will help move the journal forward. Our sincere thanks, therefore, go to Kristina Matthias, Elaheh Ghasemi, Annabel Grothstück, Farah Salaheddin, Niklas Zabe, and our current associate editors: Marielle Tomasic, Eiman Alkhatib, Holly Fischer, Jia Shen Lim, Sahar Al Kharsa, Zoë Lecht, Jessica Hille, Simge Irmak Çınar, Adebola Oluwasanmi Ojo, Kristina Matthias, Ioana-Marina Pantelici, Nele Schach, Farima Fallah, Philipp Kemeter and all those named above who contributed to this issue. Most importantly, we would like to express our heartfelt gratitude to the authors who shared their work with us. Your ideas, creativity, and critical insights are the core of this journal, and we are honored to provide a space for your voices to be read, heard, and remembered. For ongoing updates, important deadlines, and events, the news section of our website now works hand in hand with our Instagram account, @inprogress_journal. We hope In Progress continues to be a place for sharing ideas, asking questions, and thinking about where we go from here.

Bhambhra, Gurminder K. “Decolonizing Critical Theory?: Epistemological Justice, Progress, Reparations.” Critical Times, vol. 4, no. 1, 2021, pp. 73-89.

Shiva, Vandana. Staying Alive: Women, Ecology, and Survival in India. Zed, 1988.