Diversity Issues in the USA

With bans on reproductive rights and access to healthcare, with censorship in schools and universities, and the instrumentalization of rights rhetoric itself, diversity issues stand at the heart of the primary and general elections in the United States. The contributors examine how the American elections will influence diversity issues in the United States and elsewhere, considering reproductive and immigration rights, planetary justice, epistemic and physical violence against LGBTQIA+ people as well as efforts to abet this violence. In this way they highlight the symbolic and political weight of the 2024 U.S. elections as a watershed moment for citizens of the world.

Melanie Kreitler is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Giessen at the Department of Anglophone Literature, Cultural, and Media Studies. Her book Mental Illness and Narrative Complexity: An Experiential Approach to Puzzle Films and Complex Television will be published with Edinburgh UP in 2025.
Greta Olson is professor of American and British Literature and Cultural Studies and director of the Center for Diversity, Media, and Law (DiML) at the University of Giessen. She is principal investigator of a project on images of migration and human rights in the research group Human Rights Discourse in Migration Societies (MeDiMi).