FRANCES H. KENNEDY, The American Revolution: A Historical Guidebook (Oxford and New York: Oxford UP, 2014), 416 pp. Amerikastudien/ American Studies 60.4 As you hold The American Revolution: A Historical Guidebook in your hands and flip through its pages, you will quickly ask yourself the questions, for whom was this book written and for…
Read MoreWOLFGANG HOCHBRUCK, Die Geschöpfe des Epimetheus: Veteranen, Erinnerung und die Reproduktion des amerikanischen Bürgerkriegs (Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2011), 560pp. Amerikastudien/American Studies 60.4 This deeply informed and richly layered study starts out from essentially one key question: How has it been possible that an overall positive image of idealized southern “rebels” holds such a…
Read MoreEDITH M. ZIEGLER, Harlots, Hussies & Poor Unfortunate Women. Crime, Transportation & the Servitude of Female Convicts (Tuscaloosa, AL: U of Alabama P. 2014), 228 pp. Amerikastudien/ American Studies 60.4 Die Quellenlage zum Inhalt des Untertitels ist einerseits hervorragend, andererseits ausgesprochen schlecht. Hervorragend, weil – meist auf beiden Seiten des Atlantik – zahllose Gerichtsakten,…
Read MoreMARC PRIEWE, Textualizing Illness: Medicine and Culture in New England 1620-1730, American Studies Monograph Series (vol 249) (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag, 2014), 408 pp. Amerikastudien/ American Studies 60.4 Marc Priewe’s Textualizing Illness: Medicine and Culture in New England 1620-1730 offers an encyclopedic study of early American medicine through an analysis that intersects literary, historical, and medical…
Read MoreJOHN CYRIL BARTON, Literary Executions: Capital Punishment and American Culture, 1820-1925 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2014), pp. 330. PAUL CHRISTIAN JONES, Against the Gallows: Antebellum American Writers and the Movement to Abolish Capital Punishment (Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 2011), pp. 230. Amerikastudien/ American Studies 60.4 From a Western European perspective, the…
Read MoreSTEFFEN HAGEMANN, WOLFGANG TÖNNESMANN, und JÜRGEN WILZEWSKI, eds. Weltmacht vor neuen Herausforderungen. Die Außenpolitik der USA in der Ära Obama (Atlantische Texte. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2014), 476pp. Amerikastudien/ American Studies 60.4 In the preface to this collection of essays, the editors lament that research on the United States has become marginal at German…
Read MoreASTRID HAAS, Stages of Agency: The Contribution of American Drama to the AIDS Discourse (Heidelberg: Winter, 2011), 334 pp. PIA WIEGMINK, Protest EnACTed: Activist Performance in the Contemporary United States(Heidelberg: Winter, 2011), 434 pp. + 18 ill. Amerikastudien/ American Studies 60.4 According to Susan Smith Harris, drama—and, one might add, the performing arts in…
Read MorePHILIP GOULD, Writing the Rebellion: Loyalists and the Literature of Politics in British America (Oxford and New York: Oxford UP, 2013), 217 pp. Amerikastudien/American Studies 60.4 “Of the reasons which influenced, of the hopes and fears which agitated, and of the miseries and records which are left of the Loyalists—or, as they were…
Read MoreALEXANDER EMMERICH and PHILIPP GASSERT, Amerikas Kriege (Darmstadt: Theiss, 2014), 264 pp. Amerikastudien/ American Studies 60.4 Es gibt bereits einige umfassende Überblickswerke zur amerikanischen Geschichte in deutscher Sprache (Sautter, 1976 [8. Aufl. 2013]; Heideking/Mauch, 2008; Dippel, 2010; Stöver, 2012; Berg, 2013;). Alexander Emmerich und Phillip Gassert strukturieren ihre US-Geschichte entlang „Amerikas Kriege[n]“. Diese Prämisse,…
Read MoreGERALD HORNE, The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America (New York, N.Y.: New York UP, 2014), 363pp. Amerikastudien/ American Studies 60.4 The election of Barack Obama promised the emergence of a post-racial society in which Americans are no longer divided along black-and-whites lines. However, the upheavals…
Read MoreKATHLEEN DONEGAN, Seasons of Misery: Catastrophe and Colonial Settlement in Early America (Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2014), 255 pp. Amerikastudien/ American Studies 60.4 What happened to Englishmen’s identities during the establishment of colonial settlements in America? And how did these settlers “become colonial” living in the New World, experiencing crisis, misery, and…
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