		1956
		quarterly
		English, German

		literature, cultural studies, history, political science, linguistics, critical theory, teaching of American Studies

		0340-2827

		Winter


General Editors: Carmen Birkle Birgit Däwes Review Editor: Anke Ortlepp Editorial Board: Christa Buschendorf Ingrid Gessner Anke Ortlepp Heike Paul Marc Priewe Boris Vormann Associate Editors: Cedric Essi Johanna Heil Kathleen Loock Connor Pitetti

For our full submission guidelines, please visit https://dgfa.de/american-studies-a-quarterly-2/submitting/ For manuscripts and books for review, please contact our review editors at reviews@dgfa.de. There is no obligation to review unsolicited books. Amerikastudien / American Studies E-Mail: amst@dgfa.de In view of the computerized production of the journal, manuscripts of articles and reviews can only be accepted if submitted as computer files (preferably MS Word) and accompanied by a printout. Please note the following formal requirements: – Article manuscripts - manuscript text, abstract, notes, list of works cited - should not exceed 60,000 to 70,000 characters (including spaces). – All articles must be preceded by an abstract in English of no more than 200 words. – Since Amerikastudien / American Studies follows a double blind-peer review system, articles should contain no references to the author. – An Amerikastudien / American Studies style sheet is available under https://dgfa.de/american-studies-a-quarterly-2/article-style-sheet/ The editorial team gladly provides a MS Word document template file (DOT) that is used for pre-typesetting (preflighting).

Amerikastudien / American Studies

Amerikastudien / American Studies is the journal of the German Association for American Studies. It started as the annual Jahrbuch für Amerikastudien in 1956 and has since developed into a quarterly with some 1200 subscriptions in Europe and the United States. The journal is dedicated to interdisciplinary and transnational perspectives and embraces the diversity and dynamics of a dialogic and comparatist understanding of American Studies. It covers all areas of American Studies from literary and cultural criticism, history, political science, and linguistics to the teaching of American Studies. Special-topics issues alternate with regular ones. Reviews, forums, and annual bibliographies support the international circulation of German and European scholarship in American Studies.
(https://amst.winter-verlag.de/)
Editors: Carmen Birkle and Birgit Däwes
Review Editor: Anke Ortlepp
Address: Amerikastudien/American Studies
Prof. Dr. Carmen Birkle
Philipps-Universität Marburg
FB 10 Department of English and American Studies
Wilhelm-Röpke-Str. 6f
35032 Marburg, Germany
Phone: +49 6421-2824-345
E-Mail: amst@dgfa.de
or
Prof. Dr. Birgit Däwes
Europa-Universität Flensburg
Department of English and American Studies
Auf dem Campus 1
24943 Flensburg, Germany
E-Mail: amst@dgfa.de

» Visit Journal Web Site

Amerikastudien / American Studies 2014: South Africa and the United States in Transnational American Studies, Vol. 59, No. 4

South Africa and the United States in Transnational American Studies: From Comparative Approaches toward Transangulation

By Birgit M. Bauridl and Udo J. Hebel

The United States -- South Africa -- Germany: Reflections on a Triangular Transnational Relationship

By Greg Cuthbertson and Chris Saunders
This paper draws on ideas advanced by Jane Desmond and Virginia Dominguez to explore the triangular relationship between the United States, South Africa, and Germany, focusing in particular on race and racial problems and how the countries have dealt with their pasts. While there has been much comparative work on the United States and South Africa, the inclusion of Germany adds value to the comparative exercise and engages the question of exceptionalism. The paper reflects the wide intersections in the respective national historiographies to note some areas for future research.

The Daughters of Africa and Transatlantic Racial Kinship: Cecilia Lilian Tshabalala and the Women's Club Movement, 1912-1943

By Meghan Healy-Clancy
This article explores how South African women drew upon African American models of public engagement to articulate a locally meaningful racial identity. Its focus is on the work of Cecilia Lillian Tshabalala, who was born in Natal and moved to the United States in 1912. After attending the Hampton Institute, New Britain State Normal School, and the Moody Bible Institute in the U.S., she taught at an African Methodist Episcopal Church girls' school in Gold Coast (Ghana) and at black Congregationalist churches in Hartford and Brooklyn, before returning to South Africa in 1930. In 1932 Tshabalala launched a women's club movement, the Daughters of Africa (DOA), which was modeled on the African American women's club movement. Members of the DOA organized social welfare activities including small enterprise, public health, and educational initiatives, and wrote about these activities in African newspapers, articulating a model of women's public activism premised on their domestic authority. Focusing on Tshabalala's writing in the Johannesburg-based Bantu World as the DOA expanded its operations through Natal and into the Witwatersrand in the latter half of the 1930s and the early 1940s, this article highlights the gendered possibilities of transatlantic racial kinship during a foundational period in African nationalism.

Transnational Race Relations: Muriel Horrell's Journey toward Understanding Reserves and Reservations in South Africa, Africa, and the United States

By Sue Krige
In 1964, Muriel Horrell, compiler of the annual Surveys of Race Relations of the South African Institute of Race Relations, was awarded a Carnegie Corporation travel grant to study 'under-developed communities' in Africa and the United States. While travelling at this momentous time in history, she kept three detailed journals, two of which form the backbone of this article. The journals provide insight into her interactions with both the Carnegie and the Ford Foundations and into the agendas of these Foundations. While visiting three newly-independent African states, she documented the problems and possibilities afforded by independence. Though intrigued with the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S., she remained true to her original goal to study "under-developed communities" but narrowed it to a comparison between Native American Reservations and African Reserves/Homelands, which she used to develop a devastating critique of apartheid policies.

The Bader Ginsburg Controversy and the Americanization of Post-Apartheid Legal Culture

By Wessel LeRoux
In early 2012, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the United States Supreme Court suggested in a television interview that Egypt look towards the South African Constitution, rather than the United States Constitution, as it starts its constitution making process. The comment caused a public outcry in the United States and resulted in calls for the impeachment of Justice Ginsburg. This essay revisits the Ginsburg controversy in order to explore the relationship between South African and American constitutional scholars and judges and their constitutional views and principles. Justice Bader Ginsburg's comment about the South African Constitution is not an isolated occurrence, but rather forms part of a longstanding and ongoing scholarly engagement between two influential constitutional traditions, judicial supremacy and parliamentary supremacy. This essay discusses central aspects of this engagement, most particularly the collaborative development of transformative constitutionalism as a result of the Americanization of post-apartheid legal culture. It concludes with a brief reflection on the uncertain future of this post-national scholarly engagement in light of the recent rise of populist constitutionalism in both the United States and South Africa.

Cultural Imperialism and the Romanticized Frontier: From South Africa and Great Britain to New Mexico's Mesilla Valley

By Andrew Offenburger
With the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 and the Gadsden Purchase of 1853, the United States acquired its last lands to comprise the lower forty-eight states. By the early twentieth century, immigrants to the region performed the everyday labor of cultural imperialism. This article examines the lives, memoirs, and novels of two prolific but unknown immigrants who moved to New Mexico's Mesilla Valley: Benjamin J. Viljoen and Edith M. Nicholl. Viljoen, a general from the Boer Republics, emigrated in 1903 after suffering defeat by the British Empire in the South African War. He wrote memoirs, articles, and novels relating to the war and his exile in the borderlands. Nicholl, a farmer and writer from an elite British family, first moved to Virginia and then to New Mexico in 1896. Her imperial pedigree gave her a unique perspective of the Mesilla Valley. When placed together, the lives and writings of Viljoen and Nicholl not only reveal the everyday imperial cultures in the Southwest; they testify to the subjectivity of frontier life, its gendered spaces, and its transmutability on both sides of the Atlantic.

Spotlights: Nelson Mandela's Ambivalent View of the United States

By Stephan Bierling
Nelson Mandela held an ambivalent view of the United States. While he admired its democracy and freedoms, as a revolutionary heavily influenced by Marxist ideology, he harshly criticized Washington's 'imperialism' and support for colonial powers. During the 1980s, but especially after his release from prison in 1990 and his ascent to the presidency of South Africa, Mandela became a celebrity in the United States. This did not, however, prevent him from attacking Washington's foreign policy positions on several occasions or from maintaining close relations with America's political foes such as Fidel Castro and Muammar Gadhafi. This article shows how Mandela views the United States -- and international relations in general -- mainly through the prism of his lifelong fight against apartheid.

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