Journal of the Austrian Association for American Studies (JAAAS)
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Mediating Mountains: Introduction to the Special Issue
Full text linkMountains confront us in many guises. They visualize space and provide geopolitical orientations that address questions of historical, cultural, social, national, and individual identities. Mountains are subjects of philosophical reflections, environmental meditations, and ecocritical ontologies. They serve as a means of spiritual invigoration, scientific experimentation, medical therapy, and recreation. They are sources and resources of technological and artistic innovations, human and nonhuman exploitations. Mountain spaces are often borderlands, contested zones of imperial expansion, war, and migration. They are sites of tourism and industrialization, deposits of waste, and repositories of cultural memory; their forms are shaped and reshaped through processes of cultural and geological erosion. This polymorphous and fluid nature turns mountains into a dynamic medium that both reflects and grounds subjectivities. Mountains may also be conceived of as what Timothy Morton calls "hyperobjects" that affect the very ways we come to think about existence, earth, and society. This special issue sets out to examine the cultural and aesthetic malleability of mountains
Paul Austers autobiographische Werke: Stationen einer Schriftstellerkarriere. By Christian Eilers (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2019), 326pp.
Full text linkMatthias Klestil reviews Christian Eilers\u27s 2019 study Paul Austers autobiographische Werke: Stationen einer Schriftstellerkarriere
\u27Language ... Without Metaphor\u27: Soundscapes and Worldly Engagements in Henry David Thoreau\u27s Walden
No full textHenry David Thoreau has been celebrated for his observation of the natural world. While noting Thoreau\u27s skills of observation in relation to the natural world and his responsiveness to sensory experience, scholars have, however, tended to privilege sight over sound. Even though Thoreau was recognized by musicians such as Charles Ives and John Cage for having an exceptionally fine ear for the symphonies of nature, sound still remains a neglected aspect of Thoreau\u27s Walden; Or, Life in the Woods. This article is a corrective to this status quo, as it reads Walden as a transmedial project in which Thoreau frequently tuned in to the sounds encountered during his sojourn in nature in order to figure the essential parameters of his experiment and to relate to the entire world of experience. The complex soundscape of Walden engenders a multifaceted awareness of modern space, as sounds of nature, sounds of progress, and the clamor of people intersect. Accordingly, this article explores how Thoreau uses a vast array of sounds to relate to the world; how he apprehended, and even appreciated, not only the harmonies of nature, but also dissonance—within nature, as well as between nature, modernity and rurality. In doing so, this article proposes a reading of Thoreau\u27s auditory experience as a reflection on, and negotiation with, a multifaceted world where the pastoral and the industrial coexist
\u27Ta, te, ti, toe, too\u27: The Horrors of the Harsh Female Voice in 1950s Hollywood Comedies
No full textHollywood comedies of the 1950s saw the decline of a specific kind of female comedian, as unruly comediennes in the screwball tradition transformed into silly sexy vixens or tamed into homely sexless housewives. There are, however, some comedies which self-reflectively negotiate this shift. In this article, I would like to suggest that the voice of the comedienne serves as a marker of distinction. My article accordingly explores two pivotal examples of such transformative processes: Judy Holliday as Billie Dawn in Born Yesterday (1950) and Jean Hagen as Lina Lamont in Singin\u27 in the Rain (1952). Both heroines feature what critics have called "the horrors of the harsh female voice." Whereas Billie\u27s voice "survives" through schooling and refinement, Jean\u27s voice resists all training and remains shrill and rowdy, leading to the violent expulsion of her character altogether. With the transformation and eventual disappearance of these extraordinary female actresses and their roles, such voices remained silent for a long time, until loud and brassy comediennes of a new generation were allowed to reappear on the silver screen and to raise their harsh and distinctive voices once again
Sonic Others in Early Sound Studies and the Poetry of Edward Sapir: A Salvage Operation
Full text linkCharacteristically, early research in soundscapes is suffused with a sense of sonophilia; that is, a fascination with auditory perception and sound as the inferiorized Other of sight. Soundscape scholars have thus often conceived of their work as a salvage operation, which is conducted to save what would otherwise be irretrievably lost to a visual regime. This moral impetus to redeem the "sonic Other" is at the center of this article, in which I investigate how notions of sonic alterity interweave with treatments of social and cultural alterity. To explore and interrogate the nexus of social, cultural, and sonic alterity for its political and ethical ramifications, I analyze the acoustics of the poetry of Edward Sapir. Sapir played a key role in the formation of cultural anthropology and the early development of linguistic anthropology. What is far less known is that he is also the author of over six hundred poems, some of which were published in such renowned magazines as Poetry and The Dial. Focusing on the poems "To a Street Violinist" and "Harvest," I probe the dynamics of an anthropo-literary project that sets out to salvage both non-visual sense perceptions and other-than-modern, Western ways of life
Guest Editors\u27 Editorial
No full textIn lieu of an abstract, this is the first paragraph of the contribution:
This third issue of the Journal of the Austrian Association for American Studies (JAAAS) is a special issue in more ways than one. The idea at its core was to highlight contributions by emerging scholars in American studies at Austrian universities, compiled and arranged by a team of guest editors who are members of Austria’s Young Americanists (AYA)—the graduate network affiliated with the Austrian Association for American Studies (AAAS). Beyond that, the journal itself is likewise young—at the time we began our work, it had just been founded and was still in its conceptual stages. As such, the editing process presented a number of unique challenges in the ambitious process of putting together a special issue. While most jobs in academia are tenuous, with 78% of all scientific jobs at universities being limited term,1 coordinating long-term projects presents an exciting but sometimes unpredictable endeavor, especially at the early career level. This is reflected in both the composition of the issue’s editorial team, as well as the remarkable flexibility demonstrated by all contributors throughout the process
Commemorating Abraham Lincoln and the Transnational Way: Lincoln Monuments in Great Britain. By Liv Birte Buchmann (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2020), 311pp.
Full text link.Joshua Parker reviews Liv Birte Buchmann\u27s Commemorating Abraham Lincoln and the Transnational Way
The Gendered Sounds of Revolutionary American Theater
Full text linkThis article examines the relationship of sound and gender politics in revolutionary America by reading two late eighteenth-century dramatic texts, the 1774 pamphlet A Dialogue, Between a Southern Delegate, and His Spouse (written pseudonymously by Mary V. V.), and Virginia playwright Robert Munford\u27s five-act play The Patriots (written c1777, published only posthumously in 1798). Even though the sounds of early America cannot be accessed directly, as there was no sound recording in the modern, technology-based sense, and even though neither of the two dramatic texts has a known record of performances, the article sets out to explore how sound and speech were heard and negotiated, and how they reflected on prevailing cultural assumptions about gendered personhood, and the relationship between gender and politics. Arguably, attention to sound in these texts offers specific insights into the joint articulation of gender and transatlantic politics in the larger struggle over the American revolution. As this article shows, both texts, albeit for different reasons, strategically use gendered sounds to stage specific political interventions: By "listening" carefully to these sounds (as they are represented in writing), one can understand in more detail how acoustic environments impacted on the articulation, legitimation and deliberation of political argument in revolutionary America
The Motion and the Noise: Yoknapatawpha\u27s Shifting Soundscape
No full textWilliam Faulkner\u27s dislike of unwanted sound is well documented. The acoustic environment of rural Mississippi amplified irreversibly after the introduction of the automobile, airplane, and automated farm machinery. In his Intruder in the Dust (1948), the jukebox and radio absorb pointed criticism for producing "canned" sounds outside of their "proper" environment. The narrowing gap between town square and dance hall signifies encroaching chaos, as noise drowns out the attenuated "harmony" that keeps elite whites in power and Intruder\u27s African American protagonist Lucas Beauchamp out of the hands of the lynch mob. For Faulkner, the shift in the auditory environment presents both a disruption and an impediment to a system built on white bourgeois ideals. However, Faulkner\u27s pessimism is counterpointed by sociological studies undertaken by Fisk University researchers. The Fisk study identifies the emergence of a blues culture in the Delta whose energy and boundary-crossing impulses illustrate the liberating possibilities of an expanding soundscape. By juxtaposing Faulkner\u27s damning descriptions of "the motion and the noise" with the Fisk University researchers\u27 illuminating fieldwork, this essay interprets a transformative period in the constantly shifting soundscape of the U.S. South. In line with Jacques Attali\u27s dictum that "our music foretells our future," Intruder in the Dust anticipates the cultural upheaval that would energize the Civil Rights Movement. Both in fiction and in fact, the "noise" emanating from jukeboxes and radios in 1940s Mississippi accelerated social change at a volume much higher and a tempo much faster than Faulkner and other gradualists desired
Awful Archives: Conspiracy Theory, Rhetoric, and Acts of Evidence. By Jenny Rice (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2020). 226pp.
Full text linkThis is a review of Awful Archives: Conspiracy Theory, Rhetoric, and Acts of Violence by Jenny Rice