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Winner of the English Book Award, Grand Prix du Livre 2006 de la Ville de Sherbrooke. In this original and groundbreaking study, Winfried Siemerling examines the complexities of identity and recognition in the meaning of 'American'.
Meteorologies of Modernity explores the ways in which literature reflects and participates in discourses on weather and climate – historically as well as at our contemporary moment. Literature contains a huge meteorological archive built throughout the centuries. The essays collected in this volume therefore ask to what extent literature can bring the vastness and complexity of climate change into view, how literature offers ways to think through the challenges of the Anthropocene both culturally, historically, and aesthetically, and, last but not least, how it helps us to conceptualize a radically new understanding of what it means to be human. The thirteen contributions from literary and cultural studies address weather and climate discourses from a variety of conceptual angles and cover a broad range of historical and geographical contexts. Topics include representations of tropical climates in Shakespeare, the close yet tense relationship between literature and the rising discipline of meteorology in the nineteenth century, allegories of climate change in postcolonial literature, and climate catastrophes in the contemporary clifi novel. By employing a historicizing and comparative approach, the volume addresses the need for studying representations of climate and climate change in an interdisciplinary, transnational and transhistorical framework, overcoming traditional disciplinary boundaries and creating new collectives of theory and criticism that are essential when debating the Anthropocene.
For more than two hundred years, Jews have played important roles in the development of American literature. The Cambridge Companion to Jewish American Literature addresses a wide array of themes and approaches to the distinct yet multifaceted body of Jewish American literature. Essays examine writing from the 1700s to major contemporary writers such as Saul Bellow and Philip Roth. Topics covered include literary history, immigration and acculturation, Yiddish and Hebrew literature, popular culture, women writers, literary theory and poetics, multilingualism, the Holocaust, and contemporary fiction. This collection of specially commissioned essays by leading figures discusses Jewish American literature in relation to ethnicity, religion, politics, race, gender, ideology, history, and ethics, and places it in the contexts of both Jewish and American writing. With its chronology and guides to further reading, this volume will prove valuable to scholars and students alike.
American painters and graphic artists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries sought inspiration for their work in the uniquely American experience of history and nature. The result was a transformation of the conventional Old World visual language into an indigenous and populist New World syntax. The twelve essays in this volume explore the development of a frontier mythology, a democratic style depicting common people and objects, and an American artistic consciousness and identity. Conceived and written from the perspectives of both cultural and art historians, American Icons initiates an interdisciplinary discussion on the complex relationships between American and European art.
Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, Free University of Berlin, course: American Literature in the 18th Century -Early American Novel, language: English, abstract: The beginnings of an independent American prose fiction lie in the post-revolutionary era of the early American republic. In the process of claiming its political freedom from Great Britain and displacing the old patriarchal order, the nation had asserted the principle of individualism. According to the Declaration of Independence, the chief task of a democratic government was to secure each man’s right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. However, despite this stable foundation of revolutionary ideals, the United States faced severe political and social struggles in achieving a balance between the interests of the individual citizen and public welfare. During the 1780s and 1790s, America underwent a remarkable socioeconomical transformation. In the face of an expanding liberal market capitalism, a controversy between agriculture and industry began to develop. A traditional land-based class stood in opposition to a newly emerging liberal, money-based society. Popular interests drifted apart and manifested themselves in the bitter party struggle between Federalists and Republicans. While the first argued for governmental control of individualism and encouraged the growth of commerce and manufacturing, the latter favored an agrarian ideal and aimed at limiting governmental intervention to promote personal freedom and individualism.
Celebrating the 80th birthday of Winfried Fluck, this volume of REAL gathers leading US-American and European literary scholars from English and American Studies to engage some of his classic essays, covering topics that range from the aesthetics of early American literature to the history of our digital present and from the Americanization of literary studies to the search for American democratic culture. Each of the volume's twelve dialogues consists of a republished essay by Fluck and a response by one his interlocutors, written specifically for this occasion. Contributors include field-defining scholars, long-time companions, and colleagues whose intellectual trajectory has been impacted by Fluck's incisive metacriticism and his reception-oriented approach to literary and cultural history. The twelve dialogues reassess debates that have shaped literary studies in the late twentieth century and they inquire into the paradigmatic shifts that are currently reorganizing the field.
Seminar paper from the year 2001 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 3 (C), Free University of Berlin (John F. Kennedy Institut), course: Culture Seminar, language: English, abstract: There are many myths in the American culture and such as the success-myth, made America what it is today. The success-myth and self-reliance took the place of puritan virtues like unselfishness, virtuousness and modesty. The forerunner of the enlightenment was Benjamin Franklin, who replaced those puritan virtues by self-realization, reason and individuality. He himself was striving for moral perfection while his definition of moral was quite different from the previous one. His plan of gaining moral perfection concentrated on financial success and consisted of how you could be on top of everything by being always disciplined and success orientated. He believed man would be successful if he stepped out of the shadow of conformity and was brave enough to believe in his individuality and willing to work hard for his aims. For him financial success was the key to gain perfect happiness. The principle of self-reliance is also part of the great enlightenment and functions as an ally of B. Franklin`s success-myth. Emerson was the central transcendentalist whose principle of self-reliance replaced the traditional religion. He believed that conformity restricts liberty and culture and declares himself in favor of non-conformism on the principles of truth and integrity. He talks of a divine connection between man and nature which he calls intuition. He reinforces the transition of the individual and sees it as an unavoidable necessity to overcome obstacles and to bring sacrifices when you follow your intuition. Because not following it would mean moral suicide and betrayal of yourself. He makes clear that ones place in life is not ruled by society or fate but by yourself. Rely exceptionally on yourself and you will succeed. He also makes clear you have to follow your own interests instead of going conform with society which will lead you to success and independence. The only thing ruling you should be reason and ambition. You will also gain freedom because possession will lead you to it. Then there is the frontier-myth. Americans saw themselves as pioneers bringing civilization to wilderness. They saw themselves as missionaries bringing civilization to a`cultureless`race and while doing so they were simply overrunning strange cultures. Their conviction of being the superior race made them blind to different cultures. [...]
DIVA state of the art portrait of the field of American studies--its interests and methodologies, its interactions with the social and cultural movements it describes and attempts to explain, and a compendium of likely directions the field will take in the f/div