Books in the Mainzer Studien Zur Amerikanistik series

The book examines the literary representation of smell throughout American literature. In her innovative close readings, the author combines insights from cultural studies, critical race, gender, intersectionality, trauma, and affect theories to show how odor representations are used to oppress people and to subvert discriminatory power structures.

Das Buch weist die konsequente Orientierung Margaret Fullers am philosophischen Konzept des Continued Growth erstmals durchgangig und umfassend nach. Der interdisziplinare Ansatz vereint die Darstellung von Fullers Handlungsbuhne und Weltanschauung, ihren Vorbildern und ihrer Inspiration im Rahmen einer breiten biografischen und textuellen Analyse.

Die Arbeit zeigt eine kontinuierliche Entwicklung von Traditionslinien weiblichen Schreibens in den USA von der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts bis zur Ara der New Woman auf. Die Analyse verdeutlicht die verschiedenen Formen der Loslosung von der Ideologie der Separate Spheres, bei der Identitatsbildungen aufgrund von Gender, Class und Race aufgebrochen werden.

The book focuses on the minority literature of the Chicanas. Topics such as the deconstruction of pre-established roles and patriarchal beliefs, female identity construction and the new mestiza consciousness which are intertwined with the transgression of social, cultural, and gender borders are studied.

"I'll Take My Stand", two different Jefferson memorials, the Library of Congress Symposium, and the "New Masses" special issue testify to the diversity of Jefferson representations and his appropriators. Jefferson panegyrics in Congress and Roosevelt's borrowing from these speeches in 1945 suggest the various issues Jefferson was appropriated for.

The collection of essays explores the transnational and intermedial (music, visual arts, digital media) legacy of Walt Whitman. It provides examples of his influence as well as suggestive parallels in contemporary poetry and thought. One common concern is the question of Whitman's understanding of democracy and its consequences for poetry and art.

The purpose of this study is to explore how automobile manufacturer General Motors (GM) has framed its corporate identity in domestic ads to convey the 'American brand' image. The author argues that GM has continuously used a patriotic framing in its self-representations, linking itself and its products to the well-being of the country.

This study analyzes the U.S. self-image in programs of the official U.S. broadcasting service to Iran. It illustrates the development of VOA Persian and its conflict-prone organizational setup. An inductive programming analysis reveals a twofold image cultivation strategy that targets Iranian perceptions of the U.S. government and American society.

The author examines motherhood and female self-realization in the four waves of feminism and Joyce Carol Oates's recent fiction. Drawing on Gender Studies and, in particular, on the transnational relation between French and American feminism, she demonstrates how Oates takes up and transforms feminist standpoints in her work.

The study analyzes the first decades of the Yiddish advice colum A Bintel Brief. Created by Abraham Cahan, it ran as the most enduring feature in the New York Yiddish newspaper Forverts. The early letters and responses in A Bintel Brief reveal the hardships of uprooted Eastern European Jews in the United States at the beginning of the 20th century.

Combining historical, sociological and political as well as literary methods, the interdisciplinary study analyzes Thomas King's Truth & Bright Water (1999), Howard Frank Mosher's On Kingdom Mountain (2007), and Jim Lynch's Border Songs (2009). The novels narrate North American borderlands and gauge current developments at the Canada-U.S. border.

The study uses the border concept in order to analyze the bi-national encounter resulting from the American military presence in Germany. By presenting the geographical, legal, political, economic and cultural contexts of this German-American borderland, the author shows similarities and differences to conventional international border situations.

Blackness and the Color Black in 20th-Century African-American Fiction

A collection of essays, Americanists from the United States, Germany, and Latvia enter the debate about the ever increasing pluralization of societies on the North American continent by correlating the issues of multiculturalism and ethnic survival. It demonstrates that the scope of debate has to be widened to reflect the complexity of a subject.

Auctoritas Patrum?

Framing and Reframing the Ladies

The magazine was a harbinger of the Harlem Renaissance and served as a creative outlet for many African-American writers and artists, among them many women. This book offers a descriptive analysis and interpretation of America's first magazine for young African-Americans.

The case studies of Joe Namath, Dennis Rodman and Barry Bonds show how this phenomenon has become visible from the 1960s onwards because of profound changes within the media and sports. These athletes undermined the original sports-hero ideology and still became successful and popular on and off the field - also in a commercial fashion.