Interamericana – serie

This collection of essays is part of a project that surveys American literatures in terms of the writers’ responses to international literature. Among English American novelists, 1860s to 1990s, James and Howells contributed significantly to the programmatic «Great American Novel» by broadening the internationality they engaged with to include French and Russian books among the works to which they related their own. Faulkner is a key figure of a later phase when a number of American authors, while drawing upon a similar breadth of internationality, in turn became exemplary abroad in various countries. Morrison, interpreted as contributing to intra-American internationality, and the French Canadian writer Hébert, discussed in a summarizing essay, represent responses to Faulkner.

This book focuses on self-representations of several indigenous communities in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. It offers a multifaceted understanding of North American indigenous history, identity, community and forms of culture. Intersecting themes shape the structure of this volume: the first part focuses on the theme of recovery in relation to the literary field, the second part examines the theme of governance through examples of conflict, public government and citizenship, and the final part discusses the theme of increased global movements in relation to the preservation of local traditions. The contributors hope to advance trans-indigenous studies by encouraging productive dialogues across the U.S., Canada and Mexico–U.S. borders.

The volume is a contribution to the ongoing debate on the internationalization of American Studies. The essays by European, American and Latin American scholars provide critical evaluations of a wide range of concepts, including trans-national and post-national, international, trans-atlantic, trans-pacific, as well as hemispheric, inter-American and comparative American studies. Combining theoretical reflections and actual case studies, the collection proposes a reassessment of current developments at a time when American nations experience the paradoxical simultaneity of both weakened and strengthened national borders alongside multiple challenges to national sovereignty.

This volume attempts for the first time a comprehensive view of the momentous process of German-American cultural transfer during the 18th and 19th centuries, which played an important part in the formation of an American national and cultural identity, a process to which the New England Transcendentalists contributed some of the decisive ingredients, but which has largely escaped the attention of German and American scholarship. In each chapter a specific problem is treated systematically from a clearly defined perspective, deficiencies of existing translation theories are exposed, so that in the concluding chapters 13 and 14 (with an unpublished memorandum by Alexander von Humboldt) a cohesive view of the entire process emerges. A comprehensive bibliography will facilitate further scholarly pursuits.

In the decades following the American Revolution, literary and cultural discourses, but also American collective and individual identification were shaped by transatlantic relations and inter-American exchanges and conflicts. The way Americans defined themselves as a nation and as individuals was shaped by such historical events and social issues as the Haitian Revolution, the struggles for independence in Spanish America, ties with Caribbean slave economies, and rivalries with other colonial powers in the Americas. Contextualizing transatlantic and inter-American relations within a framework of the Western Hemisphere, the essays collected in this volume discuss inter-American relations in the early United States, and in American, European and Spanish-American writing of the period.

The author expands the definition of Turkish American literature beyond fiction written by Americans of Turkish descent to incorporate texts that literally ‘commute’ between two national spheres. This segment of Turkish American literature transcends established paradigms of immigrant life-writing, as it includes works by Turkish authors who do not qualify as American permanent residents and were not born in the United States by Turkish parents (such as Elif Shafak and Halide Edip), and on novels where the Turkish and Ottoman matter decisively prevails over the American (Güneli Gün’s «On the Road to Baghdad» and Alev Lytle Croutier’s «Seven Houses»). Yet, these texts were written in English, were purposefully located on the American market, and simultaneously engage the Turkish and the American cultural and literary traditions.

This collection puts the topic of Jewish Studies and Holocaust Studies in a new American Studies perspective. This perspective compares the similarities and differences in responses and their transatlantic interaction. As the Holocaust grew into an important factor in American culture, it also became a subject of American Studies, both as a window on American trends and as a topic to which outsiders responded. When Americans responded to information on the early signs of the Holocaust, they were dependent on European official and informal sources. Some were confirmed, others were contradicted; some were ignored, others provoked a response. This book follows the chronology of this transatlantic exchange, including the alleged abandonment of the Jews in Europe and the post-war attention to the Holocaust victims.

Inter-American literary study is an exciting and fast-growing area of comparative scholarship. The Americas are tied together by a common historical heritage and by a history of social, political, economic, and cultural interaction.As a contribution to this field, this book brings together the literatures and literary histories of English and French Canada, the United States, Spanish America, the Caribbean, and Brazil. The periods focused on include the Colonial Period, the Nineteenth Century, Modernism and Modernity, the 1960s, and the Contemporary Moment. The author contrasts the different European heritages that were brought to the New World. In addition, the literature and culture of Native America is referred to in each of these sections that will be of use to the reader interested in this important topic, which we can rightly think of as the common denominator of all American literature.

Where do the Americas begin, and where do they end? What is the relationship between the spatial constructions of «area» and «continent»? How were the Americas imagined by different actors in different historical periods, and how were these imaginations – as continent, nation, region – guided by changing agendas and priorities? This interdisciplinary volume addresses competing and conflicting configurations and narratives of spatialization in the context of globalization processes from the 19th century to the present.

Die Lesekultur, in die sich amerikanische Schriftsteller des frühen 19. Jahrhunderts einzuschreiben suchen, ist eine transatlantische. Zu den stützenden Pfeilern des noch jungen amerikanischen Literaturbetriebs zählen der Import von Büchern und Zeitschriften und die Orientierung an europäischen Vermarktungsstrategien und Lesegewohnheiten. Großbritannien kommt in diesem Austausch aufgrund der gemeinsamen Sprache und Geschichte eine besondere Bedeutung zu. Im historischen Roman sorgt der national-patriotische Auftrag des Genres für einen produktiven Konflikt: einer Integration in die transatlantische Lesekultur steht das Streben nach Profilierung der amerikanischen Literatur und Kultur entgegen. Die Lösung steckt in diversen Strategien der Differenzierung gegenüber britischen Bezugstexten.

This study marks a decisive advance in Longfellow studies. Instead of making do with documenting the poet’s literary contacts in a biographical context, as has been the custom in the past, the authors inquire into the uses he made of European works for the English-American literature in the making. Focusing on Longfellow’s widely famous poem, Evangeline, and the internationally most ambitious poet’s anthology, Tales of a Wayside Inn, they demonstrate that the poet-professor’s program and practice of an integrative, transnational American poetry that includes translations adapts the model that the Schlegel Brothers recommended for German literature – a cultural late-comer as was that of the U.S.A. In the process, they identify a number of correlative works so far overlooked.