The document provides a history of American Studies as an academic discipline. It discusses early influences on American Studies like Crevecoeur and Emerson in the 18th century. It then summarizes the foundations of American Studies in the works of Parrington, Miller, and Mathiessen in the 1920s-1940s. Next, it outlines the Myth and Symbol school founded by Henry Nash Smith which studied recurring American myths and symbols. Finally, it traces the growth of American Studies in Europe and Central Europe during the Cold War and after the fall of communism.
The document provides a history of American Studies as an academic discipline. It discusses early influences on American Studies like Crevecoeur and Emerson in the 18th century. It then summarizes the foundations of American Studies in the works of Parrington, Miller, and Mathiessen in the 1920s-1940s. Next, it outlines the Myth and Symbol school founded by Henry Nash Smith which studied recurring American myths and symbols. Finally, it traces the growth of American Studies in Europe and Central Europe during the Cold War and after the fall of communism.
The document provides a history of American Studies as an academic discipline. It discusses early influences on American Studies like Crevecoeur and Emerson in the 18th century. It then summarizes the foundations of American Studies in the works of Parrington, Miller, and Mathiessen in the 1920s-1940s. Next, it outlines the Myth and Symbol school founded by Henry Nash Smith which studied recurring American myths and symbols. Finally, it traces the growth of American Studies in Europe and Central Europe during the Cold War and after the fall of communism.
The document provides a history of American Studies as an academic discipline. It discusses early influences on American Studies like Crevecoeur and Emerson in the 18th century. It then summarizes the foundations of American Studies in the works of Parrington, Miller, and Mathiessen in the 1920s-1940s. Next, it outlines the Myth and Symbol school founded by Henry Nash Smith which studied recurring American myths and symbols. Finally, it traces the growth of American Studies in Europe and Central Europe during the Cold War and after the fall of communism.
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AMERICAN STUDIES
American Studies before American Studies
• Hector St. Jean de Crèvecoeur, „What Is An American,” 1781 „What then is the American, this new man? […] He is an American, who leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced, the new government he obeys, and the new rank he holds. He becomes an American by being received in the broad lap of our great Alma Mater. Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labours and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world. Americans are the western pilgrims, who are carrying along with them that great mass of arts, sciences, vigour, and industry which began long since in the east; they will finish the great circle. The Americans were once scattered all over Europe; here they are incorporated into one of the finest systems of population which has ever appeared, and which will hereafter become distinct by the power of the different climates they inhabit. The American ought therefore to love this country much better than that wherein either he or his forefathers were born. […] The American is a new man, who acts upon new principles; he must therefore entertain new ideas, and form new opinions. […] This is an American.” AMERICAN STUDIES American Studies before American Studies • Ralph Waldo Emerson, „The American Scholar,” 1836 „We have listened too long to the courtly muses of Europe. The spirit of the American freeman is already suspected to be timid, imitative, tame. Public and private avarice make the air we breathe thick and fat. The scholar is decent, indolent, complaisant. See already the tragic consequence. The mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself. There is no work for any but the decorous and the complaisant. […] What is the remedy? […] We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds. The study of letters shall be no longer a name for pity, for doubt, and for sensual indulgence. The dread of man and the love of man shall be a wall of defence and a wreath of joy around all. A nation of men will for the first time exist, because each believes himself inspired by the Divine Soul which also inspires all men.” AMERICAN STUDIES The Beginnings of American Studies • Founders of American Studies: • Vernon Louis Parrington (1878–1929) • Main Currents in American Thought (1927) • Perry G. Miller (1905–1963) • The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (1939) • The New England Mind: From Colony to Province (1953) • Life of the Mind in America: From Revolution to the Civil War (1965) • F. O. Mathiessen (1902–1950) • American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman (1941) AMERICAN STUDIES The Beginnings of American Studies • Vernon Louis Parrington, Main Currents in American Thought. 1927. • Pulitzer Prize for History, 1928 • 3 vol. history of American letters from colonial times • dominated literary and cultural criticism from 1927 to the 1950s • duality of good vs. evil in American history • historical irony – results contrary to the original aims • combines the methodologies of literary criticism and historical research AMERICAN STUDIES The Beginnings of American Studies • Vernon Louis Parrington, Main Currents in American Thought. 1927. „I have undertaken to give some account of the genesis and development in American letters of certain germinal ideas that have come to be reckoned traditionally American – how they came into being here, how they were opposed, and what influence they have exerted in determining the form and scope of our characteristic ideals and institutions. In pursuing such a task, I have chosen to follow the broad path of our political, economic, and social development, rather than the narrower belletristic.” AMERICAN STUDIES The Myth and Symbol School • Central theoreticians: • Henry Nash Smith (1906–1986) • Leo Marx (1919–) • John William Ward (1922–1985) • Main tenets: • there are recurring myths, motifs and symbols shared by Americans • it is possible to see these in operation in American culture • these give the essence of Americanness AMERICAN STUDIES The Beginnings of American Studies
• Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land. The American West as Symbol
and Myth. 1950. • the book gave the name and is the founding text of the Myth and Symbol school • the collective perception of the American West in the 19th century • used dime novels and other texts of popular culture as source material AMERICAN STUDIES The Beginnings of American Studies
• Leo Marx, The Machine in the Garden. Technology and the
Pastoral Ideal in America. 1964. „My purpose is to describe and evaluate the uses of the pastoral ideal in the interpretation of American experience. I shall be tracing its adaptation to the conditions of life in the New World, its emergence as a distinctively American theory of society, and its subsequent transformation under the impact of industrialism.” AMERICAN STUDIES New American Studies • Incorporating Marxist and neo-Marxist theories • Against American exceptionalism • Inter-national, trans-national, post-national • Interdisciplinary (although it has always been) • Post-colonial and ethnic approaches • Gender/queer studies approaches • Critical reinterpretation of the results of the Myth and Symbol school AMERICAN STUDIES American Studies in Europe • Started after WW II, and particularly during the Cold War • US government promoted and/or funded • the establishment of departments, programs, centers, libraries and chairs of American Studies
„[T]he American Studies movement in Europe […] did not result
in a transplantation of American values. Instead, European scholars used American Studies, for their own purposes, reinterpreting American history and literature in terms that were relevant to European problems.” (Pells 1997: 95) AMERICAN STUDIES American Studies in Europe • Major American Studies Centers in Europe: • John F. Kennedy Institute, Berlin • Heidelberg Center for American Studies • Zentrum für Nordamerikaforschung, Frankfurt • Bavarian America-Academy • Eccles Centre for American Studies in the British Library • Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford • Institute for the Study of the Americas, School of Advanced Studies, University of London AMERICAN STUDIES American Studies in Central Europe • Due to the political climate, and the official ideology of governments under the influence of the Soviet Union, studying America was for decades mostly impossible • The first of the firsts: László Országh, CBE (1907–1984) • worked at the University of Debrecen, Hungary • started the first university course in American Studies • published the first university textbook in 1972, entitled Bevezetés az amerikanisztikába (Introduction to American Studies) „American Studies concerns itself with the culture of the USA, examines the formation of this culture, describes and analyzes the contemporary situation of this culture, taking in view the interrelationship of various fields of American cultural life.” (Országh 1972: 5) AMERICAN STUDIES American Studies in Central Europe • 1985: The Biannual Conference of the European Association for American Studies is held in Budapest • 1985, University of Szeged, Hungary • The first university program is started in American Studies • Founders: • Bálint Rozsnyai (1944–) • Sarolta Kretzoi-Valkay „Our job in American Studies is not the identification with the Americans, but rather to investigate, to reconstruct the ways they read, understand, interpret their literature and culture, to examine the interpretive strategies of that community, to find out what meanings the Americans make of their own literature/culture, and see those ways of understanding and those meanings in their historicity.” (Rozsnyai 1986: 204) AMERICAN STUDIES American Studies in Czechoslovakia • Modern American writers’ works appeared usually first in the literary journal Světová literatura that existed from the mid-50s to the mid-90s, originally edited by Josef Škvorecký • The Jazz Section of the Czech Musician’s Union (1971–1984) • besides dealing with jazz they published books and other printed materials mostly in samizdat dealing with jazz, rock, popular culture, literature and art • an anthology of translated American poetry had also been in the making, but was confiscated by the police, and got published only after the revolution • Škvorecký’s broadcasts on Voice of America • Books published abroad and smuggled into the country AMERICAN STUDIES American Studies in Czechoslovakia and After • 1989: Czech and Slovak Association for American Studies • Key figures: • Josef Jařab (1937–), professor at Palacký University, Olomouc, constantly published about American literature both abroad and in the country since the 1960s • Současný americký román : několik vývojových kapitol z období posledních dvou desetiletí (1976) • Antologie americké literatury (1985), with Eva Masnerová and Jaroslav Nenadál • Masky a tváře černé Ameriky (1985) • Dítě na skleníku: výbor ze současné americké poezie (1989), with Jaroslav Kořán AMERICAN STUDIES American Studies in Czechoslovakia and After • Key figures: • Jaroslav Peprník (1927–), professor at Palacký University • Slovník amerikanismů (1982) • Anglo-americké reálie v české literatuře (1988)
• Martin Hilský (1943–), professor at Charles University,
Prague • Angloamerická „nová kritika” (1976) • Od Poea k postmodernismu: proměny americké prózy (1992), with Jan Zelenka