Current Objectives of Postgraduate American Studies (COPAS - E-Journal)
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‘Only Stones and Stories Remain’: Greek American (Travel) Writing about Greece
No full textSince the early 1960s, numerous Greek American authors of the second and third generation have published personal accounts on their travels to Greece. In this paper, I argue that these authors adopt a double perspective, being both ‘visitors’ and ‘locals’ who are affiliated with both the ‘here’ and the ‘there.’ Returnees often experience a feeling of belatedness when arriving in their ancestral homeland. They overcome this feeling by inscribing themselves into the foreign but - paradoxically - familiar past, and by making a contribution to the Greek diaspora. Although the intersections of travel writing and return writing are strong, in this paper, return writing will be defined as a subgenre of both diaspora writing and travel writing
Waging a Visual War on Poverty: President Lyndon B. Johnson in Appalachia
Get PDFThe article investigates how press photographs shaped poverty discourses in the historical context of the War on Poverty. Using a picture of President Lyndon B. Johnson and a presumably poor woman as a case study, it examines how iconographic elements and the visualized rhetorical pattern of the American jeremiad serve to situate the poor within dominant middle-class ideologies
"Sex in Bed or Sex in the Head?" - A Transatlantic Love Affair
No full textIn early 1947, the French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir traveled across the United States. During her four-month voyage she met and fell in love with the then quite famous American novelist Nelson Algren of Chicago. At the time both were in their late thirties. When she had returned to France, she wrote Algren that she had put aside the project she had begun prior to her departure for America (The Other Sex“, 1949) and undertaken to write a book about the New World, for "something [had] happened [...] and it was the beginning of love." The journey, she continued, for this reason had to be preserved. Apparently, the passion she had experienced with Algren (it is said that with him she enjoyed sex for the first time in her life), above all had an impact on her primary occupation in life: her writing.In my paper, I look at how de Beauvoir reflected on her affair with Algren in three different works, i.e. her America Day by Day“ (1947), her novel Les mandarins “(1954), and the third volume of her memoirs (1963). All three books were written at different stages of the relationship, and therefore offer quite diverse perspectives that taken together add up to a more comprehensive picture of the affair.When writing America Day by Day“, de Beauvoir was deeply in love, and Algren returned this feeling. Yet, Algren does not appear as a predominant figure in the book he inspired; he is hardly mentioned. For, de Beauvoir thought that once she wrote about someone or something, it was lost to her. She consequently had to find a way to write about him-he preoccupied her mind-without actually writing about him. She succeeded in doing so by writing about his“ America, i.e. the places he showed her. Whatever she sees fascinates her. In fact, this fascination reflects her admiration of Algren rather than of America.By 1954, the romantic phase of the affair was over; a first rupture had occurred. In the novel, de Beauvoir\u27s alter ego Anne from the beginning sees that the affair is doomed to fail. There is a life before and after the trip to America. Both lovers\u27 inability to give up their previous life for a mutual future is a hovering threat from the moment they first lay eyes on one another. During her trip to America Anne looks at Lewis the person directly rather than to convey an emotional but indirect portrait of him by means of describing his surroundings.By the time de Beauvoir published the third volume of her memoirs in 1963, she claimed that all feelings for Algren had died. The few paragraphs dealing with him are written from great distance. In facts, she concentrates on the long and dangerous passages to and from America rather than to write about him. Her infatuation with the American writer is likened to a nervous condition possibly to be remedied with medication. As a prior reason for the relationship to start, she indicates her (masculine) desire for a short sexual adventure in America. Little surprisingly, Algren broke with her for good after he had read the "hateful" book. Nonetheless, his memory of her was alive until his last interview shortly before his death some twenty years later. De Beauvoir in turn, though she was buried next to Sartre, had wished to be buried wearing the ring Algren had given her once upon a time, and so it was done. As one critic observed, in the end, she was more comfortable with sex in the head than with sex in bed. 
Performing Resistance: Contemporary American Performance-Activism
No full textDeriving from the question whether performances have the capability of marking forms of public intervention and socio-political action this paper examines contemporary performance-activism. Thus, my article explores three artist-collectives who perform their social, political and economic critiques in the different realms of public space. All three collectives relate to Augusto Boal\u27s method of an "invisible theater" which transforms public space into a public stage and in which the audience is not aware of being part of a theatrical situation. Regarding the artists presented in this paper, the actual notion of "public space" ranges from the streets of New York to national television and the virtual sphere of the internet.By comparing these three activist groups this paper explores on the one hand the liminal zone in which political protest and performance creatively collaborate, and on the other hand, how - within the scope of this interrelation of performance and activism - different realms of public space are utilized, subverted, and potentially transformed
“Confusions about the place and the way in which I grew up”: Place and Knowledge in Joan Didion’s Memoir Where I Was From
No full textThis essay is a close reading of Joan Didion’s memoir Where I Was From“ (2003), and it is particularly focused on the spatial aspects of Didion’s narrative. I am arguing that the production of autobiographical knowledge in this text is closely linked to the places the narrator is referring to and in which she positions herself. Furthermore, this essay aims at illustrating that Didion’s narrative itself functions as a genre-specific site for the production of autobiographical knowledge
Event{u}al Disruptions: Postmodern Theory and Alain Badiou
Get PDFThis (rather theoretical) paper juxtaposes three ‘postmodern’ tendencies (epistemology, monocentrism and its idea of events) with Alain Badiou’s ontological approach that implies multiple multiplicities and the singular event. By referring to the work of Jacques Derrida, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, as well as Gilles Deleuze, I seek to offer an insight into postmodern (Literary and Cultural) theory’s attachment to certain beliefs that pose problems to movements of resistance, as well as conceptualizations of anything ‘new.’ By introducing Alain Badiou’s thoughts on postmodern theory as well as his divergence from this path, I illuminate his potential for critical analyses in American Studies to come.  
The Spectacle of the Other: Representations of Chinatown in Michael Cimino’s Year of the Dragon (1985) and John Carpenter’s Big Trouble in Little China (1986)
No full textSince the late nineteenth century, Chinatowns have always been portrayed on the silver screen as spaces of danger, spiritual and moral decadence, and \u27otherness.\u27 This paper examines the representations of Chinatowns in two movies released in the 1980s, Year of the Dragon“ (1985) and Big Trouble in Little China“ (1986), while addressing plausible reasons for the endurance and durability of the negative depictions of Chinatown
Battleground Masculinity: Gendertroublers and Gatekeepers in Oliver Stone\u27s Platoon (1986)
No full textIn the years following its release in 1986, Oliver Stone\u27s Vietnam war film, Platoon“, received a great amount of attention in academia. A critical look from the vantage point of contemporary Queer and Gender Studies, however, can still contribute valuably and reveal issues hitherto untouched. My paper discusses how, besides fighting a military war, the film\u27s three protagonists are deeply involved in negotiating masculinity as they assume positions not only in an oedipal arrangement but also in the contest between gendertroublers and borderpatrols