American Lives

Edited by Alfred Hornung.

30 contributions (among many others by Sidonie Smith and Siri Hustvedt), including a Panel discussion on Life Sciences and Life Writing, are structured by five chapters: I. Keynote Lectures; II. History and American Lives; III. Politics and American Lives; IV. Media and American Lives; V. Life Writing and Life Science. This volume focuses on religious, historical, literary, cultural and political models, developed in America, for the realization and representation of American lives. These articles demonstrate the importance of different forms of life writing for the disciplines of American Studies. Experts in the field such as literary and cultural critics Sidonie Smith, Craig Howes, Birgit Däwes, historian Thomas Bender, and writer critic Siri Hustvedt among others cover the wide range of the presentation and performance of selves in colonial literature, nature writing, immigrant and campaign auto/biographies, religion, film, TV series, rap music, graphic presentations, comics, and sports. - Table of Contents: Alfred Hornung: American Lives. Preface. -- I. Keynote Lectures: Sidonie Smith: "America's Exhibit A". Hillary Rodham Clinton's »Living History« and the Genres of Authenticity. - Thomas Bender: Intellectual Biography and the Matrix of Creativity. - Craig Howes: Slow Lives. Micro-Traditions in American and Hawaiian Biography and Autobiography. - Birgit Däwes: "What happens when the vanishing race doesn't vanish?" Scenes of Native North American Historio/Biography. - Siri Hustvedt: Borderlands. First, Second, and Third Person Adventures in Crossing Disciplines. -- II. History and American Lives: Patrick Erben: "Ship-Mate-Ship": Commemorating the Lives of Friends in Francis Daniel Pastorius's Anniversary Poems. - Carsten Junker: Narrating Family Lives. Religion and Enslavement in Samuel West's "Memoirs" (1807). - Kirsten Twelbeck: Reconstructing Race Relations. Esther Hill Hawks' Diary and her Life Among the Freedmen. - Hannah Spahn: Eliza Potter's "barberous profession". Self, Race, and Nation in "A Hairdresser's Experience in High Life". - Kathleen Loock: Laughing at the Greenhorn. Humor in Immigrant Autobiographies. -- III. Politics and American Lives: Markus F. Faltermeier: Self, Other, and Catholicism in Dorothy Day's "The Long Loneliness" (1952). Narrative Constructions of a Personalist Identity. - Kathy-Ann Tan: "Creating Dangerously". Writing, Exile and Diaspora in Edwidge Danticat's and Dany Laferriere's Haitian Memoirs. - Cedric Essi: Transnational Affiliations in the Mixed Race Memoir. Barack Obama's "Dreams from My Father". - Christina Gerken: The DREAMers. Narratives of Deservingness in Pro-Immigrant Activism in the Twenty-First Century. - Jochen Ecke: Grant Morrison's 'Fiction Suits'. Comics Autobiography as Genre Fiction/Genre Fiction as Comics Autobiography. - Lukas Etter: On the Drawing Board. The Many Autobiographical "Wedges" of Alison Bechdel. - Eva Boesenberg: Family Business. Death in Alison Bechdel's "Fun Home". -- IV. Media and American Lives: Nassim Winnie Balestrini: Photography as Online Life Writing. Miranda July's and Harrell Fletcher's "Learning to Love You More" (2002-09). - Birgit M. Bauridl: "Deep-Mapping" the Diversity of New York Lives. The "City of Memory" Digital Project. - Katja Kanzler: Adaptation and Self-Expression in "Julie/Julia". - Dustin Breitenwischer: "Life and Times of..." Promethean (Counter-)Narratives and the Poetic Function of Aesthetic Experience in Rap. - Christoph Ribbat: Staring at (the Man Formerly Known as) Lew Alcindor. The Cultural Politics of a Basketball Life. - Frank Mehring: Remediating Multi-Racial Memories: Audre Lorde's Berlin Years and the Genealogy of Afro-German Life Writing. - Julia Faisst: Rebuilding the Neighborhood. Race, Property, and Urban Renewal Projects in "Tremé". -- V. Life Writing and Life Science: Birgit Capelle: A Transcultural Consideration of "Place". Thoreau's Walden Pond and Kitarô Nishida's "basho". - Dirk Vanderbeke: The Mental Detective. Jonathan Lethem's "Motherless Brooklyn". - Henrike Lehnguth: The Killer Inside. First-Person Narration and the Reader/Viewer in Serial Killer Narratives. - Martin Holtz: The Pathological Protagonist in Recent Films by Martin Scorsese. - Jan D. Kucharzewski: Survival of the Sickest? Cognitive Disorders and the Question of Agency in Contemporary American Fiction. -- Mita Banerjee, Ralf Dahm, Birgit Däwes, Craig Howes, Siri Hustvedt, Norbert W. Paul, and Sidonie Smith with Julia Watson: Panel on Life Sciences and Life Writing. XVII,563 Seiten mit 25 Abb., gebunden (American Studies; Vol. 234/Universitätsverlag Winter 2013)