The Health of the Nation

Edited by Meldan Tanrisal and Tanfer Emin Tunç. Assistant Editor Carsten Hummel.

19 interdisciplinary essays trace the provision of health care in the U.S. throughout its history and examine the nation's contemporary health issues in literature and culture. The volume is divided into two chapters: I. The History of American Medicine, Illness, and Health Care; II. Cultural and Literary Representations of Health in the American Context. - This edited volume, which simultaneously serves as the proceedings for the 2012 European Association for American Studies (EAAS) Conference held at Ege University in Izmir, and hosted by the American Studies Association of Turkey (ASAT), provides an overview of the conference theme, "The Health of the Nation", through an interdisciplinary lens. Comprised of nineteen essays written by emerging as well as established scholars from across Europe and the United States, this collection dissects the health of the (American) nation from numerous historical, cultural, and literary perspectives, and represents an important intervention in American Studies from a transnational angle. The volume places considerable emphasis on the provision of health care in the United States during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as on the literal and figurative health of the contemporary American nation. It also examines the health of the nation from a wide range of perspectives and approaches: from ecocriticism, to poetics, to graphic novels, to film. Contributions by Marc Priewe, Thomas Clark, Rachel Williams, Antje Dallmann, Manuel Herrero-Puertas, Carmen Birkle, Annessa Ann Babic, Hilary Sanders, Zoe Detsi-Diamanti, Claire Sorin, Elisabetta Marino, Philip Coleman, Erik Redling, Clara Juncker, Anita Wohlmann, Katherina Dodou, Carmen Rudea-Ramos, Heike Schaefer and Ahu Tanrisever. - Contents: Marc Priewe: Providential Bodies. Interpreting Epidemics in Early America. - Thomas Clark: "An Indissoluble Union between Moral, Political, and Physical Happiness". The Body Politic and the Citizen's Health in the Creation of the American Republic, 1774-1793. - Rachel Williams: Civil War Relief Agencies, the Union Soldier, and Healing the Union. - Antje Dallmann: A "Happiness, an Honor, to Do the Slightest Service". African Americans, Nurse Narratives, and the Frame of Authoritative Whiteness. - Manuel Herrero-Puertas: Prosthetic Affect. Nursing, Miscegenation, and the Reconstruction of the US Body Politic. - Carmen Birkle: Healing the Nation? Women Doctors in Nineteenth-Century America. - Annessa Ann Babic: Accessing Benefits, Benefiting the Veteran. Veteran's Benefits, Budget Cuts, and a Strained System. - Hilary Sanders: Immigrants and the Right to Health in New York City Since the 1990s. A Case of "Urban Citizenship". - Zoe Detsi-Diamanti: Staging the Health of the Nation. William Wells Brown's "The Escape; or, A Leap for Freedom" (1858) and the Disease of Slavery. - Claire Sorin: The Economy of Suffering. Body, Text and Pain in the Diaries of Louisa May Alcott. - Elisabetta Marino: Exploring Women's Mental Health in the Writings of Silas Weir Mitchell. - Philip Coleman: Minds Made by Madness? Enablements of Insanity in Modern American Poetry. - Erik Redling: "Madman's Drum". Insanity and the Dark Symbolic Other in Lynd Ward's Woodcut Novel. - Clara Juncker: Hybrid Bodies. Toni Morrison's Unnatural America. - Anita Wohlmann: Depression and Aging in Jonathan Franzen's "The Corrections". - Katherina Dodou: American Malady. 9/11, Disease, and the Experience of Terrorism in Don DeLillo's "Falling Man". - Carmen Rudea-Ramos: Polluted Land, Polluted Bodies. Mountaintop Removal in Ann Pancake's "Strange As This Weather Has Been". - Heike Schaefer: Daring to Care. Body Politics, Social Justice, and the Drama of Health Care in Contemporary American Theater. - Ahu Tanrisever: Neoliberalism, Body Politics, and Nostalgia. The Aging Hero in Contemporary US Action Films. XV,266 Seiten mit 11 Abb., gebunden (European Views of the United States; Vol. 6/Universitätsverlag Winter 2014)