Title Moveable designs, liminal aesthetics, and cultural production in America since 1772 / Stefan L. Brandt

Published Cham : Palgrave Macmillan, 2022 ©2022

Click on the following:
Springer eBooks

Copies

Description 1 online resource (xx, 297 pages) Series Renewing the American Narrative Renewing the American narrative. Contents Introduction: Welcome to the Twilight Zone -- Part I. Theoretical Framework -- Moveable Designs: Liminal Aesthetics and Cultural Production -- Part II: Contexts -- TransAmerica: Cultural Hybridity and Transgendered Desire from the Colonial Era to Modernity -- The 'American in Chains': (Cons)Piracy and the Specter of North Africa in U.S. Barbary Captivity Narratives -- Open Doors, Closed Spaces: The Transatlantic Imaginary in American Urban Writing from the Post-Revolutionary Era to Modernism -- Part III: Case Studies -- White Bo(d)y in Wonderland: Cultural Alterity and Sexual Desire in Tod Browning's Where East Is East (1929) -- Cinematic Literature: Intermedial Aesthetics, Juvenile Rebellion, and Carnal Subjectivity in J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye -- Cinematic Literature: Intermedial Aesthetics, Juvenile Rebellion, and Carnal Subjectivity in J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye -- Animal Laughter: Carnivalesque Humor and the Aesthetics of Dehierarchization in Mister Ed -- Part IV. State of Affairs and Outlook -- Astronautic Subjectivity: Postmodern Culture and the Embodiment of Space in American Science Fiction -- Coda: Thinking 'America' in the Age of the Liminal Summary The book explores the liminal aesthetics of U.S. cultural and literary practice. Interrogating the notion of a presumptive unity of the American experience, Moveable Designs argues that inner conflict, divisiveness, and contradiction are integral to the nations cultural designs, themes, and motifs. The study suggests that U.S. literary and cultural practice is permeated by moveable designsflexible, yet constant features of hegemonial practice that constitute an integral element of American national self-fashioning. The naturally pervasive liminality of U.S. cultural production is the key to understanding the resilience of American culture. Moveable Designs looks at artistic expressions across various media types (literature, paintings, film, television), seeking to illuminate critical phases of U.S. American literature and culturefrom the revolutionary years to the movements of romanticism, realism, and modernism, up to the postmodern era. It combines a wide array of approaches, from cultural history and social anthropology to phenomenology. Connecting an analysis of literary and cultural texts with approaches from design theory, the book proposes a new way of understanding American culture as design. It is one of the unique characteristics of American culture that it createsor, rather, designspotency out of its inner conflicts and apparent disunities. That which we describe as an identifiable American identity is actually the product of highly vulnerable, alternating processes of dissolution and self-affirmation. Stefan L. Brandt is Professor of American Studies at the University of Graz and former President of the Austrian Association for American Studies. He was awarded professorial positions at Freie Universitat Berlin, University of Siegen, and University of Vienna and was affiliated with Universita Ca Foscari, Radboud Universiteit, University of Toronto, and Harvard University. Brandt specializes in American Literary and Cultural Studies, having published three monographs and (co- )edited eight anthologies, most recently Ecomasculinities. He is one of the founding members of the international journal AmLit American Literatures as well as the European research network Digital Studies Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index Notes Print version record Subject Arts and society -- United States -- History Aesthetics, American -- History Liminality in literature. Liminality in art Liminality in motion pictures. Liminality on television. Aesthetics, American Arts and society Civilization Liminality in literature Liminality in motion pictures Liminality on television SUBJECT United States -- Civilization -- History Subject United States Genre/Form History Form Electronic book ISBN 9783031136115 303113611X

  Permalink