Current Objectives of Postgraduate American Studies (COPAS - E-Journal)
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Aesthetics of Concern: Art in the Wake of the Triple Disaster of North-Eastern Japan and Hurricane Katrina
Get PDFIn the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the tsunami that hit Japan in 2011, several artists turned their practices towards the subject of disaster support. Drawing on the philosophy of Bruno Latour, I argue that these artistic practices come to articulate and re‐present the multitude of concerns interwoven with disaster.  
“Free but not Equal”: In the Wake of Trayvon Martin—American Anger and Visual Activism
Get PDFThis essay highlights how one event like the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin can be a catalyst that urges deep-rooted anger to surface in many American communities. My case study consists of photographs taken at the planned demonstration from Union Square to Times Square in New York City in July 2013. The iconography surrounding the protests in the wake of the Trayvon Martin verdict is explicated, and I draw on notions of how democracy at its best is portrayed though artistic activism and dissent
“John Birch Blues”: The Problematization of Conspiracy Theory in the Early Cold-War Era
Get PDFThis paper argues that the status of conspiracy theory changed from legitimate to illegitimate knowledge in the mid-20th century. By tracing the scientific, cultural, and political discourses of the early Cold-War era I show that World War II, the Red Scare of the 1950s, and the rise in political extremism in the 1960s significantly contributed to the delegitimization of conspiracy theory
Collective Action and Public Self-Representation of Undocumented Youth Surrounding the United States DREAM Act Controversy
No full textThis article investigates the advocacy of undocumented immigrant youth to realize the passage of the United States DREAM Act, a highly controversial legislation proposal that would provide qualifying undocumented, educated immigrants a pathway to permanent citizenship. While earlier phases of activism (2001 to 2007) have been classified as following the strategies of a neoliberal immigration reform discourse, from 2007 onwards undocumented youth changed their tactics, using a more radical approach which involved increased visibility and vocality, the use of civil disobedience tactics, and the disclosure of their undocumented status. It will be argued that discourse participants thereby managed to create narratives and acts that challenge existing neoliberal discursive frameworks and reconstructed their self-understanding and representation
Multiplying Perspectives through Text and Time: Jamaica Kincaid\u27s Writing of the Collective
Get PDFThroughout Jamaica Kincaid’s fictional works, the literary technique of narrative repetition and revision multiplies narrative perspectives both with regard to singular events as well as through generations and thereby through history, pointing back to the year 1492. This article demonstrates how Kincaid thus inscribes a multitude of perspectives into what has hitherto been largely read as autobiographical fiction and, in this way, engages collective Caribbean experience as profoundly affected by the history of colonialism and slavery
The Sentimental Eloquence of the Black American Scholar: Ellison’s Invisible “Man Thinking” and Feeling
Get PDFGrief is one of the most powerful sentiments depicted in literary works throughout human history. In the cultural history of the U.S., the open expression of grief by means of public mourning mostly stands in the African American tradition. One of the most outstanding AfricanAmerican literary figures of the twentieth century is Ralph Ellison. His Invisible Man“ (1952) represents an epitome of modern sentimentalism when it comes to the political project of mourning America. Despite the wide attention dedicated to the work, critics have paid scarce attention to Ellison’s close ties to nineteenth-century sentimentalism. This especially applies to the author’s ambivalent relation to Ralph Waldo Emerson and his vision of the “American Scholar.“ The present article analyzes the complex employment of Emersonian thought “revised à la Ellison“ (Lee 336) in a contextual reading which regards Invisible Man and its sentimental function within the larger network of literary, social, and political discourse. It argues that Ellison’s Invisible Man“ reflects Emerson’s American Scholar as “Man Thinking“ and feeling. The mourning of a free and equal America thus turns out to be a powerful element of the sentimental mode. The close-reading analysis shows in how far both authors can be read to be writing in the sentimental tradition which, in contrast to many critics\u27 opinions, has not lost its appeal but continues to echo in the language of contemporary political figures such as Obama
"A Good Story": On Black Abjection in Improv Comedy
Get PDFThis paper discusses Black absence in Improv Comedy as a symptom for the racial exclusion inherent in Humanism. Critiquing Enlightenment thought as the epistemological basis for Improv\u27s liberatory and democratic ideals, I engage in deconstructive play with one of the era\u27s central literary motifs, the Doppelgänger“. I analyze Improv as a particular symptom of White aesthetic, cultural, and political hegemony
“You ought to stop trying because you had too many birthdays?” – Heroic Male Aging in the Rocky Films
No full textThis essay deals with one of Hollywood’s most popular action heroes, Rocky Balboa. It discusses the whole Rocky“ franchise as six age narratives in which the athletic protagonist faces the obstacles of age. By looking at male identity especially with regard to retirement and the aging male body, the depiction of male aging and what it signifies in these sport action films will be discussed