Amerikastudien


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George F. Kennan


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Winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize in Biography Widely and enthusiastically acclaimed, this is the authorized, definitive biography of one of the most fascinating but troubled figures of the twentieth century by the nation's leading Cold War historian. In the late 1940s, George F. Kennan—then a bright but, relatively obscure American diplomat—wrote the "long telegram" and the "X" article. These two documents laid out United States' strategy for "containing" the Soviet Union—a strategy which Kennan himself questioned in later years. Based on exclusive access to Kennan and his archives, this landmark history illuminates a life that both mirrored and shaped the century it spanned.




Aesthetic Innovation and the Democratic Principle


Book Description

This collection of essays by a leading scholar of American literature and culture demonstrates the impressive scope and depth of Heinz Ickstadt's scholarly interventions and his intense engagement with crucial concepts and questions that have preoccupied the field of American studies over the past decades. Moving from the philosophy of pragmatism to issues of identity formation, from aesthetic experience to pluralist aesthetics, and from imaginaries of American modernism to strategies of commemoration, Ickstadt's recent work explores the complexities of the agenda of literary and cultural studies at large.




Transcendental Resistance


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A timely and engrossing critique of the New Americanists




In Quest of Nothing


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Includes essays that probe urgent themes of our clime: truth, trust, the imminence of spirit in everyday life.




Bodies in Dissent


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Performance and identity in nineteenth and early twentieth-century Arican-American creative work.




African American Literary Studies


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Opening with five intriguing urban short stories by Zora Neale Hurston that are reprinted here for the first time, and with the first publication and reproduction in facsimile of two previously unknown Hurston letters, this special issue of "Amerikastudien / American Studies", edited by Glenda R. Carpio and Werner Sollors (both at Harvard University), takes stock of current trends in African American literary studies. It presents a new short story by Jamaica Kincaid inspired by the Hurston texts, a new essay by Ishmael Reed on the origins of Black Studies, and provocative new scholarship on Hurston, the Harlem Renaissance, Richard Wright, the German American artist Winold Reiss, Paul Beatty's Germany, the blues, performance poetry, transnationalism, and on current challenges and new directions in the field. Contributors from the United States and Germany include Birgit Bauridl, George Blaustein, Eva Boesenberg, Daphne Brooks, Dorothea Buehler, Carla Cappetti, Glenda R. Carpio, Melanie Eis, Jeffrey Ferguson, Katharina Gerund, Lisa Gill, Udo J. Hebel, George Hutchinson, Stephan Kuhl, Susanne Leikam, Sieglinde Lemke, Frank Mehring, Ernest Julius Mitchell II, Scott Poulson-Bryant, Werner Sollors, Kenneth W. Warren, and M. Genevieve West.




The Routledge Handbook to the Culture and Media of the Americas


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Exploring the culture and media of the Americas, this handbook places particular emphasis on collective and intertwined experiences and focuses on the transnational or hemispheric dimensions of cultural flows and geocultural imaginaries that shape the literature, arts, media and other cultural expressions in the Americas. The Routledge Handbook to the Culture and Media of the Americas charts the pervasive, asymmetrical flows of cultural products and capital and their importance in the development of the Americas. The volume offers a comprehensive understanding of how inter-American communication is constituted, framed and structured, and covers the artistic and political dimensions that have shaped literature, art and popular culture in the region. Forty-six chapters cover a range of inter-American key concepts and dynamics, divided into two parts: Literature and Music deals with inter-American entanglements of artistic expressions in the Western Hemisphere, including music, dance, literary genres and developments. Media and Visual Cultures explores the inter-American dimension of media production in the hemisphere, including cinema and television, photography and art, journalism, radio, digital culture and issues such as freedom of expression and intellectual property. This multidisciplinary approach will be of interest to a broad array of academic scholars and students in history, sociology, political science; and cultural, postcolonial, gender, literary, globalization and media studies.




The Printed Book in Contemporary American Culture


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This essay collection explores the cultural functions the printed book performs in the digital age. It examines how the use of and attitude toward the book form have changed in light of the digital transformation of American media culture. Situated at the crossroads of American studies, literary studies, book studies, and media studies, these essays show that a sustained focus on the medial and material formats of literary communication significantly expands our accustomed ways of doing cultural studies. Addressing the changing roles of authors, publishers, and readers while covering multiple bookish formats such as artists’ books, bestselling novels, experimental fiction, and zines, this interdisciplinary volume introduces readers to current transatlantic conversations on the history and future of the printed book.