Founded In    2006
Published   3/year
Language(s)   English
     

Fields of Interest

 

literature, culture, the arts and "American Studies," history, social sciences, and international relations

     
ISSN   1991-9336
     
Affiliated Organization   European Association for American Studies
     
Editorial Board

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)

Submission Guidelines and Editorial Policies

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.

     
Mailing Address
     

Marek Paryż (m.a.paryz@uw.edu.pl)
Jenel Virden (J.Virden@hull.ac.uk)
Cara Rodway (cara.rodway@bl.uk).

Contact person responsible for updating content for ASA:
Roxana Oltean (roxana.oltean@upcmail.ro)

European Journal of American Studies

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.

 

» Visit Journal Web Site

EJAS 7.1 Spring 2012, Volume 7, Number 1

A Stiff Man-Child Walking: Derrida's Economy of Secrecy and Faulkner's "Barn Burning"


Working from Jacques Derrida's contentions about secrecy and authorial responsibility, and paying brief but specific attention to Charles Baudelaire's "La fausse monnaie" (1869), as suggested by Derridean concerns over capitalist economics, this article studies the manner in which the inviolable and conditional secrets of William Faulkner's "Barn Burning" (1938) reveal the poststructural tendencies avant la lettre of this leading American modernist. While Faulkner scholars have focused on the ambivalent language and metaphors deployed in this short story, they have not formerly traced the manner in which "Barn Burning" incites a sense of deconstructive criticism, and have thereby failed to acknowledge Faulkner's attendant authorial irresponsibility. This article redresses this critical imbalance.

Foundation Networks and American Hegemony


The major American foundations constructed and sustained the rich texture of cooperative social, intellectual and political relations between key actors and institutions supportive of specific modes of thought that promoted US hegemony. Foundations also fostered and developed the attractive power-knowledge networks that not only radiated intellectual influence but also attracted some of the most creative minds. Finally, liberal internationalist foundations fostered globalism even when the American state was 'isolationist', and when US influence abroad unwelcome. Their significance in American hegemony building lay in their sustained, long-term cooperative relationship with the American state through which they helped build national, international and global institutions and networks. The latter process evidences the most significant impact of US foundations - the building of the domestic and international infrastructure for liberal internationalism which has transformed into a kind of "social neoliberalism". Theoretical conclusions follow from these claims: the sustained and deep cooperation between the state and foundations suggests that we must revise our views of "how power works" in the United States and therefore influences its foreign relations. Therefore, the article shows that elite networks, consisting of state officials and private citizens are powerful means by which foreign policy shifts may be prepared, elite and mass opinion primed and mobilised, new consensus built, 'old' forces marginalised, and US hegemony constructed.

« Writing into a Void » : Charles Bukowski and the Little Magazines


The little magazines were instrumental in turning Charles Bukowski into a hugely popular figure in American letters and, yet, their significance in Bukowski's early career has been largely overlooked. For Bukowski, the little magazines were the ideal outlet for his prolific output, and their editors, who saw him as a spiritual leader, championed his work so vehemently that he eventually became the most published author of the 1960s--his indisputable rise to fame in the alternative literary scene is displayed in the graphs provided. Bukowski's position was ambiguous: he needed those periodicals to satisfy his hunger for exposure and recognition and, yet, he attacked their editors for their allegedly unskillful productions, especially in the case of the mimeographs. This previously uncharted territory is illustrated by means of a critical and historical journey through the main magazines of the period, stressing how zealously they published Bukowski's work and helped him become an international icon.

"I'm Just a Cowboy": Transnational Identities of the Borderlands in Tommy Lee Jones' The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada.


As a problematic in-between space of racial antagonisms, liminal identities, and violence, the borderlands of the American Southwest prove fertile grounds for scrutinising Anglo-America's national frontier mythology and, therefore, its own sense of history and cultural identity. This article explores the extent to which the "contemporary" border Western, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005),challenges Hollywood's cinematic hegemony in this regard. It argues that with Three Burials comes a sophisticated challenge to the cinema's characteristic and mythic forms and to the racial assumptions that have traditionally bedevilled relations between Mexico and the USA. Transnational themes bring these issues to the fore and modify the terms in which they are represented and, therefore, imagined.

Robert Adams in Transatlantic Review: Archiving the Barbary Captive and Traveller


This paper discusses the reception of a Barbary Coast Captivity Narrative by Robert Adams, published in 1816. The text has often been mentioned in studies of the Barbary Coast narrative but not as a document of a transatlantic discourse about African exploration, ethnography, and colonial development. The creation of Adams text and the creation of the Adams archive will be the subject of the paper as seen by contemporary sources on both sides of the Atlantic. The creation of the Adams narration in the city of London is played off again in the reception of the Adams narrative in Boston. Each set of textual "editors" and reviewers attempt to use the text to intervene in a debate about Timbuctoo, the future of African exploration, and the ways a literary "curiosity" is placed within the aesthetic and ideological needs of emerging discourses of African exploration and racial representation in the first decades of the 19th century on both sides of the Atlantic.

A Lost Opportunity : The Flawed Implementation of Assertive Multilateralism (1991-1993)


Bill Clinton did not seek the presidency to initiate an activist foreign policy in the aftermath of the Cold War, but instead to champion domestic affairs and economic renewal. However, his foreign policy advisers entered office with their own, often differing, interpretations of the United States' position in the post-Cold War era. After the unity demonstrated by the Gulf War, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations advocated a tactic of Assertive Multilateralism with which to provide international leadership. This acknowledged President George H.W. Bush's approach to foreign policy and was viewed as a way to reduce costs, casualties and American exposure in overseas deployments. Despite these hopes, Assertive Multilateralism did not prevail - why was this the case? Twenty years on, this paper analyses the concept of Assertive Multilateralism, and specifically, the challenges posed to its continued implementation by the Somali mission. The paper finds that unrealistic mission expectations, the prioritizing of domestic agendas, and an inability to control the mission narrative all contributed to cause a fundamental shift in the United States' implementation of foreign policy and raised doubts over its continued commitment to the United Nations. Ultimately, the events in Somalia ensured that foreign policy become a tool with which to attack an administration focused on domestic affairs and unwilling to expend political capital on overseas operations.

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 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 5.4 2010 Special Issue: Film, Volume 5, Number 4
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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