AMERICAN STUDIES

American Studies before American Studies

• Hector St. Jean de Crèvecoeur, „What Is An American,” 1781
„What then is the American, this new man? […] He is an American, who
leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new
ones from the new mode of life he has embraced, the new government he
obeys, and the new rank he holds. He becomes an American by being
received in the broad lap of our great Alma Mater. Here individuals of all
nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labours and posterity
will one day cause great changes in the world. Americans are the western
pilgrims, who are carrying along with them that great mass of arts,
sciences, vigour, and industry which began long since in the east; they will
finish the great circle. The Americans were once scattered all over
Europe; here they are incorporated into one of the finest systems of
population which has ever appeared, and which will hereafter become
distinct by the power of the different climates they inhabit. The American
ought therefore to love this country much better than that wherein either
he or his forefathers were born. […] The American is a new man, who
acts upon new principles; he must therefore entertain new ideas, and
form new opinions. […] This is an American.”
 AMERICAN STUDIES
American Studies before American Studies
• Ralph Waldo Emerson, „The American Scholar,” 1836
„We have listened too long to the courtly muses of Europe. The
spirit of the American freeman is already suspected to be
timid, imitative, tame. Public and private avarice make the air
we breathe thick and fat. The scholar is decent, indolent,
complaisant. See already the tragic consequence. The mind of
this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself.
There is no work for any but the decorous and the complaisant.
[…] What is the remedy? […] We will walk on our own feet;
we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own
minds. The study of letters shall be no longer a name for pity,
for doubt, and for sensual indulgence. The dread of man and
the love of man shall be a wall of defence and a wreath of joy
around all. A nation of men will for the first time exist, because
each believes himself inspired by the Divine Soul which also
inspires all men.”
 AMERICAN STUDIES
The Beginnings of American Studies
• Founders of American Studies:
• Vernon Louis Parrington (1878–1929)
• Main Currents in American Thought (1927)
• Perry G. Miller (1905–1963)
• The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (1939)
• The New England Mind: From Colony to Province (1953)
• Life of the Mind in America: From Revolution to the Civil
War (1965)
• F. O. Mathiessen (1902–1950)
• American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of
Emerson and Whitman (1941)
 AMERICAN STUDIES
The Beginnings of American Studies
• Vernon Louis Parrington, Main Currents in American Thought.
1927.
• Pulitzer Prize for History, 1928
• 3 vol. history of American letters from colonial times
• dominated literary and cultural criticism from 1927 to the
1950s
• duality of good vs. evil in American history
• historical irony – results contrary to the original aims
• combines the methodologies of literary criticism and
historical research
 AMERICAN STUDIES
The Beginnings of American Studies
• Vernon Louis Parrington, Main Currents in American Thought.
1927.
„I have undertaken to give some account of the genesis and
development in American letters of certain germinal ideas
that have come to be reckoned traditionally American – how
they came into being here, how they were opposed, and what
influence they have exerted in determining the form and scope
of our characteristic ideals and institutions. In pursuing such
a task, I have chosen to follow the broad path of our political,
economic, and social development, rather than the narrower
belletristic.”
 AMERICAN STUDIES
The Myth and Symbol School
• Central theoreticians:
• Henry Nash Smith (1906–1986)
• Leo Marx (1919–)
• John William Ward (1922–1985)
• Main tenets:
• there are recurring myths, motifs and symbols shared by
Americans
• it is possible to see these in operation in American culture
• these give the essence of Americanness
 AMERICAN STUDIES
The Beginnings of American Studies

• Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land. The American West as Symbol

and Myth. 1950.
• the book gave the name and is the founding text of the Myth
and Symbol school
• the collective perception of the American West in the 19th
century
• used dime novels and other texts of popular culture as source
material
 AMERICAN STUDIES
The Beginnings of American Studies

• Leo Marx, The Machine in the Garden. Technology and the

Pastoral Ideal in America. 1964.
„My purpose is to describe and evaluate the uses of the
pastoral ideal in the interpretation of American experience. I
shall be tracing its adaptation to the conditions of life in the
New World, its emergence as a distinctively American theory
of society, and its subsequent transformation under the impact
of industrialism.”
 AMERICAN STUDIES
New American Studies
• Incorporating Marxist and neo-Marxist theories
• Against American exceptionalism
• Inter-national, trans-national, post-national
• Interdisciplinary (although it has always been)
• Post-colonial and ethnic approaches
• Gender/queer studies approaches
• Critical reinterpretation of the results of the Myth and Symbol
school
 AMERICAN STUDIES
American Studies in Europe
• Started after WW II, and particularly during the Cold War
• US government promoted and/or funded
• the establishment of departments, programs, centers,
libraries and chairs of American Studies

„[T]he American Studies movement in Europe […] did not result

in a transplantation of American values. Instead, European
scholars used American Studies, for their own purposes,
reinterpreting American history and literature in terms that were
relevant to European problems.” (Pells 1997: 95)
 AMERICAN STUDIES
American Studies in Europe
• Major American Studies Centers in Europe:
• John F. Kennedy Institute, Berlin
• Heidelberg Center for American Studies
• Zentrum für Nordamerikaforschung, Frankfurt
• Bavarian America-Academy
• Eccles Centre for American Studies in the British
Library
• Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford
• Institute for the Study of the Americas, School of
Advanced Studies, University of London
 AMERICAN STUDIES
American Studies in Central Europe
• Due to the political climate, and the official ideology of
governments under the influence of the Soviet Union, studying
America was for decades mostly impossible
• The first of the firsts: László Országh, CBE (1907–1984)
• worked at the University of Debrecen, Hungary
• started the first university course in American Studies
• published the first university textbook in 1972, entitled
Bevezetés az amerikanisztikába (Introduction to American
Studies)
„American Studies concerns itself with the culture of the USA, examines the
formation of this culture, describes and analyzes the contemporary situation of
this culture, taking in view the interrelationship of various fields of American
cultural life.” (Országh 1972: 5)
 AMERICAN STUDIES
American Studies in Central Europe
• 1985: The Biannual Conference of the European Association for
American Studies is held in Budapest
• 1985, University of Szeged, Hungary
• The first university program is started in American Studies
• Founders:
• Bálint Rozsnyai (1944–)
• Sarolta Kretzoi-Valkay
„Our job in American Studies is not the identification with the Americans, but
rather to investigate, to reconstruct the ways they read, understand, interpret their
literature and culture, to examine the interpretive strategies of that community, to
find out what meanings the Americans make of their own literature/culture, and
see those ways of understanding and those meanings in their historicity.” (Rozsnyai
1986: 204)
 AMERICAN STUDIES
American Studies in Czechoslovakia
• Modern American writers’ works appeared usually first in the
literary journal Světová literatura that existed from the mid-50s to
the mid-90s, originally edited by Josef Škvorecký
• The Jazz Section of the Czech Musician’s Union (1971–1984)
• besides dealing with jazz they published books and other
printed materials mostly in samizdat dealing with jazz, rock,
popular culture, literature and art
• an anthology of translated American poetry had also been in
the making, but was confiscated by the police, and got
published only after the revolution
• Škvorecký’s broadcasts on Voice of America
• Books published abroad and smuggled into the country
 AMERICAN STUDIES
American Studies in Czechoslovakia and
After
• 1989: Czech and Slovak Association for American Studies
• Key figures:
• Josef Jařab (1937–), professor at Palacký University,
Olomouc, constantly published about American literature
both abroad and in the country since the 1960s
• Současný americký román : několik vývojových kapitol z období posledních
dvou desetiletí (1976)
• Antologie americké literatury (1985), with Eva Masnerová and Jaroslav
Nenadál
• Masky a tváře černé Ameriky (1985)
• Dítě na skleníku: výbor ze současné americké poezie (1989), with Jaroslav
Kořán
 AMERICAN STUDIES
American Studies in Czechoslovakia and
After
• Key figures:
• Jaroslav Peprník (1927–), professor at Palacký University
• Slovník amerikanismů (1982)
• Anglo-americké reálie v české literatuře (1988)

• Martin Hilský (1943–), professor at Charles University,

Prague
• Angloamerická „nová kritika” (1976)
• Od Poea k postmodernismu: proměny americké prózy (1992), with Jan Zelenka