Current Objectives of Postgraduate American Studies (COPAS - E-Journal)
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Challenging the Cultural Mosaic: Shani Mootoo\u27s "Out on Main Street"
No full textThe essay examines the short story “Out on Main Street“ (1993) by Caribbean-Canadian author Shani Mootoo as an example of fictional contestations of the official policy of multiculturalism in Canada, which has been a major discourse in the realm of cultural affairs in Canada since the Canadian Multiculturalism Act of 1988. Canadian multiculturalism is often critiqued as a token policy aiming at keeping non-‘white’ Canadians from the ‘white’ cultural center of Canadian society. The discourse of multiculturalism is often conceptualized by the spatial metaphor of the mosaic and thus implies rigid boundaries, in this case between ethno-cultural groups. Mootoo is read here as one among many contemporary non-‘white’ Canadian authors of fiction that draft alternative spatial orders to the cultural mosaic in their texts and thus offer ways of imagining Canadian society differently. 
“Welcome to Our Home!”: Staging Practices at Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House
No full textLouisa May Alcott’s Orchard House, today a major site of literary tourism in New England, reaches out to and draws in visitors who wish to experience first-hand the premises where the Alcotts lived and where Little Women“, one of America’s favorite novels, was written. The essay investigates to what extent, however, this and other house museums rely on staging and argues that a close reading of the material culture reveals the limitations of a claim for ‘authenticity.’ 
The Romantic Veil (of Perception): American Transcendentalism and British Romanticism as a Continuation of Lockean Empiricism
No full textWhen it comes to the epistemological basis of British romanticism and American transcendentalism, a traditional approach would certainly refer to Kant’s transcendental philosophy which is commonly considered an antithesis to Locke’s empiricism. A new trend in philosophical research now suggests that romantic theories are an addition to rather than a refutation of empiricism. This essay traces the interdependencies between transcendental thought and empiricism in the writings of Coleridge and Emerson
The Private Goes Public: Gender and Cultural Spaces in Abraham Cahan\u27s Yekl: A Tale of the New York Ghetto
No full textThis essay explores the relations between cultural spaces and gender in Abraham Cahan\u27s text Yekl“. American culture at the turn into the twentieth century was becoming increasingly theatrical. In this process public and private spaces as well as conceptions of gender were transformed. By contrasting the two female characters Mamie and Gitl in Cahan\u27s text these transformations become most evident.  
"…the white women all go for sex": Discourses of Gender, Race, Ethnicity in the American Woman’s Rights Movement, 1869
No full textAs an emancipating movement for women, the American Woman’s Rights Movement can be considered as a "counter public sphere" which transgressed dominant orders of gender. In their alliance at the outset of Reconstruction, women\u27s rights activists not only sought gender equality, but under the label of "universal suffrage" connected it to the ideal of racial equality. The discussion about the introduction of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1869 is understood as a political intersection for the movement since the movement, which initially promoted "universal suffrage," then disbanded on grounds of racism, sexism and nativism which appeared in different antagonistic arguments that were brought forth to either promote the amendment or to oppose it. This paper analyzes the discourses of gender, race, ethnicity in the internal discussions of the Woman’s Rights Movement and seeks to answer whether or not it transgressed prevailing notions of racism, nativism and sexism in order to achieve emancipating potential for women
Do the Photos Tell it All? Representing Torture in the Images from Abu Ghraib
No full textIn 2004, pictures of U.S. military personnel abusing detainees of the Abu Ghraib prison came to public attention, triggering a new debate on torture. This essay examines the shock potential of the photographs from Abu Ghraib as well as the representability of pain. It argues that the role of photography in the Abu Ghraib torture scandal is a complex and complicated one, oscillating between becoming complicit in the torture and exposing it
Unconventional Allies Reunited: Liberal Hawks and Neoconservatives at the Turn of the Century
No full textThe paper argues that liberal hawks and neoconservatives formed an at first glance unconventional alliance during several international conflicts after the end of the Cold War. An analysis of the respective histories of the two schools of thought shows though that the cooperation is actually rooted in common origins and various similarities in their ideologies