Current Objectives of Postgraduate American Studies (COPAS - E-Journal)
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Spoken Art: Amy Lowell\u27s Dramatic Poetry and Early Twentieth-Century Expressive Culture
No full textThis essay rereads Amy Lowell\u27s dramatic poetry, which has been unduly neglected in literary criticism. Setting the poems in relation to high modernism as well as to the contemporary expressive culture movement—a movement emphasizing the role of the individual in the act of communication—it argues that Lowell\u27s poetry has to be reconsidered as a spoken art
Ambiguity and the Ethics of Reading Race and Lynching in James W. Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912)
No full textJames Weldon Johnson’s novel The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man “(1912) discusses the causes, conditions, and implications of passing in a segregated society. The essay argues that the novel’s aesthetics of ambiguity conveys and reflects an ambivalence towards the concept of race. Using theories of Geoffrey Galt Harpham and John Guillory, it elaborates an ethics of reading race and lynching in The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Ma“n
Hunger and Self-Fashioning in Richard Wright’s Black Boy and Knut Hamsun’s Sult
No full textDespite their obvious differences in style, setting, and literary background, Richard Wright’s novel Black Boy “and Knut Hamsun’s Sult“ share a marked similarity in their contemplation of hunger as both a social and existential issue. This matter is one that is bound up with the creation and understanding of self-fashioning and identity, as related through the subjective perceptions and experiences of the narrator
Arbitrary Ruptures: The Making of History in Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (2007)
No full textMichael Chabon’s alternate history novel The Yiddish Policemen’s Union“ (2007) is one of a few novels of that genre that have received recognition from beyond its fan community. This essay argues that the novel’s success can be attributed to its thematic participation in a post-9/11 public discourse which addresses and complements the generic conventions of alternate history
Good Mob, Bad Mob: Violence and Community in The Cattle Queen of Montana (1894)
Get PDFFocusing on the genre of the Western pioneer narrative, notably Mrs. Nat. Collins’s The Cattle Queen of Montana“ (1894), the article will discuss literary representations of violence and community in the context of the accelerating westward movement on the North American continent around the mid-nineteenth century. Drawing on the theories of Georges Sorel and Richard Slotkin, the article emphasizes the productive dimensions of violence and argues for an increased recognition of the multiple intersections that connect violent acts to processes of communal bonding. The settling of the American continent was an intrinsically violent endeavor, and consequently, it will be argued, violence became a fundamental factor in shaping the modes of social interaction and communal cohesion in the ‘new’ nation. The literary accounts of Western pioneer narratives in general provide fascinating insights into these intricate processes and contribute to an enhanced understanding of the role of violence in the settling of the West. Collins’s narrative, while maintaining a clear-cut division between the ‘acceptable’ violence of the settlers as opposed to the ‘unacceptable’ violence of the natives, relates the inherent brutality of frontier conditions with unflinching bluntness and at the same time reflects on the repercussions this violence has on emerging structures of community. By providing a reading of this narrative as well as of some of the illustrations that accompany it, the article will highlight the continuities between violence and community in the mid- nineteenth century United States and the role Western pioneer narratives played in developing these continuities
Interkulturelle Hochschullehre: Internationalisierungsstrategien am Beispiel des Fachs Amerikanistik
No full textDie Internationalisierung der Universitäten und die Steigerung der Attraktivität und Wettbewerbsfähigkeit des europäischen Hochschul- und Forschungsraums (Bologna-Prozess) kann mit einer verbesserten Wahrnehmung und Nutzung kultureller Vielfalt entscheidend gefördert werden. Als interkulturelle Hochschullehre lassen sich Bemühungen bezeichnen, die im Sinne der internationalization at home den Umgang mit interkultureller Kommunikation und Interaktion in das alltägliche Handlungsrepertoire integrieren. In diesem Sinne haben jüngere Entwicklungen in der Hochschuldidaktik den Bedeutungsgewinn vor allem von Aspekten des Lehrens und Lernens herausgearbeitet, die mit der Lehr- und Lern-Haltung eng verknüpft sind. Die folgenden Ausführungen skizzieren Ergebnisse eine empirischen Fallstudie zur interkulturellen Hochschullehre im Bereich Amerikanistik
Ralph Waldo Emerson versus Cormac McCarthy: The Annihilation of Emerson’s Values in McCarthy’s The Road
No full textFocusing on the significant and also ambivalent role that nature has always played in American literature and culture, the article examines the striking contrast between Emerson’s description of nature in his essay “Nature“ (1836) and McCarthy’s approach to the same subject in his novel The“ Road“ (2006). The aim of the article is to reveal the presence of a subtext in which McCarthy hints at the alienation between humans and the natural environment and thus puts forth a radical disillusionment with Emersonian values. Whereas transcendentalists come to read nature as a medium to find spirituality and to be able to communicate with the divine, McCarthy projects confusion and disorder through (human) terror onto nature—or rather what is left of it in the darkened and almost entirely destroyed world in The Road“. Against the background of a journey through a burned-out America which is usually celebrated for its natural beauty, the protagonists have to face a desolate waste land: ‘Nature’s Nation’ has turned into a stifling landscape of degeneration. The article examines how the idealistic concept of American nature with which the country once strove to identify itself is exposed, rejected and in fact, heavily attacked in The Road“
Shifting Spaces in the Critical Regionalist Fiction of New England
No full textAt the turn of the twenty-first century, a critical regionalist fiction is emerging. Like its architectural counterpart, this fiction fuses the local with the global by situating current issues in a particular place, simultaneously exerting an emancipatory action. Whether North Dakota, Newfoundland, or Maine, these are places off the literary map. This article explores how critical regionalist fiction is shifting the physical, imagined, and lived spaces of New England. 
"Computer-generated history": Zur paradoxen Dualität von Populärkultur und Zeitgeschichte in Jon Haddocks Screenshots
No full textJon Haddock\u27s body of work is not only a skillful exploration into the realm of the creative possibilities of Computer-generated Imagery, but also a provocative contemplation on contemporary America. Through a comprehensive analysis of Haddock\u27s series of images entitled Screenshots“, this essay argues for an integration of computer and video game culture into the academic discourse of American Visual Culture studies