Ambivalent Americanizations

Popular and Consumer Culture in Central and Eastern Europe. Edited by Sebastian M. Herrmann, Katja Kanzler, Anne Koenen, Zoë A. Kusmierz and Leonard Schmieding.

This volume explores the 'Americanization' of Central and Eastern Europe during and after the Cold War. It seeks to revisit and expand this critical concept by investigating previously overlooked perspectives and new comparative constellations. The Iron Curtain has frequently been seen as a tightly sealed border between East and West. However, as the contributions to this collection illustrate, it proved remarkably permeable for American goods and lifestyles which generated and gratified a range of often ambivalent desires and fantasies. This book attends to the ensuing 'messiness' of cultural transfer and mixing, as well as to the role 'America' has played in these processes. In twelve case studies, a broad spectrum of disciplinary angles and diverse geo-biographical horizons come together to examine the elusive dynamics of ambivalent Americanizations in areas such as music, television, and material culture. - Contents: Reinhold Wagnleitner: Jazz. The Classical Music of Globalization. - Thomas Kolitsch: The Monotony of the Yeah, Yeah, Yeah. Official Ways of Dealing with Western Popular Music in the GDR. - Leonard Schmieding: Of Windmills, Headspins, and Powermoves. Hiphop in the GDR 1983-1989. - Katja Kanzler: Kansas, Oz, and the Magic Land. A Wizard's Travels Through the Iron Curtain. - Nevena Dakovic: City Foxes / East-West Soap (Belgrade / New York). - Nadine Swibenko: »Because I'm an 'Ossi' ...« Asserting Identity by Consuming East German Goods. - Ewa Grzeszczyk: American Models of Consumption and their Presence in Poland. - Sebastian M. Herrmann: A Plastic Modernity? - Anne Koenen: Superior Taste. Mail Order in the GDR. - Magdalena Ziólek: American Smiles on Polish Faces. American Culture in the Discourse of Globalization from the Perspective of the Polish Young Generation. - Malgorzata Gajda-Laszewska: Why We Loved What They Told Us to Hate. Miscalculations of the Anti-American Propaganda in the Polish Posters of the Stalinist Period. - Zoë A. Kusmierz: »The glitter of your kitchen pans«. The Kitchen, Home Appliances, and Politics at the American National Exhibition in Moscow, 1959. - 281 Seiten mit 21 Abb., gebunden (American Studies - A Monograph Series; Vol. 165/Universitätsverlag Winter 2008)