Current Research Projects

Literature and War

This project conducts a systematic analysis of the literary discourses in U.S. War Literature ranging from WWII to the Iraq War. In particular, the project discusses the following contemporary authors: John Briley, John Del Vecchio, Susan Fromberg-Schaefer, John Hawkes, Joseph Heller, Norman Mailer, Bobbie Anne Mason, Robin Moore, Tim O‘Brien, Kurt Vonnegut.

>> Research: Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Walter Hölbling

US-Icons

There are images we all know: Mickey Mouse, Madonna, the lonesome cowboy or the falling twin towers. Such are the icons that millions of people associate with the U.S., in other words, they are the images that managed to stick out of the mass media overflow of data. These images are embedded in national and global discourses and power relations. At the same time, they appeal to a broad and heterogeneous audience. These images have multiple meanings, meanings that are constantly shifting. Thus, they epitomize social realities, including conflicts and contradictions.

>> Research: Ao.Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Klaus Rieser

Aging Studies

The question of how age is mediated in our culture is related to a semantics of form. The ‘narrative turn’ has affected the theoretical foundations of both the humanities and the life sciences. History, story- telling and images of aging are linked by narrative genres that are invested with cultural meanings. Focusing on the individual life story the question is how the aging process, memory and the experience of time are incorporated into cultural narratives of aging. Furthermore, the construction of cultural images of age will be explored in the representations of both narrative and visual media: in literature, film and television, in advertising, photography, sculpture or the graphic arts. A gendered perspective promises insights into the different ways of perceiving and narrating age in history.

>> Research: Ao.Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Roberta Maierhofer

Transnational Feminism

The term transnational is one of the biggest buzzwords of the 21st century. As umbrella term for the global linkages and the diversity and contradictions of these exchanges, it describes the degree to which people increasingly live in more than one nation and the ease with which travel of persons, goods and knowledge has been made available. Transnational feminism investigates these exchanges and proposes ways in which borders and boundaries of nation, culture, race and gender need to be reconceptualized, confused, challenged and, potentially, eliminated. Such is also the main intent of this project which analyzes the representations of these tensions in the works of a variety of Asian American, Mexican American, Latina and Caribbean authors.

>> Research: Mag. Dr. Silvia Schultermandl

The City in Postmodern Literature

“The city as we imagine it, the soft city of illusion, myth, aspiration, and nightmare,” Jonathan Raban says, “is as real, maybe more real than the hard city one can locate on maps, statistics, monographs on urban sociology, demography and architecture.” This study looks at literary representations of the American (post)metropolis and, in particular, at how processes of transformation, such as globalization and the emergence of new information and communication technologies, have changed the ways the city has been constructed in the cultural imagination. In essence, this project considers the fictional accounts of the metropolis as testimony to the ongoing conversation about what American culture is. Writers discussed include Paul Auster, Toni Morrison, Frank O’Hara, Jay McInerney, Ralph Ellison and Don DeLillo.

>> Research: Mag. Petra Eckhard

Academic Networking – AYA

AYA (Austrian Young Americanists) is a Graz-based student organization that provides information about the current research projects of post-graduate students at Austrian universities. This network is part of an initiative by the European Association of American Studies to make post-grad facilities across Europe more transparent and more effectively structured beyond the national reach. Through their website with features short profiles of the current doctoral candidates in Austria, a discussion forum, and postings of the current job and grant opportunities, AYA serves both as an interactive newsletter to students and as an additional form of academic mentorship. With its annual organization of the AYA Retreat which brings together post-graduates and Fulbright scholars, and thus helps establish future relations with American scholars across the discipline of American Studies.

>> Coordinators: Mag. Dr. Silvia Schultermandl, Mag. Petra Eckhard, Mag. Michael Fuchs

>> www.uni-graz.at/aya