Founded In    1956
Published   quarterly
Language(s)   English, German
     

Fields of Interest

 

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

     
ISSN   0340-2827
     
Publisher   Winter
     
Editorial Board

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

Submission Guidelines and Editorial Policies

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

ALTTEXT

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, Vol. 59, No. 2

Introduction: Religion and the Marketplace


'Selling Soap and Salvation': Billy Graham's Consumer-Styled Revival Meetings and the Reshaping of German Evangelicalism in the 1950s


Opening a Market for Missions: American Evangelicals and the Re-Christianization of Europe, 1945-1985


In the mid-1940s the newly revitalized evangelicals in the United States fostered great plans to evangelize the world. They felt that their efforts were thwarted by two monopolistic arrangements. The first monopoly was the result of the official position of the more liberal World Council of Churches. Because this global organization had strong backing from the established churches in the United States and presented itself as the official spokesperson for global Protestantism, evangelicals felt locked out of prospective missionary opportunities in Europe and its colonies. In order to open these religious markets, the evangelical leadership launched an alternative organization, the World Evangelical Fellowship and simultaneously embarked on a re-Christianization campaign. The second monopoly became visible once American missionaries landed in Europe. They encountered restrictions caused by nation states and established churches. Their efforts to overcome both obstacles moved through five stages. In the late 1940s, they defined Europe as a mission field. In the next decade they launched a great number of mission programs. This resulted in the formation of an alternative evangelical subculture in Europe in the 1960s, which diversified in the 1970s, and fragmented in the 1980s, with the new media revolution in TV and satellite. Halfway through this process, in the 1960s, evangelicals had found viable ways to displace monopolistic exclusion by religious pluralism. This not only led to the incorporation of Europe in global evangelicalism, but also opened opportunities for new and surprising joint ventures with competitors.

Quaker Reform and Evangelization in the Eighteenth Century


When they first arrived in England's North American colonies, the Quakers enjoyed several competitive advantages over other Christian groups. Quaker Meetings were relatively inexpensive to run compared to more formal churches, and partly as a consequence Quakerism spread quickly. Things changed, however, in the mid-eighteenth century after Quaker reformers took control of the meetings' disciplinary structures. They condemned intermarriage between Quakers and non-Quakers, made greater demands on the Friends, and in general adopted a stance that in retrospect appear to have hurt Quakerism's ability to attract new adherents. Still the reformers continued to proselytize even as they expelled the wayward from their meetings. Violence on the Pennsylvania frontier after 1763 made it politically and practically difficult for the Quakers to evangelize through conventional means. In response the reformers redoubled their efforts to enforce severe disciplinary strictures against theatre-going, horse-racing, excessive drinking, participation in warfare and slaveholding, always believing that moral purity would make Quakerism more attractive. Examining several leaders of the Quaker reform effort including Abraham Farrington, John Woolman, Israel and John Pemberton, and Anthony Benezet, this essay argues that these men never intended to abandon evangelization in the mid-eighteenth century, nor did they want the Quakers to become an insular, minority sect.

Evangelicals and Catholics Together: How it Should Have Been in the Roaring Twenties Marketplace of


The presidential election of 1928 was merely the most glaring example of Protestant-Catholic tension in America's Roaring Twenties. Catholics understood that they could not fully embrace American freedom, and Protestants viewed them as un-American for holding such a view. In the late twentieth century, evangelical Protestants broke with their liberal brethren and joined Catholics in critiquing a culture that left virtually all moral questions to choice. The elements for this common ground between evangelicals and Catholics already existed in the twenties, but the marketplace of ideas made an alliance impossible. Only later did evangelicals begin to understand that the liberal conception of freedom is based on the autonomy of the individual. As a result, they joined Catholics and now live in tension with American freedom.

California ‘Zen’: Asian Spirituality Made in America


Focusing on the United States as a contact zone for transcultural flows, this article examines how Zen Buddhism was imported into the United States; remade and remarketed there; and then re-imported back into Japan. Beginning with the impact of D.T. Suzuki, the article presents important cultural brokers, institutions and popular discourses that spread the narratives and practices of both Zen Buddhism and 'Zen.' The examination illustrates the importance of the United States as a religious marketplace in itself and as a productive and creative refinery of and for ideas, lifestyles, and products -- in this case, Zen Buddhism.

Amerikastudien als “kooperatives Experiment”: 60 Jahre Deutsche Gesellschaft für Amerikastudien


Usable Pasts, Possible Futures: The German Association for American Studies at Sixty


Other Issues

Boasian Aesthetics: American Poetry, Visual Culture, and Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 63, No. 4
Amerikastudien / American Studies 2018, Vol. 63, No. 3
Amerikastudien / American Studies 2018: Digital Scholarship in American Studies, Vol. 63, No. 2
Amerikastudien / American Studies 2018, Vol. 63, No. 1
Amerikastudien / American Studies 2017: Marx and the United States, Vol. 62, No. 4
Amerikastudien / American Studies 2017, Vol. 62, No. 3
Amerikastudien / American Studies 2017: Poetry and Law, Vol. 62, No. 2
Amerikastudien / American Studies 2017, Vol. 62, No. 1
Amerikastudien / American Studies 2016: Environmental Imaginaries on the Move: Nature and Mobility in American Literature and Culture, Vol. 61, No.4
Amerikastudien / American Studies 2016, Vol. 61, No.3
Amerikastudien / American Studies 2016: Turkish-American Literature, Vol. 61, No.2
Amerikastudien / American Studies 2016, Vol. 61, No.1
Amerikastudien / American Studies 2015: Risk, Security: Approaches to Uncertainty in American Literature, Vol. 60, No. 4
Amerikastudien / American Studies 2015, Double Issue, Vol. 60, No. 2/3
Amerikastudien / American Studies 2015: Network Theory and American Studies, Vol. 60, No.1
Amerikastudien / American Studies 2014: South Africa and the United States in Transnational American Studies, Vol. 59, No. 4
Amerikastudien / American Studies 2014, Vol. 59, No. 3,
Amerikastudien / American Studies 2014, Vol. 59, No. 1
Amerikastudien / American Studies 2013: Iconographies of the Calamitous in American Visual Culture, Vol. 58, No. 4
Amerikastudien / American Studies 2013, Vol. 58, No. 3
Amerikastudien / American Studies 2013: Pragmatism's Promise, Vol. 58, No. 2
Amerika Studien / American Studies 2013, Vol. 58, No. 1
Amerikastudien / American Studies 2012: Tocqueville's Legacy: Towards a Cultural History of Recognition in American Studies , Vol. 57, No.4
Amerikastudien / American Studies 2012, 57.3
Amerikastudien / American Studies 2012 - Conceptions of Collectivity in Contemporary American Literature, Vol. 57, No. 2
Amerikastudien / American Studies 2012, Vol. 57, Vol. 1
Amerikastudien / American Studies 2011: American Comic Books and Graphic Novels, Vol. 56, No. 4
Amerikastudien / American Studies 2011, Vol. 56, No. 3
Amerikastudien / American Studies 2011, Vol. 56, No. 2
Amerikastudien / American Studies 2011, Vol. 56, No. 1
Amerikastudien / American Studies 2010: African American Literary Studies: New Texts, New Approaches, New Challenges , Vol. 55, No. 4
Amerikastudien / American Studies 2010: Trauma's Continuum -- September 11th Reconsidered, Vol. 55, No. 3
Amerikastudien / American Studies 2010, Vol. 55, No. 2
Amerikastudien / American Studies 2010: Poverty and the Culturalization of Class , Vol. 55, No. 1
Amerikastudien / American Studies 2009, Vol. 54, No. 4
Amerikastudien / American Studies 2009: American History/ies in Germany: Assessments, Transformations, Perspectives, Vol. 54, No. 3
Amerikastudien / American Studies 2009, Vol. 54, No. 2
Amerikastudien / American Studies 2009: Appropriating Vision(s): Visual Practices in American Women's Writing, Vol. 54, No. 1
Amerikastudien / American Studies 2008, Vol. 53, No. 4
Amerikastudien / American Studies 2008: Die Bush-Administration: Eine erste Bilanz, Vol. 53, No. 3
Amerikastudien / American Studies 2008, Vol. 53, No. 2
Amerikastudien / American Studies 2008: Inter-American Studies and Nineteenth-Century Literature, Vol. 53, No. 1
Amerikastudien / American Studies 2007, Vol. 52, No. 4
Amerikastudien / American Studies 2007 - Teaching American Studies in the Twenty-First Century, Vol. 52, No. 3
Amerikastudien / American Studies 2007, Vol. 52, No. 2
Amerikastudien / American Studies 2007 - Transatlantic Perspectives on American Visual Culture, Vol. 52, No. 1
Amerikastudien / American Studies 2006, Vol. 51, No. 4
Amerikastudien / American Studies 2006 - Asian American Studies in Europe, Vol. 51, No. 3
Amerikastudien / American Studies 2006, Vol. 51, No. 2
Amerikastudien / American Studies 2006 - Multilingualism and American Studies , Vol. 51, No. 1
Amerikastudien / American Studies 2005, Vol. 50, No. 4
Amerikastudien / American Studies 2005 - Early American Visual Culture, Vol. 50, No. 3
Amerikastudien / American Studies 2005 - American Studies at 50, Vol. 50, Nos. 1/2