'E pluribus unum' or 'E pluribus plura'?

Unity and Diversity in American Culture. Edited by Hans-Jürgen Grabbe, David Mauk and Ole Moen. Assistant Editors Carsten Hummel and Julia Nitz.

The 18 essays collected in this volume are derived from the 2008 European Association for American Studies (EAAS) biennial conference in Oslo. They explore the many-layered pluralism of American life by addressing questions like the following: How does the United States negotiate the inner tensions that, because of its constitutive diversity, might threaten its unity? How do traditions, modes of consensus building, the feeling of a wished-for common good counteract potential strife and the tensions of particular interests and particular groups? Could it be that there are indeed several Americas? Is being an American necessarily being in many ways double? Can the politically unifying, centripetal power of the State, hidden under the neutral 'unum', accommodate the centrifugal forces that might generate a societal and cultural 'plura' out of the hallowed political and territorial 'pluribus'? Do diversities imply, for their survival and development, a 'middle ground', a 'mainstream', a 'tradition' - some kind of American norm? Contributions by Gert Buelens, Eliane Elmaleh, Winfried Fluck, Bernd Herzogenrath, Josef Jarab, Anne Ollivier-Mellois, Sabine Sielke, Susan Winnett, Marcel Arbeit, Hans Bak, Susan Castillo, Jude Davies, Jan Nordby Gretlund, Elisabetta Marino, Dana Mihailescu, Sophie Vallas, George Blaustein, and Laurence Gervais-Linon. XIII,306 Seiten mit 12 Abb., gebunden (European Views of the United States; Vol. 3/Universitätsverlag Winter 2011)