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Encyclopedia of American Studies
Featured Articles: American Studies in China; AS in France; AS in Germany
AMERICAN STUDIES IN CHINA
Even though “Mi Li Gan” (America) was first introduced in China by a book, Xie Qinggao’s Hai Lu (Notes on the World), as early as 1820, it was only after 1978 that American studies finally became an institutionalized field in this country. For more than a century before the founding of the People’s Republic of China, most of the Chinese who studied the United States did so because of their personal curiosity, the needs of a few academic disciplines to do case studies, and the news media’s interest in what happened on the other side of the earth. None of them could be regarded as a specialist in the study of the United States. After 1949, in the shadow of the Cold War, the Soviet Union became the most studied foreign nation in China, and Russian replaced English as the first foreign language to be taught in almost all Chinese universities and secondary schools. The United States was treated as an enemy to be hated rather than a nation to be studied. During Mao’s era, as a matter of fact, there were only a few Chinese scholars who had the privilege of studying the United States in addition to those officials working in the government agencies related to foreign affairs. To be sure, several teaching and research groups or sections specializing in the American economy, or in American literature, history, or philosophy did come into being in the Chinese Academy of Science and in a few universities in the mid 1960s. But their study was extremely limited, and all these academic activities stopped in 1966 when the Cultural Revolution swept the country. The dawn of American studies did not break in China until the late 1970s when the United States had established formal diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China. That coincided with a major reform, launched under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping and designed to make this ancient land more open to the outside world in its efforts at modernization.
All these changes led to the establishment of several professional associations to promote American studies, with an emphasis on the social sciences and humanities. They were the National Association of American Economy (1978), the American History Research Association of China (1979), and the National Association of American Literature Research (1979). The Chinese Society of Three “S” was also created in memory of Edgar Snow, Agnes Smedley, and Joseph Stilwell, with the aim of studying their work and influence as well. In 1988, the Chinese Association for American Studies was set up as a nation-wide organization to coordinate the academic activities of the Chinese institutions engaged in American studies. Moreover, many centers for American studies were founded either under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) or at prestigious Chinese universities, for example, the Institute of American Studies under CASS; Yanjing Center for American Studies at Bejing University; American Studies Center at Beijing Foreign Studies University; Center for American History and Culture at Nankai University; Center for American Studies at Fudan University; Johns Hopkins University-Nanjing University Center for Chinese and American Studies; American Studies Center at Northeast Normal University; Research Institute of American and Canadian Economy at Wuhan University; and the American Studies Center at Sichuan University. Some Chinese universities also initiated their graduate programs in American history, American economy, American literature, and American philosophy. After the department of American studies was established in the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences to provide training for graduate students, there were quite a few universities of foreign languages that started their own graduate programs in American studies. American Studies Quarterly, which was first published in 1987 and co-sponsored by the Institute of American Studies of CASS and the Chinese Association of American Studies, quickly became a widely-circulated journal in this field. In all these developments, not surprisingly, American studies was no longer regarded as a field of enemy studies, but as a multi- and inter-disciplinary academic field, no longer strongly dominated by ideology.
After all these efforts, American studies in China now occupies a rapidly expanding field that embraces almost everything of the United States as the subjects of its study, including economics, politics, law, diplomacy, military affairs, society, culture, literature, education, ideology, religion, philosophy, history, geography, etc. The most studied areas are American economics, American literature and the arts, and U.S. foreign relations, especially U. S.-China relations. But military affairs and American education have recently attracted a great deal of attention from Chinese scholars. According to a statistical survey encompassing the major areas of interest, 34.44% of all articles and translations (4,594 pieces) in the field of American studies published in Chinese newspapers and journals in the year 2000 are on the American economy, 16.33% on American literature and arts, 11.95% on military affairs, 11.14% on U.S. foreign relations (including U.S.-China relations), 5.40% on American education, 5.29% on American history, 3% on U.S. domestic politics, 3% on American philosophy and sociology, 1.33% on science and technology and 0.15% on American geography (Huang).
The reason that American studies in China so far has been focused on the American economy and on U.S. foreign relations rather than on American culture can be found in the major goals of this field, defined by a leading Chinese scholar, as (1) deepening mutual understanding between the two countries, (2) helping make strategic decisions in international relations, (3) providing a frame of reference for China’s modernization, and (4) exploring the unique experience of American people as part of Western civilization (Zi). Obviously, practical contributions appear to be more in need than basic research. As for methodology, it varies from discipline to discipline. Generally speaking, the Marxist approach is officially advocated. But other theories and methodologies such as modernization theories, pluralism, institutionalism, structuralism, functionalism, cultural studies, anthropological methods, quantitative study, discourse analysis, deconstruction, textualism, etc., have played an increasing role in the approach of the younger generation of Chinese scholars, especially those who have studied or done research abroad. Whatever goals or approaches we see in this field, the last three decades have been most productive years for Chinese scholars in American studies. Various monographs, collected works, single-volume and multi-volume histories, reference books, and tens of thousands of articles have made the United States no longer like a stranger in the eyes of the Chinese people.
Han Tie
Bibliography
Cai, Cuihong and Ni Shixiong “American Studies or Study of America—-Analyzing the Asymmetry in American Studies of Different Countries,” Social Science 9 (2005):50-58.
Hu, Guocheng, ed., An Inquiry into the United States: American Studies in China during Recent Years (Beijing: Social Science Press of China, 2002).
Huang, Annian “A Quantitative Analysis of China’s American Studies in 2000,” History Monthly 9 (2002):5-13.
Yang, Yusheng “American Studies in the 1980s China,” American Studies Quarterly 4 (1990):146-157.
Zi, Zhongyun “American Studies in China,” American Studies Quarterly 1 (1987):7-20.
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AMERICAN STUDIES IN FRANCE
American Studies in France goes back at least to the early 20th century but only really developed after World War II. It is still characterized by a weak institutional organization as well as a certain insularity and remains one of the least developed area studies in French Universities, despite the deep and constant—albeit ambivalent—interest of French society in the United States.
There is no department of American Studies in French universities and most scholars in the field are found in departments of “English and Anglophone studies” where American literature is taught alongside “American civilization,” the closest institutional equivalent to American Studies. The teaching emphasizes a comprehensive approach to the “culture” of the English-speaking world as well as a strong training in language, and a much lesser emphasis on social sciences methodologies. There is also a small number of very active historians of the US in history departments (fewer than ten in 2009), as well as excellent but scattered scholars in art history, political science, law, sociology, economics and geography departements.
This blurring of the lines between humanities and “weak” social sciences goes back to the first half of the 20th century when Charles Cestre taught literature as well as American civilization at the Sorbonne and supervised dissertations on a broad range of U.S. social and economic topics. More specialized research was conducted in several law schools and departments of economics, with an emphasis on two aspects that dominated this first period of American Studies in France for a long time: constitutional theory on the one hand and current political issues on the other (e.g. American imperialism in the first years of the 20th century and the New Deal from 1933 on). The scholars who published or supervised that research tended not to be Americanists, or not primarily Americanists, but rather specialists on international law or on Britain.
The situation did not change much in the first decades after the war, despite efforts from the U.S. government and American foundations to develop American Studies in France as well as in other countries. The turning point took place in the late Sixties with important institutional developments as well as a change in the topics studied. In 1967 the Sorbonne created, along with other chairs in area studies, the first chair in American History in France, which was first held by Claude Fohlen, an economic historian who was originally a specialist of 19th century France but had taught French history in the U.S. This led to the creation of the first center in American History, where most of the French historians of the next generation (Jean Heffer, Jacques Portes, Elise Marienstras) were trained. Because historical research relied heavily on archival research and extended stays in the U.S. were difficult to arrange, many French historians studying the U.S. used European archives and acquainted the French scholarly audience with research conducted in the U.S.
At the same time, in the context of the political and intellectual turmoil of the Sixties and of the influx of students of the baby boom generation, departments of English were profoundly transformed. Many junior professors, encouraged by their students, seized the opportunity offered by the reorganization of many French universities to create new departments of “Anglophone studies,” where “civilization” would play a much greater role and where American Studies would be awarded the same legitimacy as English studies, an important shift in the French tradition. The shift was also visible in a focus on new objects and the use of new methods: media and film studies as well as African-Americans, women, immigrants, workers in American society. (Scholars developing these fields included Francis Bordat, Geneviève and Michel Fabre, Catherine Collomp, and Marianne Debouzy, to name but a few). The teaching in English and American Studies departments also included the study of American literature in all its varieties, including the most contemporary ones. Quite notable at that time was the study of Southern literature and Faulkner in particular (André Bleikasten, Michel Gresset, François Pitavy).
The irony was that the U.S. cultural services had financially contributed to the development of American civilization in departments of English, and that the field turned out to be dominated by quite radical critics of the American model. Apart from history, the field of American civilization and literature remained relatively impervious to American methodologies and research, due perhaps to the fact that many of the American theoretical approaches were themselves beginning to borrow from French models (e.g. structuralism, deconstruction, Lacanian psychoanalysis, Foucault).
Since the 1970s there have been remarkable developments in the domains of social history, “new” political history, film studies, art history, cultural studies, political science, as well as studies of contemporary and Southern literature. Radical critique has subsided, and the dialogue with American studies in the U.S. has increased paradoxically via the European networks of Americanists whose contribution is essentially in the consideration of different objects from those of their American counterparts (e.g., history of the State, Atlantic history), and who enjoy perhaps a greater critical distance from the fashion effects of some fields.
A professional association and learned society, the Association Française d’Etudes Américaines, was created in 1969 with the purpose of federating all those teaching and doing research on the U.S. Its membership is now about 700, composed primarily of scholars from departments of English but also from other disciplines. It publishes two journals, the Revue française d’études américaines (founded 1976) and TransatlanticA (online journal founded in 2001).
The lingering problem of American studies in France, however, remains its institutional weakness, leading to underfunding for research, and some doubt over the professional identity of the discipline given the presumed transparency of American culture. Despite better training (it has now become standard for Ph.D. candidates to spend several years in American universities) and a growing body of research of great quality (French scholars have repeatedly been recognized for distinction by American professional associations), the research output remains limited and often insular, beginning with its publication essentially in French.
The enigma that existed a century ago, remains—that in France everybody seems to have an opinion about the United States, but for very few of them is Americanism a profession. Although the anti-Americanism that had long influenced writings about the United States (on grounds of being imperialist and/or decadent), has largely receded among specialists, at the institutional level, the field continues to be under-developed.
Jean Kempf and Paul Schor
Bibliography
Chénetier, Marc, Beyond Suspicion : New American Fiction since 1960 (University of Pennsylvania Press 1996).
Huret, Romain, La fin de la pauvreté? : les experts sociaux en guerre contre la pauvreté aux Etats-Unis (1945-1974) (Éditions de l’École des hautes études en sciences sociales, 2008)
Kempf, Jean, American Studies in France. A critical review, European Journal of American Studies, EJAS 2006, [online] http://ejas.revues.org/document478.html.
Lacorne, Denis, De la religion en Amérique : essai d’histoire politique (Gallimard 2007)
Rossignol, Marie-Jeanne, The Nationalist Ferment: The Origins of U.S. Foreign Policy, 1789-1812 (Ohio State University Press 2004)
Related Websites:
Association française d’études américaines (AFEA): http://www.afea.fr/-EN-.html
Centre d’études nord-américaines (CENA): http://www.ehess.fr/cena/
TransatlanticA (French online journal of American Studies): http://www.transatlantica.org/
Revue française d’études américaines (French Journal of American Studies): http://www.afea.fr/spip.php?article5
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AMERICAN STUDIES IN GERMANY
The first “Amerika-Institut” in Germany was established at the University of Berlin in 1910, but until WW II the new object of study remained academically marginalized. Scholars followed a model of Kulturkunde or Auslandskunde, an integrated study of foreign countries developed first in the analysis of English and French “civilization” in order to understand their “characteristic” national traits. In a 1921 manifesto, Friedrich Schönemann formulated a corresponding program of Amerikakunde; in 1930 M.J. Bonn published Die Kultur der Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika; and in 1931 Paul Hartig edited a “Handbook on America” (Handbuch der Amerikakunde). Schönemann became the first full professor in American studies at a German university in 1936 and illustrates the ideological pitfalls of a Kulturkunde based on essentialist notions of national character (Volkscharakter): when the Nazis pushed the project of national area studies for their own political purposes, the “very man who was the founder of the new discipline became a fervent Nazi,” as Sigmund Skard put it (“TheAmerican Studies Movement,” in USA in Focus, 1966). “In one of the nations of their origin, ‘integrated’ American Studies thus became thoroughly discredited, and with the collapse of Nazi Germany in 1945 shared the downfall of the Reich itself.”
It took a generation of emigrants returning to Germany after the Nazi years, among them the political scientists Arnold Bergstraesser and Ernst Fraenkel, the historian Dietrich Gerhard, and politically untainted “odd fellows” (as one of the post-War pioneers, Ursula Brumm, who had a degree in medieval history, ironically described herself) to revive the project of American studies in post-WW II Germany and to provide it with new legitimacy. U.S. occupation authorities encouraged and supported the project but they were not its driving force. For the leading German Americanists in the post-War period, Brumm wrote, “the promotion of American Studies…was an effort in the political education and rehabilitation of a Europe corrupted and held in ignorance by Fascism and National Socialism” (“American Studies as We Found It,” in America Seen from the Outside, ed. Brigitte Georgi Findlay and Heinz Ickstadt, 1990). In 1953, a German Association of American Studies (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Amerikastudien) was founded, and in 1954 the first issue of the official publication of the association appeared, the Jahrbuch für Amerikastudien (Yearbook of American Studies), later renamed Amerikastudien / American Studies and published as a quarterly since 1980. In a programmatic essay “Amerikastudien als Problem der Forschung und Lehre” (“American studies as a Problem of Research and Teaching”), published in the first issue of the Jahrbuch, Bergstraesser proposed an important conceptual change by redefining American studies as an experiment in interdisciplinary cooperation and no longer as an integrated discipline of its own. This experiment in cooperation took a variety of forms, ranging from independent institutes in Frankfurt (1946), München (1949) and Berlin (1952) to Mainz (1956), where an influential program developed out of an already existing English department under the dedicated chairmanship of Hans Galinsky. Conceptually and practically, this notion of cooperation has prevailed, despite some attempts in the late 1960s to develop a unified theory of American Studies.
Today, American literature and culture is taught at almost all German universities, including universities of the former GDR, which had developed their own tradition of American studies, albeit party-controlled, at the University of Leipzig and at Humboldt-Universität in Berlin. Although positions in American history, and even more so, in political science, sociology, and economics, are still far below satisfactory levels, projects of interdisciplinary cooperation and joint programs, often of a comparative and, increasingly, of a transnational nature, have increased. Altogether, the institutionalization of American studies at German universities (there is no college system comparable to that of the U.S.) has been a remarkable success. In its 2007 edition, the Mitteilungsblatt, the annual newsletter of the German Association of American Studies, which provides information on all appointments, programs, and courses taught in American studies in Germany, lists 87 universities with various kinds of American studies programs. Membership in the association has jumped from the original founding members of 33 to currently over 800. The German Association of American Studies is by now the largest national association in Europe.
Defined as an experiment in interdisciplinary cooperation, American studies held considerable promise for a German university system that had long appeared resistant to reform. In the early 1960s, a far-reaching proposal was submitted by the political scientist Ernst Fraenkel, who had fled from the Nazis to the U.S. in the 1930s and returned to Berlin in 1952 to help build up the newly founded Freie Universität. Drawing on Bergstraesser’s ideas, Fraenkel submitted the bold plan of an American studies institute consisting of six disciplines (literature, culture, history, political science, economics, and geography, later replaced by sociology) which would bring together humanities and social sciences in one academic program. The Amerika-Institut of Freie Universität Berlin was founded in 1963 and was renamed John F. Kennedy-Institute for North American Studies after Kennedy’s assassination. With financial support from the Ford Foundation, the by now largest American studies library in Europe was established, and after a difficult transition period, exemplary forms of interdisciplinary cooperation were developed and institutionalized, among them interdisciplinary degree-programs in North American Studies (initially Magister, now B.A. and M.A.), and, more recently, on the doctoral level in the form of an international Graduate School of North American Studies, with participation, in each case, of all six disciplines of the Institute. These successful steps in the realization of an interdisciplinary American studies agenda have profited from, and have, in turn, inspired and encouraged interdisciplinary programs at other German universities, most notably in München, Frankfurt, Erlangen, Hamburg, Leipzig, Bonn, and, more recently, Göttingen, Halle, and Heidelberg.
Research in American studies has not been restricted to these programs, of course. German American studies scholars from across the country have consistently produced important publications in the field which have found international recognition. The number of publications is growing continually; the 2007 annual newsletter lists over 500 titles for the preceding year. A monograph series American Studies, edited by the German Association of American Studies, was established in 1957; since 1997, when the series changed publishers, it has become one of the premier publication organs in the field of American studies. A condensed summary of the state of German scholarship on the U.S. is provided by the 870-page survey Länderbericht USA (Report on the U.S.A.), now in its 5th edition and edited by the political scientist Peter Lösche, with extended sections on American history, the political, social and economic system and American culture. A standard history in a crowded field is Jürgen Heideking’s Geschichte der USA (History of the U.S.A.), published in 1996.
German contributions to American studies have been shaped by specific historical, political, and cultural conditions. Only some of the major trends can be mentioned here. In the post-WW II years, two agendas were central for a generation of scholars that conceived of American studies as a “Demokratiewissenschaft” (a study of democracy): to focus on American democratic traditions and to liberate American culture from being seen as a shallow “materialist” culture. In history, this led to a number of studies on the American founding documents (by, among others, Dietrich Gerhard, Gerald Stourzh, Erich Angermann, Willi Paul Adams, Horst Dippel). In lit erary and cultural studies, the project of a re-evaluation of American culture took several routes: a) a recovery and reinterpretation of American intellectual traditions such as Puritanism (Ursula Brumm, Hans Galinsky, Winfried Herget), later extended to Transcendentalism (Dieter Schulz, Herwig Friedl) and Pragmatism (Hans Joas, Susanne Rohr); b) a focus on modern American writers from the Lost Generation to the 1950s who could be read to forcefully express the anguish of modern times and the modernity of American culture (Ursula Brumm, Jürgen Peper, Klaus Poenicke, Lothar Hönnighausen, Peter Freese, Dieter Meindl); c) a reassessment of popular cultural forms, which a younger generation, partly because of its own exposure to these forms since early childhood, could no longer simply discard as mindless mass culture. Inevitably, this also led to reconsiderations of the question to what extent, and in what specific sense, the impact of American culture on post-War Germany could be described as “Americanization” (Berndt Ostendorf, Winfried Fluck, Hans Borchers).
When the student movement emerged in the 1960s and challenged dominant views of the purpose and responsibilities of scholarship, debates on the theory and method of American Studies (with a capital S) became an important part of the field in Germany. They reached a high-point in the 1970s, when American (Cultural) Studies and Critical Theory were often seen as complementary projects by younger scholars. A 1977-special issue of Amerikastudien / American Studies, edited by Martin Christadler and Günter Lenz, highlights the changes in research perspectives. In contrast to the post-War stage, the U.S. is no longer defined primarily by its democratic ideals but by its social realities, including questions about the changing social and political functions of culture. In literary and cultural studies, non-formalist and more historically minded conceptions of literature led to major revisionist studies of key periods of American literary and cultural history (Heinz Ickstadt, Winfried Fluck, Helmbrecht Breinig, Kurt Müller, Udo Hebel, Frank Kelleter, Dietmar Schloss). An especially noteworthy result is the scholarly collaboration on a new and revised American literary history, edited by Hubert Zapf under the title Amerikanische Literaturgeschichte. First published in 1996 and now approaching its 4th edition, it is one of the most successful of the new revisionist literary histories, and not only outside the U.S. (Regrettably, it has not yet been translated.) German American studies also paid special attention to American postmodernism, which for some time seemed to confirm the continuing creative potential of American experimentalism, as well as its deconstructive power (Heinz Ickstadt, Josef Schöpp, Gerhard Hoffmann, Alfred Hornung, Bernd Engler, Martin Klepper, Klaus Milich). In the study of history, intellectual history was displaced by social history (Dirk Hoerder; or the Volkswagen-sponsored “Chicago-Project,” headed by Hartmut Keil, which investigated the living and working conditions of German workers in Chicago, 1850-1915). Particular emphasis was put on immigration history and the role of German Americans in the U.S. (Günter Moltmann, Hans-Jürgen Grabbe, Wolfgang Helbich, Willi Paul Adams). In political science, events like the Vietnam War reinforced a focus on foreign policy and foreign relations, with critical reconsiderations of German-American relations and its place in the transatlantic political order (Ernst-Otto Czempiel, Detlef Junker, Klaus Schwabe, Knut Krakau, Monika Medick-Krakau, Ursula Lehmkuhl). At the same time, a tradition of analyzing the changing political culture in the U.S. was continued (Kurt Shell, Peter Lösche, Hans Kleinsteuber, Hans-Jürgen Puhle, Andreas Falke, Margit Mayer).
In the 1980s, following American developments, a redefinition of the “realities of America” in terms of racial, ethnic, and gender difference also began to dominate German American studies. Race and gender studies (Renate Hof, Susanne Opfermann, Sabine Sielke, Eva Bösenberg, Alfred Hornung, Mita Banerjee, Stefan Brandt), the poststructuralist critique of a misrecognition of otherness (Thomas Claviez), and postcolonial perspectives (Ulla Haselstein, Gesa Mackenthun) were quickly taken up in research as well as in teaching, helped by a course system less standardized than in the U.S. and fueled by the growing importance of issues such as immigration, citizenship, gender equality, and calls for a recognition of racial and gender difference also in German society. The result has been important work on African American history (Norbert Finzsch, Manfred Berg) and Afro-American culture (Werner Sollors, Berndt Ostendorf, Klaus Ensslen, Günter Lenz, Maria Diedrich, Klaus Benesch, Ulf Reichardt, Sieglinde Lemke), Jewish American Culture (Kurt Dittmar), Chicano literature (Dieter Herms, Josef Raab, Markus Heide), Asian American literature (Ruth Mayer) and Native American culture (Brigitte Georgi Findlay, Hartmut Lutz). At the same time, comparative and transnational perspectives have become more important in literary studies (Armin Paul Frank, Kurt Müller-Vollmar) and in historical studies (Hermann Wellenreuther, Dirk Hoerder). The tradition of theoretical reflections on the goals and methods of American studies has been kept alive, including discussions of new developments such as Transnational American studies, and suggesting that after its successful institutionalization American studies in Germany may actually be well placed to develop an increasingly independent outside view.
Winfried Fluck
Bibliography:
Bergstraesser, Arnold, Amerikastudien als Problem der Forschung und Lehre, Jahrbuch für Amerikastudien 1 (1956): 8-14.
Christadler, Martin and Günter Lenz, eds., Amerikastudien—Theorie, Geschichte, interpretatorische Praxis, Amerikastudien / American Studies. Special Issue 1977.
Fluck, Winfried, Theories of American Culture (and the Transnational Turn in American Studies), REAL - Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature 23 (2007): 59-77.
Hornung, Alfred, From the Jahrbuch für Amerikastudien to the Quarterly Amerikastudien / American Studies - 1956-2005, Amerikastudien / American Studies 50:1/2 (2005): 11-52.
Lösche, Peter, ed., Länderbericht USA—Geschichte, Politik, Geographie, Wirtschaft, Gesellschaft, Kultur. 4th edition (Frankfurt/Main: Campus, 2009).
Zapf, Hubert, ed., Amerikanische Literaturgeschichte (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1996).
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