Heinz Tschachler Knihy

The book explores the enduring legacy of George Washington, highlighting how he was revered as the "Father of His Country" during his lifetime, symbolizing resistance and rebirth for the American people. It examines the role of presidents as paternal figureheads throughout history, serving as moral exemplars for the nation. The narrative delves into Washington's impact on American identity and the symbolic significance of leadership in shaping the country's values and ideals over more than two centuries.

Sitting at the intersection of literary studies and masculinity studies, this reading reconstructs Washington Irving's life-long struggle to somehow win a place among other men. The book is the first of its kind to encompass and examine Irving's writings. číst celé

Seit dem Beginn der Neuzeit begleiten den bürgerlichen Zivilisationsprozeß Gegenbewegungen, deren Argumentationen vom Naturbegriff bestimmt sind. Mit Bezug auf die Kritische Theorie der Frankfurter Schule untersucht die vorliegende Studie Naturargumentationen in der nordamerikanischen Kultur der siebziger Jahre. Exemplarische Interpretationen mythisch-primitivistischer Romane (James Dickey, Margaret Atwood) sowie der literarischen Utopie und sozialutopischen Varianten der Science Fiction (Ursula K. Le Guin, Ernest Callenbach, Marge Piercy) werden durch diskurstheoretisch-soziosemiotische Verfahren in den gesellschaftlich-kulturellen Zusammenhang gestellt. Zugleich wird versucht, Diskurskritik auf die Kritik am eigenen Diskurs auszuweiten.

Almighty Dollar brings together papers and lectures from the 35th International Annual Conference of the Austrian Association for American Studies (AAAS). The conference took place at the very time that the United States and world economies were plunging downward. However, money has never been simply an economic issue; it has also always been a cultural one, conveying complex historical, social and political meanings. Contributions consider people's engagements with the „Almighty Dollar“ from the most ordinary, mundane daily practices to the most extra-ordinary, life-changing ones. They deal with these engagements in literature, the arts, film, and popular culture.

The study is an interdisciplinary analysis of American culture through one central case study. It explores the cultural, social, and historic contexts of America's national money icon, covering such topics as origin, design, creative usages, counterfeiting, and its defenses by official America. Applying the theoretical model of a „circuit of culture,“ the book attempts a comprehensive account of the ways in which dollar bills relate to social and political change, and how such events as the War of Independence, the Civil War, and the continuing War on Terror have shaped the themes of national and other identities. The book should offer graduate students and scholars alike an opportunity to explore the meanings and hidden agendas of the world's most powerful and most widely known as well as most widely used currency. In addition, it should make it possible to look at other currencies and forms of money in a similar way, much as it should help to refine and expand theoretically the analytic approach outlined in it.

American culture has literally become fixated on the body at the same time that the body has emerged as a key term within critical and cultural theory. Contributions thus address the body as a site of the cultural construction of various identities, which are themselves enacted, negotiated, or subverted through bodily practices. Contributions come from literary and cultural studies, film and media studies, history and sociology, and women studies, and are representative of many theoretical positions, hermeneutic, historical, structuralist, feminist, postmodernist. They deal with representations and discursifications of the body in a broad array of texts, in literature, the visual arts, theater, the performing arts, film and mass media, science and technology, as well as in various cultural practices.