STYLE SHEET FOR MANUSCRIPTS SUBMITTED TO AMERIKASTUDIEN / AMERICAN STUDIES

Our editorial team will edit, proofread, and typeset all accepted manuscripts before publication. The following guidelines serve to facilitate this process and ensure the best possible results.

Download Style Sheet (pdf) here.

Formatting

Please use double spacing and indicate clearly what constitutes a heading, a body paragraph, citation, footnote, or a block quote. The editorial staff will add all further formatting.

Please ensure that the text contains no automated formatting or manual insertions of tabs or space characters at the beginning of paragraphs. When using automated reference tools (e.g., EndNote, Zotero, Edifix), please make sure that they convert outputs to plain text upon submission. Words should not be separated at line breaks, neither by automatic nor manual hyphenation.

Please keep content footnotes concise and use them sparingly. Em-dashes—not hyphens—should be used to set off sentence elements and/or asides, with no space before, between, or after. Please use double opening and closing quotation marks (“…”) for direct quotations and for scare quotes. We encourage authors to use scare quotes as well as other means of formatting for emphasis sparingly. A carriage return (paragraph mark) should only be used at the end of paragraphs; there is no need to enter it twice for spacing paragraphs.

The editorial team will gladly provide the MS Word document template file (.dot) that is used for pre-typesetting (preflighting).

A Note on Capitalization and Ethnic Identities

The editorial team of Amerikastudien / American Studies is aware that the question of capitalization in the context of racial and ethnic positionalities remains contested. We have decided to follow critics and journalists of Color who recommend the capitalization of all racial as well as ethnic identity markers, including “White.” Our concern is to avoid the impression that Whiteness is a neutral category or an absence and instead “call attention to White as a race as a way to understand and give voice to how Whiteness functions in our social and political institutions and our communities” (Nguyễn and Pendleton). For further elaborations, see the writings of Kwame Anthony Appiah and Nell Irvin Painter, the American Psychological Association (APA) Style Guide, and the Conscious Style Guide. Bridging orthography and politics, we agree with Wiley Blackwell (in the Diversity Style Guide) on the need to promote awareness and visibility while simultaneously refraining from enforcing one exclusive stance for all contributors. In full awareness of existing controversies, we do, of course, respect individual decisions by our authors. In this case, we kindly ask authors to clarify their usage in a footnote.

Documentation of Sources

Please follow the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (7th ed.). In accordance with MLA 7Amerikastudien / American Studies uses the parenthetical system of documentation rather than footnotes or endnotes. Citations in parentheses within the text point to sources in the works cited, and the works cited are listed at the end of the article. In-text citations give the author(s) and the page number(s) (with no comma in between). If the name of the author already appears in the body of the text, only put the page number(s) in parentheses:

Psychologist Jane Flax explains that women usually do not blame their mothers because they “tend to feel guilty that they are somehow betraying their mother in the attempt to resolve and terminate the symbiotic tie” (35).

If the list of works cited contains more than one work by the author, add the cited title in a shortened form after the author’s last name.

(Frye, Anatomy 278)
(Frye, Critical Path)

When referring to a supplementary work, inserting “see also” into the parenthesis can be helpful. Similarly, the abbreviation “cf.” may be used to indicate comparison. We discourage including “see” in a parenthetical citation because it will be redundant in most cases.

Quotations

Quoted material exceeding four lines should be set off as a block quotation. Should quoted material contain italics (or other special formatting), please specify “emphasis in original” or “emphasis added” in the respective parenthesis. Please use single quotation marks to indicate quotations in the original quoted materials.

Ellipsis points in square brackets mark omissions in quotations:

Louis D. Rubin explains that “[h]istory […] remains a striking characteristic of the Southern literary imagination, black and white” (5-6).

For quotations containing an ellipsis in the original, please use three periods without brackets.

Bibliographic Format for References

Type of EntryWorks Cited
A book by a single authorMcConnell, Frank. Storytelling and Mythmaking: Images from Film and Literature. New York: Oxford UP, 1979. Print.
A book by more than one authorGilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1979. Print.
A book by multiple authorsBlocker, Clyde E., Robert H. Plummer, and Richard C. Richardson, Jr. The Two-Year College: A Social Synthesis. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice, 1965. Print.
A work in an anthology or collection of essaysSattelmeyer, Robert. “Thoreau and Emerson.” The Cambridge Companion to Henry David Thoreau. Ed. Joel Myerson. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995. 25-39. Print.
A republished bookDoctorow, E.L. Welcome to Hard Times. 1960. New York: Bantam, 1976. Print.
A book in a seriesHinchcliffe, Arnold P. Harold Pinter. Rev. ed. Boston, MA: Twayne, 1981. Print. Twayne’s English Author’s Series 51.
An unpublished dissertationJohnson, Nancy Kay. “Cultural and Psychosocial Determinants of Health and Illness.” Diss. U of Washington, 1980. Print.
An article in a journalSollors, Werner. “W.E.B. Du Bois in Nazi Germany, 1936.” Amerikastudien / American Studies 44.2 (1999): 207-22. Print.
An article in an online journalMendoza, Mary E. “Treacherous Terrain: Racial Exclusion and Environmental Control at the U.S.-Mexico Border.” Environmental History 23.1 (2018): 117-26. https://doi.org/10.1093/envhis/emx124 .  

(When citing an online journal article, please include the DOI if available; otherwise, please provide the URL.)
An article from a daily newspaperBrody, Jane. “Heart Attacks: Turmoil beneath the Calm.” New York Times 21 June 1983, late ed.: C1. Print.
A newspaper article (unsigned)“Give Georgia More HOPE.” Atlanta Journal-Constitution 18 Dec. 1994: G6. Print.
A newspaper article (online)Pengally, Martin, Sabrina Siddiqui, and David Smith. “Trump Challenges Tillerson to ‘Compare IQ Tests’ after Reported ‘Moron’ Dig.” The Guardian. Guardian News & Media Ltd., 10 Oct. 2017. Web. 16 May 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/oct/10/donald-trump-forbes-rex-tillerson-moron.  

(When citing an online source, include the publication date (here 10 Oct. 2017) and the date you visited the site (here: 16 May 2019).  
An article (online and unsigned)“Tory MP Ben Bradley ‘Sorry’ for Blog Post about Jobless.” BBC. BBC, 16 Jan. 2018. Web. 16 May 2019. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-42712180.
A magazine articleCowley, Geoffrey. “I’d Toddle a Mile for a Camel.” Newsweek 23 Dec. 1991: 70-71. Print.
A filmIt’s a Wonderful Life. Dir. Frank Capra. Perf. James Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore, and Thomas Mitchell. RIKO, 1946. Film.

Please consult the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 7th ed., or contact the editorial team for all other types of publication and other questions.