		1956
		quarterly
		English, German

		literature, cultural studies, history, political science, linguistics, critical theory, teaching of American Studies

		0340-2827


Manuscripts and books for review should be submitted to the editorial office in Mainz. There is no obligation to review unsolicited books. Amerikastudien / American Studies Prof. Dr. Oliver Scheiding FB 05 Dept. of English and Linguistics Amerikanistik Johannes Gutenberg - Universität Mainz Jakob Welder Weg 18 (Philosophicum), Zi 02-579 55128 Mainz, Germany Phone: +49 6131 39 22 357 Fax: +49 6131 39 20 356 Email: redaktion@amerikastudien.de In view of the computerized production of the journal, manuscripts of articles and reviews can only be accepted if submitted as computer files (preferably MS Word) and accompanied by a printout. Please note the following formal requirements: – Article manuscripts - manuscript text, abstract, notes, list of works cited - should not exceed 60,000 to 70,000 characters (including spaces). – All articles must be preceded by an abstract in English of no more than 200 words. – Since Amerikastudien / American Studies follows a blind-review system, articles should contain no references to the author. – An Amerikastudien / American Studies style sheet is available under http://www.amerikastudien.de/quarterly/ The editorial team gladly provides a MS Word document template file (DOT) that is used for pre-typesetting (preflighting).

Amerikastudien / American Studies

Amerikastudien / American Studies is the journal of the German Association for American Studies. It started as the annual Jahrbuch für Amerikastudien in 1956 and has since developed into a quarterly with some 1200 subscriptions in Europe and the United States. The journal is dedicated to interdisciplinary and transnational perspectives and embraces the diversity and dynamics of a dialogic and comparatist understanding of American Studies. It covers all areas of American Studies from literary and cultural criticism, history, political science, and linguistics to the teaching of American Studies. Thematic issues alternate with regular ones. Reviews, forums, and annual bibliographies support the international circulation of German and European scholarship in American Studies.
(www.amerikastudien.de/quarterly/)
Editor: Oliver Scheiding
Address: Amerikastudien/American Studies
FB 05 Dept. of English and Linguistics Amerikanistik
Johannes Gutenberg - Universität Mainz
Jakob Welder Weg 18 (Philosophicum), Zi 02-579
55128 Mainz, Germany
Phone: +49 6131 39 22 357
Fax: +49 6131 39 20 356
Email: redaktion@amerikastudien.de

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Amerikastudien / American Studies 2011, Vol. 56, No. 2

Mission Statement

By Oliver Scheiding

Abolitionists from the Other Shore: Radical German Immigrants and the Transnational Struggle to End American Slavery

By Mischa Honeck
The 1850s in the United States are commonly remembered as a time of fierce controversy over the westward expansion of slavery; yet they were also a period of mass immigration. Simultaneous to the escalating sectional conflict, emigration from Europe soared to record numbers, further exacerbating debates over race, nationality, and citizenship in the young republic. In a climate of increased worries about the nation's future, the arrival of German-speaking Forty-Eighters, refugees of the failed European Revolutions of 1848/49, fueled existing apprehensions among the older settlers. The following article offers a fresh appraisal of these exiled democrats during the run-up to the Civil War and beyond by probing their relationship to another group of beleaguered agitators, America's abolitionists. It outlines how individuals from both camps joined forces in the long, often dangerous battle to eliminate slavery and argues that cooperation shaped the activists' social and political identities in a society steeped in racist and nativist thought. Adding the experience of radical German immigrants to the abolitionist struggle, it elucidates how immigration affected American conversations over slavery, race, and emancipation. Most significantly, the article gauges the extent to which the alliance between Forty-Eighters and abolitionists challenged prevailing concepts of freedom and equality in a transatlantic age of racial construction and nation-making.

Singing Hail Columbia in German and English: Carl Schurz's Sequential Bilingualism

By Michael Boyden
This article focuses on the bicultural and bilingual legacy of the German-born Senator, diplomat, Civil War General, and man of letters Carl Schurz (1829-1906). Particular attention is devoted to Schurz's autobiography, the first part of which, dealing with his youth in Germany up to the 1848 revolution and his exile, was written in his mother tongue, while the second part about his American career was composed in English. The aim of the article is to draw renewed attention to the bilingual dimension of Schurz's Lebenserinnerungen - Reminiscences in order to rethink accepted notions on migration and assimilation. I argue that while on a surface level, through its narration of Schurz's impressive rise to fame as an American orator and writer, the memoir bespeaks an integrationist perspective on immigration, this interpretation is in need of revision if we take into consideration the divergences between the German and English versions of the book.

Lap Dancing for Mommy: Queer Intermediality, Chick Lit, and Trans-Generational Feminist Mediation in Erika Lopez's Illustrated Narratives

By Alexandra Ganser
Erika Lopez has been active as a performance artist, writer, and graphic novelist since the 1990s. Lopez's work is emblematic of a transition from second-wave feminism and identity-based lesbian activism to a third-wave, queer approach to gender, sexual, and other difference categories, using humor and a creative politics of the in-between which disturbs generational, sexual, gendered, and ethnic binarisms alike. This essay examines how, through the use of intermedial spaces and gaps, such work accomplishes a mediation between two generations of feminists that are often set in opposition in contemporary debates, and argues for the importance of a verbal and visual bridging of the feminist generation gap. Texts like Lopez's, this article argues, critically negotiate a collective feminist memory, acknowledging difference but not division.

Pragmatismus und die Hoffnung auf Solidarität

By Michael Dellwing
Durkheim's and Horkheimer's critiques of pragmatism have often been portrayed as misunderstandings. However, a pragmatist perspective contradicts itself if it claims that its opponents missed the 'true meaning of a text.' Reorienting the discussion towards ideas of truth is equally uninteresting for the pragmatist. The present paper wishes to frame the discussion around the concept of hope instead. For this purpose, the critiques of pragmatism are seen as 'foundationalist theory hope' and 'anti-foundationalist theory hope.' The paper offers a pragmatic concern with hope as a rebuttal.

Empire, Theoretical Practice, and Postnational American Studies

By Ulf Schulenberg
The relation between American Studies and critical theory has often been problematic. This is especially true with regard to the relation between American Studies and Marxism. In 1986, Michael Denning posed the question of why there had been so little engagement with Marxism by American Studies scholars. This paper seeks to contribute to the discussion of the relation between American Studies and Marxism by focusing on two of the most important neo-Marxist texts of the last decades: Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's Empire (2000) and Multitude (2004). Of primary concern will be the following question: Can these two Marxist manifestoes be useful for the development of a postnational American Studies? To answer this question, this paper concentrates on two aspects. First, the meaning of the term 'theoretical practice' and its effectiveness in a field of immanence. Second, the contemporary significance of the concept of totality.

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