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European Association for American Studies | |
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The Director of this publication is the President of the European Association for American Studies, Professor Philip John Davies, The Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British Library, London davies@eaas.eu. Editor for literature, culture, the arts and “American Studies”: Marek Paryż (Poland) Associate editors John Dumbrell (Great Britain) Andrew Gross (Germany) Roxana Oltean (Romania) Jean-Yves Pellegrin (France) Editor for history, social sciences and international relations: Jenel Virden Book Reviews Editor: Theodora Tsimpouki (Greece) tsimpouki@enl.uoa.gr Editor for web presence: Cara Rodway (Great Britain) |
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EJAS publishes both solicited and unsolicited articles. The editors also welcome proposals for special issues. All submissions should be addressed to the Senior Editorial team in the first instance: Dr Marek Paryż (m.a.paryz@uw.edu.pl), Dr Jenel Virden (J.Virden@hull.ac.uk) and Dr Cara Rodway (cara.rodway@bl.uk). EJAS publishes articles under the Creative Commons attribution-noncommercial license. The full terms and conditions of the license can be viewed athttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/. Articles must be in English. Contributions should be between 5,000 and 10,000 words, unless previous arrangements have been made with the editors. The article should be preceded by a short abstract. Bibliographical references and general presentation should follow the MLA style sheet for literature, culture and the arts, and the Chicago Manual of Style for history, social sciences and international relations. In-text references should be indicated in the typescript, between parentheses, by giving the author’s surname followed by the year of publication and a page reference if necessary. All articles will be made anonymous and handed over to two referees whose reports shall be synthesized by the editorial team and provide the basis for acceptance or rejection. In both cases the author shall be given immediate notice. Reports will be provided to authors upon request. Even when an article is accepted, the editorial board reserves the right to ask for changes, both in form and scope. |
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Marek Paryż (m.a.paryz@uw.edu.pl) Contact person responsible for updating content for ASA: |
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European Journal of American Studies
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EJAS is the official, peer-reviewed academic journal of the European Association for American Studies, a federation of 21 national and joint-national associations of specialists of the United States (http://www.eaas.eu) gathering approximately 4,000 scholars from 27 European countries. EJAS aims to foster European views on the society, culture, history, and politics of the United States, and how the US interacts with other countries in these fields. In doing so the journal places itself firmly within the continuing discussion amongst Europeans on the nature, history, importance, impact and problems of US civilization. As part of this task, EJAS wants to contribute to enriching the contents, broadening the scope, and documenting the critical examination of “American Studies” in and outside of the United States. EJAS welcomes contributions from Europe and elsewhere and endeavors to make available reliable information and state-of-the-art research on all topics within its broad field of interest. As a matter of policy, the journal will pay particular attention to objects, phenomena and issues less documented or less often debated in the United States, as well as to innovative cultural modes and the diversity of reception of United States culture abroad. Associated with this outlook, it welcomes submissions that elaborate and renew critical approaches, paradigms and methodologies, and that express varied and pluralist views. While intended for the entire American Studies community, EJAS aims in particular to provide space for the rapid publication of quality scholarship by doctoral and post-doctoral researchers. The journal hopes to constitute a genuine forum for European Americanists of all generations, national origins and disciplinary affiliations. |
EJAS 5.4 2010 Special Issue: Film, Volume 5, Number 4
The articles in this issue of the EJAS are intended to shed light on how European film-makers have constructed their own “America” - a nation that is socially and culturally cohesive (pluribus unum) or composed of many different social and ethnic elements (pluribus plura). Since the very beginnings of cinema, Europeans have been involved in interpreting and commenting on “America” on screen both to American and foreign audiences. Many European directors have made films with American subjects (a very partial list would include Michelangelo Antonioni, Constantin Costa-Gravas, Frank Darabont, André de Toth, Julien Duvivier, Roland Emmerich, Milos Forman, Emir Kusturica, Sergio Leone, Anatole Litvak, Ken Loach, Adrian Lyne, Wolfgang Peterson, Jean Renoir, Jacques Tourneur, Paul Verhoeven, and Wim Wenders). Equally, many directors of European origin were assimilated into “Hollywood” - illustrations of this would include Richard Boleslavsky, Frank Capra, Michael Curtiz, William Dieterle, Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz Lang, Ernest Lubitsch, Rouben Mamoulian, Friedrich Murnau, Otto Preminger, Douglas Sirk, Charles Vidor, Josef von Sternberg, Erich von Stroheim, James Whale, Billy Wilder, William Wyler, and Fred Zinnemann. Frequently, in projecting their own view of a unified or diversified American society and nation, such directors were greatly influenced by their own personal and national experiences.
Out of Many, One: European Film-Makers Construct the United States
The articles in this issue of the EJAS are intended to shed light on how European film-makers have constructed their own "America" - a nation that is socially and culturally cohesive (pluribus unum) or composed of many different social and ethnic elements (pluribus plura). Since the very beginnings of cinema, Europeans have been involved in interpreting and commenting on "America" on screen both to American and foreign audiences. Many European directors have made films with American subjects (a very partial list would include Michelangelo Antonioni, Constantin Costa-Gravas, Frank Darabont, André de Toth, Julien Duvivier, Roland Emmerich, Milos Forman, Emir Kusturica, Sergio Leone, Anatole Litvak, Ken Loach, Adrian Lyne, Wolfgang Peterson, Jean Renoir, Jacques Tourneur, Paul Verhoeven, and Wim Wenders). Equally, many directors of European origin were assimilated into "Hollywood" - illustrations of this would include Richard Boleslavsky, Frank Capra, Michael Curtiz, William Dieterle, Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz Lang, Ernest Lubitsch, Rouben Mamoulian, Friedrich Murnau, Otto Preminger, Douglas Sirk, Charles Vidor, Josef von Sternberg, Erich von Stroheim, James Whale, Billy Wilder, William Wyler, and Fred Zinnemann. Frequently, in projecting their own view of a unified or diversified American society and nation, such directors were greatly influenced by their own personal and national experiences.
(De)constructing "America": the Case of Emir Kusturica's Arizona Dream (1993)
By means of an analysis of Kusturica's only film about America, Arizona Dream, this article argues that while the United States offers a vision of a united society founded on diversity, it also represses, altering in the process both society and the landscape. National unity is consequently a dream - a dream the film suggests that has often been dreamed up by un-Americans. Filtered through Kusturica's own perceptions of America - and his position on the Balkan War (1991-2001) - the film seems to suggest sadness at the loss of a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural perspective. Through its representations of geography and ethnic diversity, and its dense network of filmic citations, what Arizona Dream ultimately offers is consequently a European auteur's view of the United States rather than a systematic deconstruction of the "imagined community" of "America."
From Independence Day to Land of Plenty: Screening American Patriotism from German Émigré Perspectives before and after 9/11
Independence Day and Land of Plenty are two tropes referring to the basis of American national identity: the Declaration of Independence with its guarantee of equal and inalienable rights and the promise of an inexhaustible abundance of resources. Independence Day and Land of Plenty are also two American feature films directed by German émigrés, the first being a science fiction blockbuster from 1996 by Roland Emmerich, the second an independent road movie from 2003 by Wim Wenders. Both films confront the issue of American patriotism albeit from different angles and at different times. Independence Day wholeheartedly embraces the American founding myths and translates them into a science fiction scenario. Wenders manoeuvres into an artistic space producing what I call patriotism of dissent. The films engage in a kind of dialectic dialogue on American patriotism. This article takes a close look at émigré perspectives on American patriotism before and after 9/11. By turning to the four patterns which political theorist Samuel P. Huntington identified as possible responses to the discrepancy between principles and practices of American democracy, I will analyse Independence Day as a filmic strategy to deny democratic gaps and Land of Plenty as a representative example of a moralistic reaction to democratic gaps. In the discourse of screening American patriotism from German émigré perspectives before and after 9/11, the work of Emmerich and Wenders exemplifies the spectrum of approaches to negotiate the fantasy of, desire for, and experience of American culture in the medium of film.
Star and National Myths in Cold War Allegories: Marlene Dietrich's Star Persona and the Western in Fritz Lang's Rancho Notorious (1952)
Fritz Lang's film Rancho Notorious offered Lang himself the chance to direct a western in which he could develop a double focus, contrasting indigenous American against foreign influences. He was helped in this by Marlene Dietrich, who had begun her career as a symbol of modernization and consumer culture. Lang used Dietrich in the film to comment on aspects of modernity and, at the same time, to offer an allegorical reading of American nationalism of the McCarthy era. Through Dietrich's character, Altar, the boss of the Chuck-a-Luck ranch and the criminal world it embodied, Lang critiqued the emerging Cold War ideology of the man as patriarchal figure and bread-winner. At the same time, by moving Dietrich progressively towards the centre of the film, he produced an amalgam of the women's film and the Western genre that suggested the pointlessness of the male aggression the Western itself had traditionally embodied.
"Don't Be Frightened Dear ... This Is Hollywood": British Filmmakers in Early American Cinema
British visitors to Hollywood from the late 1920s onward have captured the attention of writers as importing a particular view of their home country in a succession of "British-Hollywood" movies. This article argues, however, that there was an initial wave of such trans-national pioneers - writer-directors Charles Brabin, Colin Campbell, Reginald Barker and Frank Lloyd - who not only did not demonstrate such "Britishness" in their work but instead made a crucial contribution to the development of classical Hollywood filmmaking. At times, they also offered a more nuanced view of social and historical complexities of the American past than many US-born directors.
Frank Capra and Elia Kazan, American outsiders
Frank Capra and Elia Kazan both came to the United States as children. From immigrant stock, each experienced the effects of being looked down upon as outsiders to Anglo culture. Based on the two men's autobiographical accounts, together with their films and biographical writings about them, this article examines the routes by which they sought entry into the dominant culture. This process would require the rejection, in each case, of part of his family heritage. It would lead to very different attitudes to ethnicity in their films: Kazan demonstrated interest in the subject, whereas Capra largely suppressed it. The article underlines other "covert dialogues" in the films directed by the two men. It shows that they most diverged over issues of sexuality and the later rediscovery of their ethnic roots.
Eldorado Revisited: Spanish Film-makers in Reagan’s America
In the early 1980s Spanish directors José Luis Borau and Bigas Luna produced two films - 0n the Line and Reborn respectively - that offered a trans-national perspective on American society of the early Reaganite 1980s. On the Line focussed on the issue of trafficking Mexican immigrants; Reborn dealt with tele-evangelism. Both narratives were presented as challenges to American unity as identified in the conservative social and cultural values of the time. Each film raised the issue of social hybridity and raised the question - to which both gave ambiguous answers - of whether different cultures can co-exist within a unified, monolithic American culture.
Transatlantic Refractions: Ambivalence and Cultural Hybridity in the Euro-American Road Movie
This article analyses a variety of ways in which the "road movie" has been reinterpreted by modern European directors (German Wim Wenders, Finn Aki Kaurismäki) or American director Jim Jarmusch with his pronounced European sensibilities. Despite the ubiquity of American popular culture in many of these movies, the films themselves are far from representing a simple "colonization" on the part of American culture. The ambivalent view of the United States adopted by these men has helped transform a typically "American" genre into a new demonstration of transatlantic cultural hybridity.
Other Issues
EJAS 15.2 Summer 2020 , Volume 15, Number 2
EJAS 15.1 2020 Special Issue: Truth or Post-Truth?, Volume 15, Number 1
EJAS 14.4 2019 Special Issue: Spectacle and Spectatorship in American Culture Volume 14, Number 4, Volume 14, Number 4
EJAS 14.3 2019 Special Issue: Harriet Prescott Spofford: The Home, the Nation, and the Wilderness, Volume 14, Number 3
EJAS 14.2 Summer 2019, Volume 14, Number 2
EJAS 14.1 2019 Special Issue: Race Matters: 1968 as Living History in the Black Freedom Struggle, Volume 14, Number 1
EJAS 13.4 2018 Special Issue: Envisioning Justice: Mediating the Question of Rights in American Visual Culture, Volume 13, Number 4
EJAS 13.3 2018 Special Issue: America to Poland: Cultural Transfers and Adaptations, Volume 13, Number 3
EJAS 13.2 Summer 2018, Volume 13, Number 2
EJAS 12.4 2017 Special Issue: Sound and Vision: Intermediality and American Music, Volume 12, Number 4
EJAS 12.3 2017 Special Issue: Cormac McCarthy Between Worlds , Volume 12, Number 3
EJAS 12.2 2017 Summer Special Issue: Popularizing Politics. The 2016 U.S. Presidential Election, Volume 12, Number 2
EJAS 12.2 Summer 2017 , Volume 12, Number 2
EJAS 12.1 Spring 2017 Special Issue: Eleanor Roosevelt and Diplomacy in the Public Interest, Volume 12, Number 1
EJAS 11.3 2016 Special Issue: Re-Queering The Nation: America's Queer Crisis , Volume 11, Number 3
EJAS 11.2 2016, Volume 11, Number 2
EJAS 11.1 2016 Special Issue: Intimate Frictions: History and Literature in the United States from the 19th to the 21st Century, Volume 11, Number 1
EJAS 10.3 2015 Special Issue: The City , Volume 10, Number 3
EJAS 10.2 Summer 2015 Special Issue: (Re)visioning America in the Graphic Novel, Volume 10, Number 2
EJAS 10.2 Summer 2015, Volume 10, Number 2
EJAS 10.1 Winter 2015 Special Issue: Women in the USA , Volume 10, Number 1
EJAS 9.3 2014 Special Issue: Transnational Approaches to North American Regionalism, Volume 9, Number 3
EJAS 9.2 Summer 2014, Volume 9, Number 2
EJAS 9.1 Spring 2014, Volume 9, Number 1
EJAS 8.1 2013, Volume 8, Number 1
EJAS 7.2 2012 Special Issue: Wars and New Beginnings in American History, Volume 7, Number 2
EJAS 7.1 Spring 2012, Volume 7, Number 1
EJAS 6.3 2011 Special Issue: Postfrontier Writing, Volume 6, Number 3
EJAS 6.2 2011 Special Issue: Oslo Conference, Volume 6, Number 11
EJAS 6.1 Spring 2011, Volume 6, Number 11
EJAS 5.3 Summer 2010, Volume 5, Number 3
EJAS 5.2 2010 Special Issue:The North-West Pacific in the 18th and 19th Centuries, Volume 5, Number 2
EJAS 5.1 Spring 2010, Number 5, Volume 1
EJAS 4.3 2009 Special Issue: Immigration, Volume 4, Number 3
EJAS 4.2 Autumn 2009, Volume 4, Number 2
EJAS 4.1 Spring 2009, Volume 4, Number 1
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