Astrid M. Fellner Libros

Even a global political watershed, such as the end of the Cold War, seems to have left a fundamental characteristic of cultural relations between the US and the rest of the world American popular culture still stirs up emotion. American popular culture's products, artifacts, and practices entangle their consumers in affective encounters characterized by feelings of fascination, excitement, or even wholesale rejection. What is it that continues to make 'American' popular culture 'cool?' Which role does 'cool' play in the consumers' affective encounters with 'America?' This volume of essays offers new insights on the post-Cold War dissemination of American popular culture, exploring the manifold ways in which 'cool' has emerged as an elusive, yet determining, factor of an American culture gone global. ( American Studies in Austria - Vol. 13)

Exploring the interface between sexuality, queerness, migration, and belonging, this volume addresses constructions of sexual and queer identities within global processes of bordering, colonization, globalization, capitalism, nationalism, and the recent ‘crisis of migration.’ The topics covered in this volume range from biopolitics and homonationalism to the (de)construction of sexual borders and to queer solidarity and coalition building.

How do diversity and memory mutually shape one another? This volume of the IRTG Diversity Series shows that a focus on memory introduces an important and contested temporal dimension to the politics, practices, and narratives of diversity. Exploring the various entanglements of historical projections and representations of and from the past with contemporary discourses on difference and inclusion, the articles in this collection problematize memory in relationship to three (often overlapping) modes of storytelling: literature, ethno-biography, and historiography. From the construction of diasporic identities to family migration histories to the conflicted politics of remembering, memories shape diversity, be they in the form of shared memories, divided memories, or conflicting memories.

This collection examines how the signifier 'America' functions as an intermediary in the production of transnational identities and analyzes how different forms of cultural exchange between 'East' and 'West' are constituted in literary and cultural texts. In particular, the essays investigate the transnational flow of cultural texts, analyzing how, by whom, and to what purposes and effects (pop)cultural practices have been appropriated and transferred to local contexts and how the significance of place, especially the category of the national, has changed in the process. Analyzing various spaces of cultural transmission, the articles focus on patterns of movement and the flows of culture in order to approximate the question of whether the dialogue with 'America' in the 21st century still plays a vital role in the production of 'European' identities. What specific role does the flexibility and adaptability of the signifier 'American' play in this intermediary function of American culture? This book therefore gauges the potential and the limits of 'American' culture as a third term that can 'other' both national and European traditions (for identification or dis-identification) and can serve to reconstruct and to transgress national cultural identities.

This collection of scholarly articles as well as creative writings by leading Chicano/a writers and critics focus on the primacy of the body as the site and means of enunciation in U.S. Latino/a culture. Exploring the multiple forms of how the body is written, performed, and represented, the essays address a series of questions such as: In what ways is the body depicted as the site where representations of difference and identity are inscribed? By considering how cultural signifiers, practices, and discourses have been creatively reconfigured, this volume asserts the significance of the body in Latino/a cultural production.

Gender has become an important category in politics, society, and academic research. Gender is everywhere! But is this really true? Is the category of gender still relevant in post-feminist times? In what ways is gender an important topic of research in different academic disciplines? How are gender questions tackled in different disciplines? Gender überall!? attempts to answer these questions, offering insights into the importance of gender in a variety of disiplines ranging from Literary Studies, Linguistics, Philosophy, Theology, Pedagogy, and Social Sciences to Biology and Medicine. Testifying to the importance of interdisciplinary research, the individual essays point towards the necessity to engage in dialogic exchanges between the Humanities and the Social and Natural Sciences.