European Association for American Studies Conference Ovidius University, Constanta, Romania April 22-25, 2016 Abstracts Adeleke, Tunde, Iowa State University, usa: “The Black American Experience as a Lens for Europe

Schmieder, Katja, University of Leipzig, Germany: The Cholesterol Debate and Its Cultural Implications
A 1984 issue of the Time magazine featured a story about the damage cholesterol might do to your body, illustrated by a cover picture of a frowning face made out of eggs and bacon. Saturated fat, whose ingestion was held responsible for high cholesterol levels, was thus publicly denounced as the major cause of the nationwide coronary disease and obesity “epidemic.” This hypothesis had been famously advocated by Ancel Keys, an American nutrition scientist, and his Seven Country Study seemed to have ultimately proved him right. Soon this flawed study became the basis for US health politics and public campaigning. The cholesterol hypothesis gained momentum as knowledge supported by scientific fact. Pictures showing plates full of greasy meat, eggs, butter, and bacon became the new epitome of unhealthy eating, and self-help books about low-fat dieting led the bestseller lists. Even if this hypothesis has been challenged just recently, the medial omnipresence of the view of cholesterol as the most important agent in the development of cardiac disease lingers on. In my paper will discuss cholesterol as a symbol of American biopolitics and the cultural work it performs. In this context, dietary advice would serve as a tool to normalize the body according to prescribed levels, and consumers of cholesterol-lowering drugs are thus generated. As I will look at different texts, including media coverage, newspaper articles, and documentaries, I also hope to elicit the rhetoric engendering such “knowledge production.” Here, as I will argue, the popularized relationship between health and nutrition is based on the results of bad scientific practice.
Schörgenhuber, Eva, University of Vienna, Austria and Eugenie Theuer, University of Barcelona, Spain: “From Domestic Violence to Violent Dominatrices: Deconstructing the Dominatrix Figure in Female Artist’s Music Videos”
Approaching the topic of violence in American culture from a different angle, the present paper will draw on critical perspectives of gender studies and feminist criticism to explore new facets of the same phenomenon. Yet, against common expectation, attention will not rest on women as victims of violence, but will shift instead to women capable of inciting violence by studying the female figure of the dominatrix. Although their appearance in American culture by no means confined to this medium, the paper will focus on dominatrix in music videos of female popular musicians. The analysis will be based on the examples of three selected videos, which were chosen as illustrative of the manifold ways in which dominatrix are represented and allow for different interpretations: Rihanna’s “SM” (2010), Britney Spear’s “Work Bitch” (2013), and “Nicki Minaj’s “Only” (2014). The paper will analyse how these female singers stage themselves as dominatrix in their music videos, how biographical knowledge about their respective lives shape our interpretation of the dominatrix motif, and how these interpretations in turn have an impact on our perception of the singer’s star persona. The dominatrix often expresses an ambiguous stance regarding gender relations, and by relating the motif to patriarchal, feminist, and post-feminist discourses, the analysis will finally contemplate to what degree violence is depicted as a means of female empowerment in these music videos. That is, does patriarchy come under assault by the dominatrices in these videos, or is it actually perpetuated?
Schneider, Ana-Karina, Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Romania: “Re-defining the Contemporary in American Fiction”
Current scholarship devoted to contemporary literature evinces much inconsistency in its definition and periodisation of the “contemporary”. As it becomes increasingly evident that “literature after 1945” no longer means “contemporary literature” (cf. Duvall 2011: 1), new temporal landmarks are hard to agree upon and often seem tenuous, problematic and “fraught with conceptual and ideological difficulties” (Tew 2007: 60). Nonetheless, periodisations remain “pragmatically necessary and theoretically suggestive” (Tew 2007: 17), and they seem to be encouraged by every major event that has the potential of questioning and re-shaping discourses and ideologies. Focusing on fiction as the more referential and perhaps the most representative of contemporary literary forms, my paper aims to investigate the ways in which recent American literature has been narrativised in relation to various events (the Fall of the Iron Curtain; the awarding of the Nobel Prize for Literature to Toni Morrison in 1993; 9/11/2001; the emergence of new patterns of migration, etc.), in search of a relational and workable periodisation of the contemporary. More specifically, I am interested in the impact of such events on generic and formal evolutions such as the mainstreaming, on the one hand, of the literature of minorities, women’s writing, life writing and teen fiction, and, on the other, of crime narrative, science fiction, and apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction. Furthermore, I interrogate the extent to which periodisations of American literature have the potential for crossing national borders and influencing how literary history is written in other cultures, and the slippages that inevitably occur between the descriptive and normative connotations of periodising terms (cf. Călinescu 2005: 94-95).
Schneider, Ana-Karina, Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Romania (chair)

Panel: Utopia, Dystopia and the Tactics of Texts
This panel aims to investigate representations of a broad diversity of tactical responses to historical events in American fiction and their impact on critical discourse as well as literatures outside the USA. Ranging between utopian aspiration and dystopian deterrence, such responses include the opportunistic adaptation of European modes and genres as diverse as naturalism and the novel of manners, the hybridization of fictional forms, as well as the unproblematizing yet tactical appropriation of critical terminologies and definitions. More specifically, we are interested in the relationship between historical and environmental contexts and generic and formal evolutions as illustrated in American writing from William James and Henry James to our times. The four papers composing this panel approach issues such as the transatlantic mutations of the novel of manners as a tactical genre that has analytical as well as transformative dimensions; the utopian ingredient of the cognitive theoretical foundations of realism and its suspicion of determinism; the multiethnic turn in recent speculative and post-apocalyptic fiction; and the mainstreaming, on the one hand, of the literature of minorities, women’s writing, life writing and young adult fiction, and, on the other, of crime narrative, science fiction, and apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fictions. Furthermore, we interrogate the extent to which generic evolutions and periodizations of American literature have the potential for crossing national borders and influencing how literary history is written in other cultures, and the slippages that inevitably occur between the descriptive and normative connotations of generic and periodizing terms. This panel has been envisioned as a companion to the one titled “Utopia – Dystopia and the Global Order of the Image” (proposed by Dr Adriana Neagu), investigating utopia and dystopia as integral to global sensibilities in the twentieth century and beyond.
Panel speakers:

Ana-Karina Schneider, Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Romania: “Re-defining the Contemporary in American Fiction”
Sämi Ludwig, Université de Haute-Alsace, Mulhouse, France: “From Image to Action: Realism vs. Naturalism and the Anti-determinist Arguments of William James”
Begoña Simal-González, University of Coruña, Spain: “New Las Vegas: American Metamorphoses of the Post-Apocalyptic Genre”

Jochun, Tobias, Free University of Berlin, Germany: “Repainting/Reclaiming Murder City: Memory, Fear, and Doubt in New Northern Mexican Border Fiction”

Schwab, Anamaria, University of Bucharest, Romania: “Already Posthumanism? E. L. Doctorow’s Homer and Langley”

In two of E. L. Doctorow’s novels, The Waterworks (1994) and Homer and Langley (2009), which unfold as usually in New York, the author places the idea of waste centrally. In both cases, refuse is related to a society of excess whose constant desire to expand its benefits and increase its possessions affects humans and material items alike. In my paper I would like to discuss the subdued apocalyptic scenarios that Doctorow devises in the two novels, in the specific context of Manhattan, taking into consideration critical posthumanist theories as a prolongation rather than a denial of postmodernism into the 21st century.

Schulman, Bruce, Boston University, USA (chair)

Panel: The Local and the National in Twentieth Century United States
This panel advances the recent revival of interest among historians and literary scholars in the complex, sometimes paradoxical interactions between localism and nationalism in American life. In so doing, the panelists challenge the teleological view, so conventional as to be assumed without overt acknowledgement, of the inexorable transformation of the United States into a modern, integrated nation. To be sure, chain stores replaced mom-and-pop businesses, interstate highways knit together once isolated regions, national media shaped debate from coast-to coast, and federal agencies and other instruments of national power became daily presences in the lives of ordinary Americans. But the local and the parochial did not inexorably give way to the national and eventually to global integration. Looking at three separate cases, the papers in this panel analyze a host of ways in which local places were drawn into a wider polity and culture. At the same time, they reveal how national and international structures and ideas repeatedly created new kinds of local movements and local energies. Schulman’s paper explores turn-of-the-century efforts to build national markets for advertising and brand name goods, and national audiences for music and theater. Davies will analyze the politics of natural disaster relief, especially the ways that the exceptional strength of ideas of private property rights in the US made even national institutions rely on and bolster local actors. Osman’s paper investigates the “new localism” in American cities in the late twentieth century, particularly the way Do-It-Yourself movements and informal networks supplanted government action and created neighborhood alliances that challenged traditional ideological boundaries. Together, the panelists will suggest that one of the central dialectics in twentieth century US culture is the tension between local and national rather than just the conflict between left and right.
Panel speakers:

Gareth Davies, St. Anne’s College, Oxford University, UK: “Road to Disaster: The Failure of Federal Efforts to Regulate Local Land Use Since the 1960s”
Suleiman Osman, George Washington University, USA: “The DIY City: Localism and Anti-Statism in Urban America”

 

Bruce Schulman, Boston University, USA: “‘Are We A Nation or an Aggregation of Localities?’: Nation-Building in The Early Twentieth-Century US”

Schultermandl, Silvia, University of Graz, Austria (chair)

Gerund, Katharina, University of Erlangen- Nürnberg, Germany (chair)

Workshop: Transnational Feminism and American Studies
Taking the 165th anniversary of Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I a Woman”-speech as an occasion, this workshop seeks to assess the historical significance and current role of transnational feminism in and beyond the United States. It draws both on a (re)reading of Truth’s famous text and its multi-facetted reverberations as well as on current debates in the field of transnational feminism as exemplified by Samantha Pinto’s Difficult Diasporas and Leela Fernandes’ Transnational Feminism in the United States (both New York UP 2013). These texts serve as starting points to explore the multiple interconnections between transnational feminism and American Studies. As umbrella term for the diversity and contradictions of global exchanges, transnationalism describes how people increasingly live in more than one nation and the ease with which persons, goods, and knowledge travel across borders. Transnational feminism critically investigates these exchanges and proposes ways in which borders and boundaries of nation, culture, race, and gender need to be reconceptualized, confused, challenged, and, potentially, eliminated. At the same time, it highlights the importance of specific locations that contribute to the social construction of people’s lived worlds as well as the global inequalities that emerge from a world order based on binary (gender) oppositions and neo-liberal market logics. It offers a nuanced set of parameters, diction, and frameworks for a contemporary discussion of the dynamics at play in migration, transnationalism, diaspora, and globalization. Our workshop is designed to bring together American studies scholars whose interest in transnationalism, globalization, American exceptionalism, neo-imperialism, and critical race studies draws from transnational feminist theory and practice. In lieu of a set of papers, we invite participants to share their insights into the ways in which transnational feminism has shaped new directions in American Studies in the past decades. We are equally interested in theoretical debates and best-practice examples which discuss the role of transnational feminism in the knowledge production in American studies, both in the US and in Europe.

Ščigulinská, Jana, Institute of British and American Studies, University of Prešov, Slovakia: “Depiction of Native Americans in the Mainstream Media”
Mainstream media such as newspapers, the internet, television, or books in the past, represent one of the most powerful mediators of information about the world, and at the same time, they have the capacity to wield great power over the masses. Via these media, the opinions of the individuals about certain issues can be easily formed, as the information they provide are often considered to be the truth, even though they offer only one point of view. Despite the tendencies to support the equality in all the areas of society such as race, gender or religion, there still is some unspoken prevalence of stereotypes, often related to the case of minorities and is presented through various genres and forms in mass media. When it comes to Native Americans, a look back in history offers one of the best examples of the stereotypical depiction of a minority living in the USA presented in the printed and electronic media, often criticised by the opponents from the circles of the Natives. They point at the fact that despite the genre, the presentation of the characters of Native American origin and their features should be more based on the real historical perspective including the point of view of the Native Americans as well. This article focuses on the portrayal of Native Americans in the genre of film. The emphasis will be put on the choice of the most common stereotypical features of the Native Americans present in the analysed characters in the chosen films from the point of view of the native and non- native production.
Sergunin, Alexander, Saint Petersburg State University, Russia: “Congressional Black Caucus and the Problem of Police Violence: Past and Present”

Panel speaker: African American History: Aspects of Racism and Violence, Part I
Šesnić, Jelena, University of Zagreb, Croatia: “‘Uncanny Domesticity’ in Contemporary US Fiction”
I will be using the term “uncanny domesticity” to account for a trend in contemporary US fiction, often arising in response to the events of 9/11 but not exclusively due to them, to employ as a hard kernel of its plots some instances of the uncanny—here used mostly in its classic Freudian account as something that is so familiar and homely, and yet too frightening and disturbing, to remember. I will argue that this uneasy dynamics takes place precisely at the intersection of the local and homely (US domestic and domesticated spaces) and its foreign underside. The foreign, or by extension, the uncanny takes various forms—be it that of terrorism (real or anticipated), uncontainable immigration, economic melt-down, environmental hazards, natural disasters, wars, and political violence and upheavals. While the domestic logic very much strives to keep these indicators of globalization or global interconnectedness outside of its domain relying on the role of the nation-state to do the work of consolidation, the novels of contemporary middle-class life in the United States are replete with the accounts of characters struggling to make sense in a world that far exceeds the bounds of “home” in line with the recent global overreach of the nation-state to which they nominally belong. This process is for the characters often the encounter with the uncanny that resides in the recesses of America’s past or comes into being by its present-day actions. Some of these observations will be illustrated by drawing on the exemplary novels by Jonathan Raban, Claire Messud, and Barbara Kingsolver for an illustration of a more general tendency.
Shumsky, Neil, Virginia Tech USA: “Dirt, Disease, Death, and Deity: Creating the ‘Dust Bowl’”
On April 14, 1935, the fiercest dust storm that had ever occurred roared across the panhandle areas of Texas and Oklahoma. Robert Geiger, a correspondent for the Associated Press, happened to be in the area, and he reported what he had seen and experienced. When his article appeared across the nation on the next day, the phrase “dust bowl” was used to the region. As far as anyone has determined, this was the first time that the phrase was used in print. By the end of 1935, the term “dust bowl” had become a commonly accepted part of the American English vocabulary. Although the two words had never appeared together before, the phrase began showing up regularly in indices such as the Annual Index to the New York Times, the Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature, the Monthly Index to Government Publications, and other guides to publications that were published on a regular and recurring basis. The rapid appearance of the term, and its apparently widespread acceptance, is somewhat puzzling. The phrase has no literal meaning. After all, what could a “dust bowl” possibly be? Is it a bowl used to contain dust as a sugar bowl contains sugar? That hardly seems likely. Why would anyone collect dust and place it in a bowl? There must be some other answer to the question. Perhaps a dust bowl is a bowl made out of dust as a silver bowl is made from silver. Once again, this answer to the query “what is a dust bowl?” seems questionable. Something cannot be fabricated from dust unless the dust is moistened sufficiently for the particles to adhere to each other. But, if the dust is mixed with some liquid one would be more likely call the resultant substance a ”mud bowl,” not a “dust bowl.” A third meaning of “dust bowl” is that the term refers to a geographic location where dust was common and that was ringed with mountains or hills giving it the shape of a bowl. That explanation, too, comes up short. The region commonly considered to be the “dust bowl” included the southwest corner of Kansas, the panhandle sections of Oklahoma and Texas, and the eastern portions of Colorado and New Mexico. In the first place, this entire region was not surrounded by a circle of mountains or even hills that resembled the shape of a bowl. Moreover, even if such a formation had existed, the distances from one point on the perimeter to the point directly opposite would have been too great to be visible from the ground; it could only be seen from a high altitude or be depicted on a map of the physical topography. So, the notion that the term “dust bowl” refers to a geographic or topographic feature of the landscape must also be abandoned. How then can we explain the meaning of the term and understand why it resonated so strongly that the American people adopted it so quickly with so little questioning? To answer that question we need to look at the larger connotations and the metaphorical implications of the two words “dust” and “bowl” and see how they came together to form a compelling image. Such an analysis reveals that the phrase “dust bowl” emerged from several aspects of American culture that had been growing increasingly important since the middle of the nineteenth century (a demand for cleanliness, a concern about disease and death) and one that been important since the first English people settled in North America (evangelical Protestantism). The remainder of the paper explores how these aspects of American culture intersected each other and interacted to create the “Dust Bowl.” In particular, it delves into increasing American demands for cleanliness that intensified after about 1840; the revolutions in microbiology that led to the development of the germ theory of disease in the latter decades of the nineteenth century; the growth of the public health and housing reform movements in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; and the significance of the words “dust” and “bowl” in evangelical American Protestantism, especially the new translations of the New Testament that appeared after about 1880.
Simal-González, Begoña, University of Coruña, Spain: “New Las Vegas: American Metamorphoses of the Post-Apocalyptic Genre”
In “Death and Dancing in New Las Vegas” (2011), science-fiction writer Ernest Hogan revisits two literary (sub)genres, one more specific and typically American –Las Vegas fiction –, and the other broader – dystopian and post-apocalyptic literature. In Hogan’s story, as in much dystopian fiction, we witness the extrapolation of perceivable trends in the present. In fact, famous examples of speculative fiction, Margaret Atwood’s acclaimed The Handmaid’s Tale or her later MaddAddam trilogy, have been read as cautionary tales about current pernicious tendencies. In the US, it is probably Octavia Butler’s science fiction books, especially her Xenogenesis trilogy, that have garnered most critical attention, due to the manner in which she uses the genre to critique past and present realities, most notably racialization in the US. It is in this context that I intend to explore how recent narratives like Hogan’s “Death and Dancing in New Las Vegas” contribute to the “Americanization” of the genre of science fiction. I argue that this generic adaptation or mutation pivots around the issue of race, which the short story incorporates and problematizes. In particular, Hogan both includes echoes of the past – the history of racism in America – and hints at possible developments in the future, as those suggested by Gilroy in After Race. Like much so-called escapist literature, this speculative narrative does not escape reality but goes deeper, beyond the surface of conventional realism, and successfully engages in a nuanced critique of contemporary America.
Simon, Bryant, Temple University, USA: “The Star Spangled Statue of Liberty: Icon Making in 1960s America”
In his book on the hamburger as an icon, the journalist Josh Ozersky writes, “America is the great icon making nation because it requires (emphasis added) icons more than any other nation. Created whole cloth, peopled by immigrants from China and Peru, and with little more than a federal bureaucracy, a half-formed and contested ideology, and a common language to unite them, Americans turned to iconography again and again: first George Washington, and then the Founding Fathers, and then, consecutively, the Flag, the White House, Abe Lincoln in his hat, Robert E. Lee in his uniform, Uncle Same, the Statue of Liberty, the planting of the flag at Iwo Jima.” Perhaps no icon from Ozersky’s rather obvious list has been more important and enduring and more available for competing and contested interpretations of the United States than the Statue of Liberty. From the time it arrived in New York Harbor in 1886, it has been used both in the service of the nation, and in the service of critiquing the nation and calling on it to live up to the ideals embodied in the Statue of Liberty’s physical form, geographic position, and poetic inscriptions (e.g. “Give us your huddled masses . . .) In his paper/presentation, Bryant Simon will explore how activists in the 1960s deployed the Statue of Liberty, as shorthand, to make their claims for change and voice their dissent. The paper will, then, discuss these day of hope and rage in America, but also use these examples to talk about the Ozersky’s larger idea of America as an icon making nation and about the study of iconicity – or how ideas travel through images and concrete forms in the American past.