Monographs, Journals

Special Issue of Comparative American Studies: An International Journal

Edited by Antonio Barrenechea und Heidrun Moertl

Pages: 110
Year of Publication: 2013
Language: Englisch
Maney Publishing
Print ISSN: 1477-5700
Online ISSN: 1741-2676

This special issue approaches Native American Studies across the Americas in order to emphasize connections between indigenous people that are often overlooked and/or suppressed in scholarship by both Native and non-Native scholars. Together, the contributors call for a broader discipline that challenges the political, cultural, and linguistic dominance of settler-nations, ranging from Latin America and the Caribbean to Canada and the United States. The collection features multidisciplinary essays that address an interconnected indigenous world and traverse the fields of literature, history, photography, music, and museum studies. Articles confront issues pertaining to American Indian cultures from the pre-contact period to the present, and in dialogue with inter-American and transatlantic studies. In keeping with the mission of Comparative American Studies, the guest-editors argue for the value of a transnational and inter-American scholarly paradigm vis-à-vis the indigenous communities of the western hemisphere.

Keywords: pan-Indianism, transnational tribalism, comparative indigeneity, Native American studies, hemispheric, inter-American, Americas, Europe

From the content:

• Earl E. Fitz: Native American Literature and Its Place in the Inter-American Project
• Scott M. Stevens:The Histography of New France and the Legacy of Iroquois Internationalism
• Silvia Spitta: Monumentally Indian: The Photography of Edward Curtis and the Cuzco School of Photography
• Maria Teresa Ceseña: Hemispheric Visions and Border Divisions: Differential Decolonizations at the US National Museum of the American Indian

Series: Interkulturelle Pädagogik

Edited by Ulla Kriebernegg, Roberta Maierhofer und Hermine Penz

Pages: 224
Year of Publication: 2012
Language: Deutsch
Publisher: LIT Verlag
ISBN: 978-3-50191-2

Today’s society is characterized by increasing plurality and mobility, a development which results in growing contacts among people of different origin. Intercultural competence has become a key competence for the majority of people and not just a small elite. Coping with cultural diversity should thus be seen as a challenge to our society which is also reflected in the educational system. For this reason a discussion of “Interculturality and education” needs to include the whole social context. This demand is also reflected in the view that a democracy should be measured against the fact of how minorities and foreigners are treated.

Intercultural learning is concerned with questions relating to the identity of the individual and its construction and deconstruction. The major learning processes in this connection relate to empathy and solidarity, and tolerance of ambiguity. The prerequisites for dealing with cultural plurality are openness to a continuous and life-long learning process which may be enriching but also painful at times. This openness is required by society on both the institutional and personal level.

The aim of this two-volume publication (one volume in English, one in German) is to address questions of cultural plurality in society in general and to focus on aspects of “Interculturality and education” in all areas of life both in the domains of formal and informal education.

This first volume (German, LIT Verlag 2012) addresses the following questions:

How do institutions which offer formal learning (from nursery school to university) cope with the challenge of a multilingual and multicultural society and intercultural learning?

How does intercultural learning work in informal contexts, such as in people’s daily working and family lives?

Edited by Ulla Kriebernegg, Gerald Lamprecht, Roberta Maierhofer und Andrea Strutz

Pages: 359
Year of Publication: 2012
Language: German
Publisher: Wallstein Verlag
ISBN: 978-3-8353-0886-2

Ever since the European discovery at the end of the 15th century, the Americas have been both a real and an imaginary destination for migrants and a beacon of hope for people from all parts of the world, most importantly, however, from Europe. Images of liberty, religious and cultural tolerance, and the utopia of a "New World" in which social advancement and self-determination were possible constituted the core aspects of imaginations and hopes. Although the ideal of the "American Way of Life" was predominantly connected to the United States, millions of people were received by the Americas, the countries of North and South America. Among them were many Jews who, similar to other groups of migrants, decided or were forced to embark on a journey to the Americas.

This book discusses the reasons why people migrated and where their journeys led them, focusing on the cultural exchanges such migration processes bring about.

From the contents:

• Michaela Raggam-Blesch: Arrival in the »New World«. Neuanfang im Exil unter geschlechtsspezifischen Aspekten
• Helga Embacher: Jüdische Migration im 20. Jahrhundert
• Andrea Strutz: Wege nach Kanada im 20. Jahrhundert
• Christian Cwik: Emigration und Flucht österreichischer Juden nach Lateinamerika 1900-1945

Voices of the press:

»Ein umfangreiches, äußerst spannendes Werk, das für die jüdischen Studien ebenso interessant sein dürfte wie für die Kulturwissenschaft.« (Christian Dietrich, Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 60. JG., 11/2012)

A review of the publication was published in the German newspaper "Die Welt" on April 21, 2012. (Ludger J. Heid, Die Welt, 21.04.2012)

Ulla Kriebernegg

Pages: 186
Year of Publication 2011
Lanugage: English
Publisher: Logos Verlag
ISBN: 978-3-8325-2696-2 186

Comparing apples and oranges - frequently, this is what we do when we talk about similarities and differences regarding higher education in the United States and Europe. Based on the assumption that higher education policy texts are cultural texts to be interpreted, this book deconstructs four US American cultural narratives within higher education (co-opetition, the frontier myth, McDonaldization, and the narrative of security), and compares these to discourses prevailing in Europe. Disputing the prevalent claim that both the recent European higher education transformation initiative, the Bologna Process, and the establishment of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) have had absolutely no impact on US institutions of higher learning, this study proves that cultural narratives in the last decade have strongly determined political and structural developments in higher education on both sides of the Atlantic. This book therefore adds another facet to the transatlantic dialogue on higher education by providing a cultural critical perspective, including the Foucauldian theory of governmentality as well as aspects of postcolonial theory.

Keywords: American Cultural Studies, Higher Education Policy, Cultural Narratives, Bologna Process, Transatlantic Cooperation

From the content:

• Bologna Goes America: The Narrative of "Coopetition"
• From Sea to Shining Sea: The European Higher Education Area - A European Frontier Myth?
• Americanizing the Humboldtian Legacy: The Cultural Narrative of Decline
• Open Doors, Secure Borders: The Narrative of Security in US Higher Education Policy

Edited by Roland Reiter

Pages: 136
Year of Publication: 2008
Language: English
Publisher: Books on Demand
ISBN: no ISBN

In the academic year 2007-2008 C.IAS organized a project with Styrian Youth 14 to 19 years motivating them to think about "the Americas" and challenging them to take notice of the cultural, political and social diversity in North, South and Latin America. Interested youth was promted to write down their thoughts in essay or short story form. To prepare them for the challenge, C.IAS organized a creative writing workshop with specialist David Newbold at the University of Graz in November 2007.

The collection Imagining the Americas contains all texts from the writing competition - as well as the essays written by students at the University of Graz:

This volume is the result of a young generation's critical encounter with "the Americas". As an outcome of a creative writing competition and a students' workshop at the Center for the Study of the Americas at the University of Graz, the 25 essays and short stories provide a multilayered insight into current perceptions of the Western Hemisphere.

From the content:

• Stories about the Americas
• Experiencing the Americas
• American Chronicles
• Contemplations
• Critical Voices
  

Arbeiten zur Amerikanistik Vol. 32.

Roberta Maierhofer

Pages: 366
Year of Publication: 2003
Language: German
Publisher: Verlag die Blaue Eule
ISBN: 9783899240184 (out of print)

The central question of this publication is the intersection of identity, age and gender in American literature. While researchers during of the second wave of feminism, in the 1970s and 1980s, mainly analyzed topics related to the experience of young women, this publication asks for a paradigm shift towards the “Graying of American Feminism”1. Now aging women are moving to the center of feminist interest. By analyzing texts of the last thirty years of the 20th century female aging can be read as a paradigm of American culture. By linking theories of gender and age, Maierhofer proposes a search for a specific female culture of aging in the tradition of Elaine Showalter’s “gynocriticism,” resisting the assumption that human life course identity can be determined by biological factors alone, and that biological age determines one’s social and cultural place in society. With the help of “salty old women” – Maierhofer proposes an antonym to the commonly used phrase “sweet old lady” – the anocritic begins the search of the specific culture of female aging.