Linford D. Fisher, The Indian Great Awakening: Religion and the Shaping of Native Cultures in Early America (Oxford/New York: Oxford UP, 2012, 2014), 312 pp. Amerikastudien / American Studies 61.2 Im Zentrum der anregenden Studie des an der Brown University lehrenden Historikers Linford Fisher stehen die unterschiedlichen und facettenreichen Modi, mit denen Native…
Read MoreSteve Longenecker, Gettysburg Religion: Refinement, Diversity, and Race in the Antebellum and Civil War Border North (New York: Fordham UP, 2014), 246 pp. Amerikastudien / American Studies 61.2 Steve Longenecker’s micro-historical study attempts to carve out the significance of Gettysburg beyond its role as the site of a three-day Civil War battle, or its place…
Read MoreLawrence I. Berkove and Joseph Csicsila, Heretical Fictions: Religion in the Literature of Mark Twain (Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 2010), 271 pp. Amerikastudien / American Studies 61.2 For many people, the name “Mark Twain” is synonymous with American humor. Therefore, it is worth noting that this book says very little about humor,…
Read MoreLaura Bieger, Ramón Saldívar and Johannes Voelz, eds., The Imaginary and its Worlds: American Studies after the Transnational Turn (Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College P, 2013), 312 pp. Amerikastudien/ American Studies, 61.2 The collection of papers in The Imaginary and its Worlds was developed out of a conference hosted at the John-F-Kennedy-Institut of the Freie…
Read MoreWinfried Fluck, Donald E. Pease, and John Carlos Rowe, eds., Re-Framing the Transnational Turn in American Studies (Hanover: Dartmouth College P, 2011), 460 pp. Amerikastudien/ American Studies, 61.2 The late 2000s and early 2010s saw a considerable number of monographs and edited collections reconsidering the nexus of transnational and global American studies. Coming out…
Read MoreHartmut Lutz, Contemporary Achievements: Contextualizing Canadian Aboriginal Literatures (Augsburg: Wißner, 2015), 334 pp. Amerikastudien/ American Studies, 61.2 The front cover of this outstanding collection shows a beadwork turtle designed by Anette Brauer with Canada’s national symbol, the maple leaf, on its back. The animal here echoes Turtle Island, a term used by many native…
Read MoreOliver Scheiding and Martin Seidl, eds., Worlding America: A Transnational Anthology of Short Narratives before 1800 (Stanford: Stanford UP, 2015), 245 pp. Amerikastudien/ American Studies, 61.2 Anthologies are by nature provocative: the chosen selections will always impress some and dismay others, and, by prioritizing certain writers and values, editors make literary and political statements.…
Read MoreSebastian Emling und Katja Rakow, Moderne religiöse Erlebniswelten in den USA. “Have Fun and Prepare to Believe!” (Berlin: Reimer Verlag, 2014), 266 pp. Amerikastudien/ American Studies, 61.2 Can spirituality be expressed through “modern religious experience worlds?” The answer is in the affirmative. Are religions, when marketed to appeal to broad audiences, inevitably watered down?…
Read MoreFelix Krämer, Moral Leaders: Medien, Gender und Glaube in den USA der 1970er und 1980er Jahre (Bielefeld: transcript, 2015), 416 pp. Amerikastudien/ American Studies, 61.2 On March 30, 1981, President Ronald Reagan was shot by a deranged man, John Hinckley, Jr. This well-known tidbit of US-American history is one of the examples Felix…
Read MoreSaskia Hertlein und Hermann Josef Schnackertz, eds., The Culture of Catholicism in the United States, American Studies – A Monograph Series 213 (Heidelberg: Winter, 2012), 396 pp. Amerikastudien/ American Studies, 61.2 Wie kann man gleichzeitig ein guter Amerikaner und ein guter Katholik sein? Diese Frage treibt katholische und nicht-, ja antikatholische Amerikaner seit über…
Read MoreBrycchan Carey and Geoffrey Plank, eds., Quakers and Abolition (Urbana, Ill: U of Illinois P, 2014), 233 pp. Amerikastudien/ American Studies, 61.2 As Gary Nash writes in the final chapter of Quakers and Abolition, “The story of Quaker leadership in the abolition movement has been known and proudly recounted by Friends and friends…
Read MoreUlrich Rosenhagen, Brudermord, Freiheitsdrang, Weltenrichter. Religiöse Kommunikation und öffentliche Theologie in der amerikanischen Revolutionsepoche (Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2015), 370 pp. Amerikastudien/ American Studies, 61.2 Die Heidelberger Dissertation im Fach Systematische Theologie des lutheranischen Pfarrers und als Dozent am Institute for the Study of the Abrahamic Religions der University of Wisconsin in Madison/Wisc. tätigen Ulrich…
Read MoreStephanie Kirk and Sarah Rivett, eds., Religious Transformations in the Early Modern Americas (U of Pennsylvania P, 2014), 360 pp. Amerikastudien/ American Studies, 62.1 The history of empire and religion in the Americas remains as politically relevant as ever. Pope Francis, as the first Latin American pope, was reminded of this last year…
Read MoreHeike Brandt, Invented Traditions: Die Puritaner und das amerikanische Sendungsbewusstsein [Schriften der Forschungsstelle Grundlagen Kulturwissenschaft. Bd. 4] (N.P.: Verlag Karl Stutz, 2011), 292 pp. Amerikastudien/ American Studies, 61.2 “Uppon the first sight of New-England, June 29, 1638” Hayle holy-land wherin our holy lord Hath planted his most true and holy…
Read MoreAbram C. van Engen, Sympathetic Puritans: Calvinist Fellow Feeling in Early New England (New York: Oxford UP, 2015), xii + 311 pp. Amerikastudien/American Studies, 61.2 Anyone who picks up a copy of Sympathetic Puritans might wince at what purports to be something of an oxymoron: “Sympathetic Puritans”? Are you kidding me? Whatever happened…
Read MoreJan Stievermann, Prophecy, Piety, and the Problem of Historicity: Interpreting the Hebrew Scriptures in Cotton Mather’s “Biblia Americana” (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), 493 pp. Amerikastudien/ American Studies, 61.2 Prophecy, Piety, and the Problem of Historicity is a rarity in this day of ideologically inflected cultural history, a lucid fusion of textual, intellectual, theological,…
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