Stefan L. Brandt Livres

In the past few years, the concept of «liminality» has become a kind of pet theme within the discipline of Cultural Studies, lending itself to phenomena of transgression and systemic demarcation. This anthology employs theories of liminality to discuss Canada’s geographic and symbolic boundaries, taking its point of departure from the observation that «Canada» itself, as a cultural, political, and geographic entity, encapsulates elements of the «liminal.» The essays comprised in this volume deal with fragmented and contradictory practices in Canada, real and imagined borders, as well as contact zones, thresholds, and transitions in Anglo-Canadian and French-Canadian texts, discussing topics such as the U. S./Canadian border, migration, French-English relations, and encounters between First Nations and settlers.

Focusing on the liminal aesthetics within U.S. cultural and literary practices, the book challenges conventional understandings and assumptions. It delves into how these transitional spaces influence artistic expression and societal narratives, offering a fresh perspective on identity and culture. By examining various texts and contexts, the work highlights the complexities of cultural intersections and their impact on literature, ultimately enriching the discourse on American identity.

Space Oddities: Difference and Identity in the American City approaches a space (and place) central to the American imagination-the city. In particular, this volume discusses the paradoxes of American cities and American urban life. In this way, Space Oddities critically engages with the paradoxes of the American identity, embodied by cultural practices in, and cultural representations of, urban life in the United States.

Making National Bodies addresses the discourse of the body in Revolutionary and post-Revolutionary America. While recent literary and cultural criticism has extensively explored the relation between concepts of the nation and the body, this volume of essays contributes to the academic dialogue by addressing a crucial period of American history. The trope of the body gained particular importance during this era of emerging nationalism, especially when the body politic, its weaknesses and strengths were seen and described in terms of bodily functions: infections, virtuousness, and purity became key terms in the description of the nation. In the early years of the Republic, the imaginary, the rhetorical, and the symbolic were employed for the making of the nation. Topics such as the metaphorical constitution of the body in literary texts, or the body in the medical discourse of the time are taken up in some of the essays while others investigate how the Republic and the nation were invented in foundational fictions and epic poems. The essays collected in this volume assert that the discourse of embodiment was indispensible for the construction of a stable national identity in post-Revolutionary America. The aesthetics of corporeal self-fashioning was instrumental in generating the basis for a rhetoric of “making the national body.”

Modern cities serve as a platform for the emergence and negotiation of transcultural spaces, where the interplay between urbanity, ecology, and the environment is prominently displayed. The tensions between the creative and destructive forces in global cities resonate throughout the humanities. With the recent politicization of the humanities and the 'transnational turn' in American Studies, concepts of 'environment' and 'culture' have increasingly been viewed as hybrid entities. This volume explores critical questions surrounding the symbolic construction of transcultural spaces in both academic and literary contexts. It examines how an interdisciplinary approach can effectively respond to the post-ecological turn of the 2000s. Contributions from literary and cinematic fiction, visual arts, and other discourses from Germany and the United States are analyzed for their roles in addressing environmental and technological issues. The anthology also considers how scholars in American Studies can confront the ongoing environmental crisis, which is intricately linked to technological advancement. The individual essays discuss the amalgamation and hybridization of city and nature as complementary figures, alongside the emergence of 'transethnic,' 'posturban,' and 'virtual' environments.

The Culture of Corporeality outlines a cultural history of the body in the American postwar years (1945-1960), based on contemporary critical theory and exemplified by a variety of films, literary works, and other documents. The book argues that the body, as a cultural, symbolic, and ›lived‹ entity, was strategically foregrounded during this era, pervading discourses such as literature, cinema, television, music, the visual arts, architecture, design, medicine, and philosophy. As demonstrated in close analyses of works by James Baldwin, Saul Bellow, Ralph Ellison, Allen Ginsberg, and J. D. Salinger, cultural concepts of the body keep reinventing and reforming themselves through the exploration of boundaries. This complex interaction between text and environment may result in a justification of the dominant value system or in a dismantlement of cultural oppositions. By exploring the intricate strategies of 'embodiment' used in canonic texts, the study wants to contribute to current debates concerning the aesthetics and function of the body in the context of cultural processes of self-fashioning.

Eine Aura von Wildwest-Romantik umgibt die Szenerie in Frederic Remingtons Gemälde "The Hunters' Supper" (1909), das eine Gruppe von Cowboys am Lagerfeuer zeigt. Die meisten Männer wirken nachdenklich und niedergeschlagen, ihre Hüte tief ins Gesicht gezogen. Sie sind Jäger, aber auch Gejagte, heimgesucht von einer glorreichen Vergangenheit, die das Stereotyp des 'tapferen Cowboys' hinterlassen hat. Entstanden in einer Zeit, als der 'Wilde Westen' bereits Vergangenheit war, symbolisiert das Bild einen zentralen Konflikt der amerikanischen Jahrhundertwende: Wie kann das glorreiche Bild der Männlichkeit angesichts des schleichenden Verlustes traditioneller Werte wiederbelebt und in der Kultur verankert werden? Die in "Inszenierte Männlichkeit" behandelten Themen der spätviktorianischen Kultur zeigen ein bekanntes Panorama: Auch heute befindet sich Männlichkeit in einer 'Krise', und es werden ähnliche Rezepte herangezogen, um Männer (und damit die Nation) aus der Apathie zu befreien. Das Buch dient mit seinem umfangreichen Index und der Bibliographie sowohl als Nachschlagewerk als auch als Einführung in die moderne Männlichkeitsforschung ("Men's Studies").