Astrid Boger – författare

Even though the fantastic (in its most inclusive definition) has been a part of our culture for as long as it exists, it has not been a prominent feature of European academic interest. With its inherent transgressive moment the fantastic allows for an ideal space of the cultural negotiation of political, social and physical boundaries, which should place it at the center of popular cultural research, not as is the case, at its periphery. But the commencing boom of fantastic themes in contemporary media production has facilitated a paradigmatic change in research, prompting a wide interest in the fantastic in all its forms, from fantasy to horror, from fairy tale to science fiction.

This volume addresses this growing interest by reviewing the status of research on the fantastic in Europe so far and by providing a necessary outlook for the future. In the essays current trends, such as the liminality debate, as well as established discourses, as for example on genre theory, are brought together to show interested researchers a network of interdisciplinary (from literary, media and social studies) approaches towards the fantastic.

The World's Fairs staged in the United States in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries showcased world cultures in peaceful competition and cooperation. But as Astrid Boger shows in "Envisioning the Nation", at the same time the fairs played an important role in the growth of nationalism and American exceptionalism, subtly recasting world history from an American point of view and thus laying the groundwork for American dominance in the twentieth century. Drawing on studies of the fairs' sites, architecture, and scientific and cultural displays, as well as contemporaneous literary works that dealt with the fairs, Boger paints a richly contextualized portrait of these influential spectacles of national culture.