Current Objectives of Postgraduate American Studies (COPAS - E-Journal)
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Norms, Myths, and Vulnerability: Audre Lorde’s Reconstruction of Self in “125th Street and Abomey”
Full text linkIn her poetry collection The Black Unicorn“ (1987), Audre Lorde shows the ways in which those who do not comply to the normative ideals of her contemporary US culture are especially vulnerable to societal marginalization and violence. Analyzing Lorde’s reconstruction of vulnerability in her poem “125th Street and Abomey,” this paper argues that the poet’s drawing from West African cosmology constitutes one method through which Lorde reconstructs her speaker’s vulnerable socio-cultural position as a potential site for transformative processes of intersubjective self-(re)formation.
Remembering: Transnational Memory Cultures and American Studies: The 2022 Postgraduate Forum
Full text link“The time loop nightmare of being a black man in the US” African American Cultural Memory in the Short Film Two Distant Strangers (2020)
Full text linkThis paper is concerned with African American cultural memory and the translation of historical experiences into contemporary narratives. To discuss this, I will analyze the American short film Two Distant Strangers“ (2020), which takes up contemporary discussions of the Black Lives Matter“ movement and problematizes racial profiling and police violence in the United States. Addressing the ways in which contemporary cinematic representations display traumatic memories and discuss existing memory processes, I will argue that films like Two Distant Strangers “are substantial contributions to African American cultural memory and thus capable of impacting predominant narratives about African American histor(ies) and identit(ies).
Travel Writing and Transnational Relations: Francis Lieber as The Stranger in America
Full text linkIn this paper I analyze Francis Lieber’s 1835 travel book The Stranger in America “with regard to Lieber’s portrayal of transnational relations. By exploring his account of US culture, politics, and institutions, and by examining the comparative framework he cultivates, I carve out Lieber’s transnational perspective. To investigate whether he was indeed the “Stranger in America” he claims to be, I map out the identity he claims for himself. I conclude that Lieber purposely situated himself as a cultural intermediary to profit from a position of authority and to pave the way for a future in US political science and academia
From Melville to Saunders: Using Liminality to Uncover US-American Racial Fantasies
Full text linkThis paper offers a comparative reading of Herman Melville’s romance Moby Dick“ (1851) and George Saunders’s fantastic ghost story Lincoln in the Bardo “(2017), tracing the reverberations of Toni Morrison’s ‘American Africanism’ as a specific kind of White supremacist discourse in both novels. After sketching nineteenth-century romance and recent fantasy literature as liminal genres fitting for a critical negotiation of the equally liminal Africanist presence, this paper shows how both novels employ liminality as a shared narrative strategy to transport their criticism on White supremacy and anti-Blackness
Emerson, I am trying to live...the examined life - The Transcendentalist Poet Mary Oliver
Full text linkEven after the poet’s passing in 2019, Mary Oliver’s poetry continues to soothe and inspire her readers. Celebrated for her mindful and meditative poetic responses to the natural world, her name has been linked to literary movements such as American Transcendentalism and Romanticism. This article traces such Transcendentalist thought in selected works by Mary Oliver through comparisons made to Emerson’s concept of the Over-Soul and the position of the poet as presented by both writers
Saul Bellow’s Henderson the Rain King and the Zany Postwar Novel
Full text linkThis essay argues for understanding Saul Bellow’s 1959 novel Henderson the Rain King“ as an instance of the zany, a writing style of ‘desperate playfulness’ that is characterized by its ludicrous imitation. While the novel’s formal unevenness, peculiar affective mix of exhaustion and comedy and seemingly unending intertextual references has long occupied critics and scholars alike, approaching the novel as zany not only allows us to piece together these seemingly unrelated elements of the novel but also to shed light on the novel’s negotiation of the changing role of American literature abroad anchored in its satirizing of the Hemingway code here
"Distribution is the Key": Transnational Networks of Audiopoetry in the Postwar Era
Full text linkThis essay carves out a transnational network of postwar audio publishers invested in the idea to distribute spoken poetry and performed art via LPs and cassettes. To exemplify the strategies and practices of labels, it presents a case study of the German S Press Tonbandverlag and its correspondence with the audio magazines Black Box “(Washington D.C.) and Audio Arts “(London, UK). Thereby, it delves into the history of the midcentury audio scene whose meanings and significance for literary history has so far received relatively little attention within the field of literary studies
Lost Chances? Re-Negotiating Forest Activism in the Anthropocene
Full text linkThis essay examines the recent cultural revisit of previous forms of forest activism. Focusing on the 2019 Austrian art installation “For Forest” by Klaus Littmann and the 2018 novel The Overstory“ by American novelist Richard Powers, the article takes a closer look at the representation of, and reactions to, eco-activism and shows how discrediting representations and backlash against such activism blocks the development of an ecological consciousness