Current Objectives of Postgraduate American Studies (COPAS - E-Journal)
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A Voluntary End of Earth. Melancholia and Jean Améry
No full textThis essay interrogates the semantics of finality in Lars von Trier’s Melancholia “(2011), in the light of Austrian theorist Jean Améry’s 1976 study On Suicide. A Discourse on Voluntary Death“. I suggest an apsychological reading of Melancholia“, to unwrap its narrative and philosophical reflections on a desire for the end of earth
Ghosts in the Archive: Re-Vis(ion)ing Transnational Perspectives with Anna Lee Walters’s Ghost Singer and Diana Taylor’s The Archive and the Repertoire
Get PDFThis essay probes the limitations of current transnational perspectives in American studies by drawing attention to an often disregarded internal transnationalism. Via a reading of Anna Lee Walters’s novel Ghost Singer“, based on performance scholar Diana Taylor’s concepts of the archive and the repertoire, the analysis negotiates Western and Native American epistemologies regarding concepts of perception, haunting, and temporality that entail challenging implications for transnational scholarship
From the Other Half to the Down and Out: Reflections on Poverty in the Documentary Mode
Get PDFThis article investigates how poverty is negotiated in the social documentary mode. By considering the work of Jacob Riis and Lewis Hine as well as scrutinizing two HBO documentaries, Down and Out in America“ (1985) and American Winter“ (2013), I argue that there is a continuous disparity between those who represent and those who are being represented. I will exemplify how this imbalance is facilitated through visual rhetoric and narrative form in documentary representations of poverty
African American Narratives of Captivity and Fugitivity: Developing Post-Slavery Questions for Angela Davis: An Autobiography
Get PDFThe paper raises theoretical questions for a ‘post-slavery’ approach to African American narratives of captivity and fugitivity out of an engagement with Black Studies perspectives on enslavement, confinement, and flight which theorize the structural position of Blacks as ‘captives,’ ‘fugitives,\u27 and ‘slaves’ in—or rather outside of—U.S. American society. The questions are confronted with close readings of two passages from Angela Davis: An Autobiography“
Political Appropriations and the Construction of the Jefferson Icon in the United States Congress, 1934-1943
Get PDFThis essay analyses the rhetorical appropriation of Thomas Jefferson by diverse Congressmen between 1934 and 1943. The critical discourse analysis reveals how the consensual and dissentaneous interpretations and appropriations of Jefferson contributed to the construction of the “free-floating“ Jefferson icon. I explain why depictions and appropriations of Jefferson as humanitarian, (Christian) radical, and Socialist became the saving grace during the years of social and economic crisis
The Black Male as Ancestor in John Edgar Wideman’s The Homewood Trilogy
Get PDFThis essay focuses on John Edgar Wideman’s representation of the black male’s role as ancestor in his Damballah“. It investigates why black male ancestry is traditionally not well-established, and how Wideman recreates such ancestry to empower the current generations of young black males. In The Homewood Trilogy“ Wideman creates ancestral figures to establish connections with the past, reclaim a forgotten history, and better understand the contemporary black male crisis
Between Meritocracy and the Old Boy Network: Elite Education in Contemporary American Literature
Get PDFThis article focuses on the discourse of elite education in the United States. I argue that the discourse generates two dominant topoi—merit and network—in order to make sense of elite education and its socio-political implications. Examining Tom Wolfe\u27s I am Charlotte Simmons“ (2004) and Curtis Sittenfeld\u27s Prep “(2005) against the backdrop of different positions within the discursive framework, I read literary texts as counter-discourses that provide spaces of subversion and resistance to dominant meanings
Of “Half-Rembered Dream[s]” and “Unanswered Myster[ies]”—The Trope of Trauma in Inception and Alan Wake
Get PDFBy means of their own genre-specific techniques, the movie Inception“ and the video game Alan Wake“ incarnate the same concept—that of trauma. While the origin of a trauma is generally agreed upon among trauma theorists, the issue of representation is widely debated. It is the aim of this paper to investigate the representation of traumas across media, to compare the results and thus shed some light on the question of whether trauma can only be psychologically categorized or if it even has become a significant societal trope
Remembering through Retro TV and Cinema: Mad Men as Televisual Memorial to 60s America
Get PDFThis article examines ways in which some contemporary American television and cinema set in the 1950s and 1960s such as Pleasantville“ and Mad Men“ share a critical engagement with the period they represent. The engagement is through the twin processes of identification and dissonance. The article describes this way of reviewing the past as retro representation. The article further explores the idea of retros as televisual memorials for the present, as they contribute to preserving memories of the represented period. Mad Men“ is examined as such a televisual memorial of the 60s.