Böcker i American Culture-serien

How had it ever happened here? This book covers this question to explore Thomas Pynchon's novels in the light of constructivist theory.

Following Koselleck's history of concepts, Americanness is approached as a semantic field at the intersection of several antebellum concepts (nation, representation, sympathy, race, and womanhood, among others), in the various stages of their respective histories. The book is also a period study of major American writers of the antebellum era.

This study explores the cultural trajectory of Japanese American internment, both during and after World War II. It also provides the most exhaustive biographical outline of John Okada to date and refutes the assumption that his novel No-No Boy was all but shunned when first published. A close reading positions the book within world literature.

The study situates Norman Mailer in the tradition of Modernism, showing how he imbibed the worldview of a coterie of male modernist writers who imposed their notions of art and literature and politics on the movement. Mailer followed a specific ideological path, moving from a rejection of liberalism, technocracy and mass culture to a Gnostic vision.

The book analyzes debates about civil-military relationships in post-9/11 wars, observing how civic activists promote Indigenous warrior traditions as role models for US society. It reads non-Native military life writing and interactions with civilians as "ceremonial storytelling" that negotiates war experience and collective identity.

The book traces the reverberations of Ronald Reagan's ideology in selected Hollywood blockbuster movies. The analysis includes filmic content as well as production and distribution. It is concluded that political metaphors and an economic setting inherited from the 1980s continue to shape the style and content of Hollywood blockbuster filmmaking.

Alan Lomax (1915-2002) is arguably the most popular and influential American folk song collector of the 20th century. Pursuing a mission of both preserving and popularizing folk music, Lomax moved between political activism, the scholarly world, and the world of popular culture. Based largely on primary material, the book shows how Lomax's diverse activities made him an authority in the field of folk music and how he used this power to advocate the cultures of perceived marginalized Americans - whom he located primarily in the American South. In this approach, however, folk music became an abstract idea onto which notions oscillating between hope and disillusionment, fear and perspective were projected. The author argues that Lomax's role as a cultural mediator, with a politically motivated approach, helped him to decisively shape the perception and reception of what came to be known as American folk music, from the mid 1930s to the late 1960s.