by Jon Lackman | 23 October 2007 | Americas
The latest issue (52: 1) of Amerikastudien / American Studies is devoted to “Transatlantic Perspectives on American Visual Culture.” In their introduction, editors Astrid Böger and Christof Decker write that because American Studies is a relatively new discipline, that may have helped it become
a particularly hospitable place for emerging and hitherto marginalized research agendas. Feminism, queer studies, the study of minority cultures, or popular culture often had their beginnings in the context of American studies which they subsequently left to form their own disciplinary fields, leaving behind the much lamented sense of fragmentation and disciplinary dissolution. But despite this relative openness to new research agendas, the comprehensive and theoretically complex exploration of American visual culture never managed to create its own subcategory within American studies …
As the rapid dissemination of images depicting the burning twin towers or the torture victims at Abu Ghraib demonstrates, the transcultural analysis of iconographies that are related to, or connected with, U.S.-American culture in complex and often confusing ways, is actually one of the most pressing issues … After all, the mediated and globalized public sphere is the crucial arena feeding the imaginary construction of national identities, and a highly contested space for gaining political support and legitimacy for a nation’s actions …
[C]hoosing a comparatist perspective implies comparing and contrasting certain identifiable and unique features. We agree that the concept of a coherent national culture is highly questionable, yet some notion of cultural specificity must be retained in order to make meaningful comparisons. Furthermore … Who decides which cultural objects are representative of a particular culture or subculture and thus worthy of critical attention?
Essays include “The Düsseldorf Academy of Art, Emanuel Leutze, and German-American Transatlantic Exchange in the Mid-Nineteenth Century,” by Karsten Fitz, and “The Index and Its Vicissitudes: Hyperrealism from Richard Estes to Andreas Gursky,” by Johannes Völz.
