Electoral Cultures

American Democracy and Choice. Edited by Georgiana Banita and Sascha Pöhlmann.

This volume establishes an interdisciplinary platform for a broad investigation of election mechanics and legacies. Historians, political scientists, literary scholars, and cultural theorists shed light on the narratives of election successes and failures. Beginning with the struggle for voting rights and extending to current representations of candidates and campaigns, 18 essays examine elections as complex cultural phenomena. Analyzing political processes and personalities from Lincoln to Obama, the chapters query assumptions about democracy in the United States. The resulting survey significantly alters how we perceive the paradoxical American ideals of equality, individualism, and authenticity. - Contents: Manfred Berg: From White Supremacy to the White House. Racial Disfranchisement, Party Politics, and Black Political Integration. - Volker Depkat: African Americans Voting. Visual Narratives of the Reconstruction Period. - Sascha Pöhlmann: Vote With a Bullet. The Aesthetics of Assassination in Stephen King's "The Dead Zone" and "11/22/63". - Georgiana Banita: Voting for American Energy. Elections, Oil, and US Culture. - Michael Hochgeschwender: The Rise and Decline of the American Catholic Vote. - Georg Schild: Lincoln the Campaigner. The Issue of Slavery in Election Campaigns of the 1850s. - Andrew Gross: Goldwater's Phoenix. Emerging from the Ashes of an Unsuccessful Presidential Campaign. - Gerd Hurm: A Crisis of Rhetoric? 2012 Campaign Speeches and the Dilemma of American Exceptionalism. - Diana Owen: The Political Culture of American Presidential Elections. A Media Perspective. - Andreas Etges: »A Great Box-Office Actor«. John F. Kennedy, Television, and the 1960 Presidential Election. - Reingard M. Nischik/Gabriele Metzler: Culture and Charisma. The 2008 Presidential Election. - Sabine Sielke: The Blackening of Barack Obama and the Browning of America, or How Race and Ethnicity Mattered in the 2012 Presidential Race. - Brendon O'Connor: Buying into American Dreams. US Presidential Elections, Exceptionalism, and Global Power. - Karsten Fitz: Crafting the Presidential Story. The Electoral Narrative in Recent Presidential Campaigns. - Sebastian M. Herrmann: »To Tell a Story to the American People«. Elections, Postmodernism, and Popular Narratology. - Greta Olson: Confessing Self, Confessing Nation. Life Narratives in the 2012 Presidential Election. - Sabrina Hüttner: »Stay in Control of Your Narrative, If You Let the Other Guys Define You«. Hockey Moms, Hawks, and Heroes on the (Political) Stage. - Antje Dallmann: Absences and Presences. Campaigns, Candidates, and Voters in American Film. 416 Seiten, gebunden (Publications of the Bavarian American Academy; Vol. 16/Universitätsverlag Winter 2015)