Reinhard Isensee - Böcker

Starting in 2005, Günter H. Lenz began preparing a book-length exploration of the transformation of the field of American Studies in the crucial years between 1970 and 1990. As a commentator on, contributor to, and participant in the intellectual and institutional changes in his field, Lenz was well situated to offer a comprehensive and balanced interpretation of that seminal era. Building on essays he wrote while these changes were ongoing, he shows how the revolution in theory, the emergence of postmodern socioeconomic conditions, the increasing globalization of everyday life, and postcolonial responses to continuing and new forms of colonial domination had transformed American Studies as a discipline focused on the distinctive qualities of the United States to a field encompassing the many different “Americas” in the Western Hemisphere as well as how this complex region influenced and was interpreted by the rest of the world. In tracking the shift of American Studies from its exceptionalist bias to its unmanageable global responsibilities, Lenz shows the crucial roles played by the 1930s’ Left in the U.S., the Frankfurt School in Germany and elsewhere between 1930 and 1960, Continental post-structuralism, neo-Marxism, and post-colonialism. Lenz’s friends and colleagues, now his editors, present here his final backward glance at a critical period in American Studies and the birth of the Transnational.

The volume discusses utopian representations of American society, and reflections of American political thought and vision in literature, film, and television. The articles address topics of ecology, urbanism, politics, society, and heroism. Specifically, the volume addresses texts by Paul Auster, Ernest Callenbach, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Herman Melville, Edgar Allen Poe, Sam Shepard, Alexis de Toqueville, James Welch, and Nathanael West, and television series like 24, and the Star Trek and Stargate franchises, as well as video games. Contributors include Sandra Beyer, Rasmus Damkjær Christensen, Antje Dallmann, Allison Davis-White Eyes, Martin Dalgaard Grøn, Reinhard Isensee, Berenike Jung, Philipp Kneis, Daniela Simon, Katarzyna Sobieraj, Renate Ulbrich, and Thomas Wagenknecht.