We are happy to announce that as of today we have completed the digitization and publication of 262 records from the series that are now available in the AGF special collection in The Stacks. This collection contains 244 book chapters, 12 monographs and 6 collected volumes. The digitization effort was made possible by our collaboration with the GDZ, whose support was integral in transferring these publications that were hitherto only available in print into open access.

Due to copyright limitations we were not able to publish the entire series. For this purpose we need the agreement of the authors, especially for essays published in the collected volumes. So if you have published in this series, please get in touch with us: thestacks@sub.uni-goettingen.de

The Adam Matthews database "Literary Print Culture" contains digitized business and administration documents from the archive of the "Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers" (aka Stationers' Company), a book trader's guild founded in 1403 in London. This guild later held the monopoly over print and publishing in England for several stretches during the 16th and 17th century. The Stationers' Company played a central role in the development of censors, censorship of the press, and the copyright.

Because we negotiated a national license for Germany, you can access "Literary Print Culture" via the central Database Information System (DBIS) in Germany. 

Literary Print Culture in DBIS.

Seit diesem Sommer steht den Freunden und Freundinnen der Buch- und Bibliothekswissenschaft in Deutschland eine Schatztruhe offen: Bis dato waren die mittlerweile 150 Jahrgänge des US-amerikanischen Branchenjournals Publishers Weekly den Forschenden in Deutschland weder in Print noch elektronisch vollständig zugänglich. Nun konnten der FID BBI und der FID Anglo-American Culture für das Publishers Weekly Digital Archive eine Nationallizenz erwirken. Wir freuen uns über die erfolgreiche Zusammenarbeit der beiden FID und über die Unterstützung der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft!

Publisher's Weekly

Publishers Weekly ist ein amerikanisches Gegenstück zum Deutschen Börsenblatt oder zum Buchreport. Es handelt sich um eine Fachzeitschrift für Buchverlage, Buchhändler, Bibliothekare und Literaturagenten. Die wöchentlich erscheinende Zeitschrift wird seit 1872 herausgegeben und hat ihren Schwerpunkt auf Kurzrezensionen von Neuerscheinungen auf dem Buchmarkt. Darüber hinaus enthält sie Artikel zu buchmarktrelevanten Themen, seit 1912 auch Bestsellerlisten. Alle Ausgaben können via OCR im Volltext durchsucht werden, die Transkription kann auf jeder Seite aufgerufen und kopiert werden, dazu können Nutzende eigene Tags vergeben.

Zugriff erhalten

Der Zugang muss durch die Bibliothek, über deren Netz Sie darauf zugreifen möchten, freigeschaltet werden. Ob das schon geschehen ist, können Sie über das Datenbank-Infosystem (DBIS) in Erfahrung bringen. Wenn Ihre Heimatbibliothek in der Liste der „Bibliotheken mit Bestandsnachweis“ nicht auftaucht, kontaktieren Sie bitte die Kolleg*innen vor Ort. Andernfalls können Sie auch eine Einzelnutzerlizenz bei Nationallizenzen.de beantragen.

Eintrag des Publishers Weekly Digital Archives im Datenbank-Infosystem (DBIS)

According to the database description, "this primary source archive contains every page of Publishers Weekly published for nearly 150 years, in its original context, in full color, and fully searchable." The collection comprises 7,755 issues that contain close to 400,000 book reviews, many author profiles and interviews as well as bestseller lists from 1895 forward. If you want to know what the best-selling book for Christmas 1908 and 1980 was, this is the place to look for that information.

Browse the database now and enjoy exploring!

As with all our licenses, the Kompetenzzentrum für Lizenzierung (KfL) has negotiated with the publisher to provide access to the materials from your university’s network or via the database information system (DBIS) provided by your library. Independent scholars or scholarly-minded people without an affiliation can register for access to nation-wide licenses with the DFG (German Research Council) when they permanently reside in Germany. Find more information concerning registration and our other databases on the FID AAC page at the KfL.

If you would like to make a request for future databases, fill out this form and let us know.

The archives offer entire newspaper pages as well as individually indexed materials such as articles, commentaries, opinion pieces, reviews, photographs, comics, and ads. With this access the FID-network expands upon the national license already in effect, which granted access to these newspapers until 1922.

Direct access for users with an FID-account:

• The New York Times (1851-2018)

• Washington Post (1877-2005)

If you need access, please consult our manual on how to register for the newspaper archives below or visit the KfL-website of the FID Geschichtswissenschaft.

Enjoy browsing the archives! If you would like to make a request for future licensing efforts, fill out this form and let us know.

As such it is one of the most important European centers for the study of American and transatlantic history and promotes the exploration of the "trajectories of Dutch-American and, generally, transatlantic relations" in culture, society, and politics. The RIAS' local archive is expansive, reaching from presidential papers (Roosevelt - Carter), to W.E.B. DuBois's papers, to US foreign relations with the Netherlands and its colonies. 230,000 documents and 52 audio files of its holdings have been digitized and made available through BrillOnline's Transatlantic Relations Online database.

The collections of this database are:

• Dutch-American Diplomatic Relations Online, 1784-1973
• The Fulbright Archives, 1949-2016 (excerpts)
• Dutch-Catholic Immigration to the Americas Online, The Henk van Stekelenburg Collection, 1820-1960
• Dutch-Protestant Immigration to the Americas Online, The Stallinga-Ganzevoort Collection, 1890-1960

According to the database description, these "are of particular interest to scholars working on cultural and public diplomacy, political and economic relations, migration flows, cross-cultural exchanges, [and] the role of religion in foreign policy making." If you or your students are working on these topics, these primary sources will be of tremendous value to you.

Browse the databse now and enjoy exploring! If you would like to make a request for future databases, fill out this form and let us know.

As with all our licenses, the Kompetenzzentrum für Lizenzierung (KfL) has negotiated with the publisher to provide access to the materials from your university’s network or via the database information system (DBIS) provided by your library. Independent scholars or scholarly-minded people without an affiliation can register for access to nation-wide licenses with the DFG (German Research Council) when they permanently reside in Germany. Find more information concerning registration and our other databases on the FID AAC page at the KfL.

Additional materials on related topics (books, journal articles, DVDs, Blu-rays) can be provided by the FID via inter-library loan.

The transfer of knowledge and the discussion of research findings is one of the most central tasks in academia. To a heightened degree, fields operating in the humanities have a responsibility and desire to communicate their research as it helps to contextualize, explain, categorize, and observe the many aspects of human existence as they relate to politics, history, culture, nature, and society. Aspirations to make knowledge production and academic discourse more transparent as well as permeable are strongly encouraged (if not required) by sponsors and facilitated by digital technology that reaches audiences like never before. The possibilities seem endless, so does the amount of outlets, so does the workload.

With this gateway, the FID AAC wants to highlight excellent examples for successful and innovative research communication in form of podcasts and, in doing so, appreciate the immense work that goes into the production of episodes, channels, and overall scholarly communication infrastructure. At the same time, we want to provide a source for students, teachers, and researchers working in our fields to find valuable resources. This gateway, in which we mainly focused on German productions, aims to make the work of many visible and usable. If important resources are missing, please let us know.

With the subject repository The Stacks, the FID AAC provides a space where you can openly archive and collect scholarly work product that otherwise might go unrecognized. We think it is important to make this vibrant and dynamic part of academic work more visible and accessible. 

What are the advantages of archiving your event materials in The Stacks?

Accessibility: Your documents will be found by (academic) search engines such as Google, Google Scholar, or BASE.

Visibility: The entirety of your work and/or your department's, network's or institution's activity is available in one place and can be browsed by names of individuals and institutions.

Citability: Your documents will be clearly identifiable and citable through permanent identifiers such as Persistent Uniform Resource Locators (PURL) and Digital Object Identifiers (DOI). 

Reliability: Your documents are archived and saved by a DFG-funded, non-commercial institution within German data privacy law.

Longevity: As a DINI-certified service, we can guarantee that your documents will be stored responsibly for many years to come. You don't have to worry about keeping a website running in order not to lose your documents.

Integrity: We import metadata of already registered DOIs in order to maintain document integrity and to avoid redundancy.

Non-Exclusivity: By granting The Stacks non-exclusive usage rights, you retain all rights to your documents and are free to re-use them elsewhere, e.g. the repository of your home institution.

Browse:

• Conference Programs in The Stacks.
• Conference materials of the Postgraduate Forum of the German Association for American Studies

Checklist: Follow these steps to archive your event materials in The Stacks?

1. Decide which materials you'd like to archive.
2. Make sure you have the necessary rights to publish the materials.
3. Make sure you have the necessary rights to re-use the images and designs for non-commerical purposes.
4. Decide under which Open Access license you'd like to archive your materials. You can contact us with your questions or use the CC-Chooser tool.
5. Upload your materials in The Stacks yourself OR send us your materials via email and we upload them for you.

We look forward to receiving and hosting your event materials, so that this vital part of academic communication is properly scured and appreciated. 

Please contact us with any questions and concerns you might have!

To this new platform we have contributed an Open Access directory for our research communities to facilitate successful scholarship in the subject areas we support. This directory includes open access sources and tools such as

• Open Access Journals
• Open Access Books
• Disciplinary Repositories

These and other subject-specific references are paired with general information about various aspects of and frequently asked questions about open access in form of videos, graphs, and introductory texts. As such it is a great place to learn about open access and a valuable source to share among your network, with colleagues as well as students. Make sure to visit the subject-specific open access pages for English and American Studies.

Canada’s motto is “Singular Plurality – Singulair Pluriel” and will be explored at their pavilion on the grounds of the fair and the accompanying program that "not only reflects the country’s size, but the diversity of its culture, languages and traditions [...] [and] will address the topics “Language and Culture,” “Indigenous, Political and Social Issues,” “Space and Territories,” “Children’s and Young Adult Literature,” “Women in Literature,” “LGBTQ2 Perspectives” and “The Environment”" as the organizing committee Canada Frankfurter Buchmesse 2021 (CanadaFBM2021) stated in a press release issued on September 28, 2021.

The official literary delegation that will represent Canada in Frankfurt reads like the who is who of contemporary Canadian literature and includes authors such as Margaret Atwood, Joséphine Bacon, Alexis André, Catherine Hernandez, Paul Seesequasis, and Joshua Whitehead. Find the full list at Canada’s official book fair website. Due to Corona-restrictions only a few authors will be present in person to talk about their work on several occasions and different formats; these include Michael Crummey, Kim Thúy, Canisia Lubrin, and Catherine Mavrikakis. One such occasion will be “Canada Night – Kanadische Literatur im Rampenlicht der Frankfurter Buchmesse” on October 20, 2021 organized by the Department of Canadian Heritage and Canada FBM2021. The program includes author talks, a round table discussion, and other artistic performances. Other events - on location and remote - organized for and by the guest of honor are listed here.

Covering a time when Madison Avenue was the epicenter of US marketing and advertising and so-called Mad Men were looked up to, these databases offer a wide variety of materials to not only study the history of American consumerism. Concentrating on two of the most influential individuals and their advertising firms in US history, these databases offer invaluable insights into the inner workings of these companies as well as their impact on US culture as a whole. Thus, the materials support a wide variety of projects from researching the mechanisms of advertising, to visual culture across different media, to the cultural image of certain objects (cars, cigarettes, etc.), services (airlines, travel agencies), or brands (Kodak, Barbie, Ford).

Market Research & American Business, 1935–1965

This database is a great resource to study American consumer culture of the mid-twentieth century through the lens of Ernest Dichter’s agency The Institute for Motivational Research, Inc. that was responsible for ad-campaigns for, among others, Kraft Foods, Heinz, or Disney. The collection offers an excellent stock of documents that attest to the immense influence of Freudian approaches in post-war American advertisement.

You can browse the document collections according to

• document type (letter, memorandum, pilot study, etc)
• industry (food, beauty, politics, electronics, etc.)
• language (English, German, Spanish, French, etc.)

Besides documents, the database also offers useful visual materials that contribute to a deeper study of questions surrounding advertisement in the US. The Ad Gallery includes newspaper and magazine ads as well as posters that can be filtered according to decade, brand, and industry.

Immensely helpful in using this database is the fact that each item was categorized according to an industry. The Industries-page not only directs users to related materials but also contextualizes each industry within the greater framework of Dichter’s understanding of his work. This is especially fruitful in areas ‘outside’ commerce such as Politics, Public Service, or Education.

Search the collections now!

J. Walter Thompson: Advertising America

This database presents vast materials from the inner workings of one of the most renowned and influential advertisement agencies of the twentieth century: J. Walter Thompson (JWT). From the perspective of consumer culture, these documents and ad-campaigns offer great potential to study, among others, questions related to history, cultural studies, economics, or gender studies in the US.

Smartly, the materials have been grouped together in collections and series according to their respective context and given introductory texts to historicize and explain the nature of these sources. In this way users can use series such as Staff Meeting Minutes, Account Files/Brand Case Studies, or Chicago Office Media Resources and Research Department Records in an informed way. The visual sources differentiated between Print Advertisements and JWT  Photographs are both searchable by date, brand, subject and type.

Besides the excellent primary sources, this database also offers access to rich supplementary materials in the Explore section. Here, users can find academic essays on the impact of JWT, video interviews with experts in the field, client case studies, and chronologies of the company’s history (both from the company’s perspective and an archive’s perspective).

Search the collections now!

The databases on American Consumer Culture, so far, has sourced materials from the following institutions:

• Hagley Museum and Library, which specializes in the study of business and technology in the US and holds majority of Dichter’s US-related market studies and reports.
• The John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History, Duke University, which holds the J. Walter Thompson Archives.
• The Advertising Archives.

Enjoy exploring! If you would like to make a request for future databases, fill out this form and let us know.

Additional materials on related topics (books, journal articles, DVDs, Blu-rays) can be provided by the FID via inter-library loan.

Each anthology—covering many academic disciplines from history, film studies, literary studies to medieval studies—now has its own collection and lists every article individually: 

• Anthologies

Furthermore, we are excited to be able to archive every book so far published in the series „Göttinger Schriften zur Englischen Philologie” (“Göttingen Writings in English Philology”) – monographs and anthologies.

• "Göttinger Schriften zur ENglischen Philologie”

You can find all publication from Göttingen University Press archived in “The Stacks” relating to the fields we support here:

• Göttingen University Press in "The Stacks"

These digital materials, alongside the entire Göttingen University program, are of course also available on the publisher’s website. Make sure to browse it. We look forward to continue this cooperation with Göttingen University Press, update our repository with top-notch academic publications, and make the work of scholars in our fields more visible by providing an additional Open Access platform.

Never miss any important news related to the Fachinformationsdienst Anglo-American Culture and History. With our newly-established newsletter, we will inform our community about current events, ongoing services, and the general developments of the FID AAC and its subject repository "The Stacks." Additionally, we understand the newsletter as a way to foster direct communication with our research communities and welcome feedback and questions about our work.

We invite you to subscribe to our newsletter, so we can deliver our latest updates right to your digital doorstep. 

Our inaugural newsletter "No. 1, July 2021" is out now for you to read! 

Spread the word and tell your networks and colleagues.

You can unsubscribe here.

Browse the holdings of DVDs and Blu-rays the SUB Göttingen has acquired so far.

If something is missing, please send us your suggestions via our Request Form and we will notify you as soon as the materials are ready to order. 

Series that were produced in the UK, Ireland, Australia, and/or New Zealand will be acquired by the SUB Göttingen. Our partners from the JFKI Library at FU Berlin already house a large collection of American and Canadian series.

Besides supporting German researchers in conducting their work by providing access to primary sources, assembling DVDs and Blu-rays in this way will also ensure the development of an accessible collection of TV productions and serial storytelling.

You can now find more monographs, anthologies, and anthology articles in “The Stacks”. The books cover many academic disciplines related to our fields such as cultural studies, didactics, economics, gender studies, literary studies, etc.:

• Monographs
• Anthologies

Some anthologies are made available as collections, where the articles can be accessed separately:

• Collections of Anthologies

These digital materials complement the physical copies of books published by Peter Lang that the SUB Göttingen has acquired and that are available via interlibrary loan. If you want to suggest a book for purchase, please let us know through our “Request Form.”

Please make sure to browse the entire Peter Lang program in English/British Studies, American Studies, and beyond!

We look forward to continue this cooperation with Peter Lang, update our repository with top-notch academic publications, and make the work of scholars in our fields more visible by providing an additional OA platform.

If you'd like to publish your work in Open Access in our repository The Stacks, but you're not sure how to go about it or simply don't have the time to figure it out, we are here to make it easier for you:

Send us your list of publication and we will review and clarify the issues concerning copyright and self-archiving. Many publishers have individual policies about which version of your text to use for self-archiving and when. The review of each document is a time-consuming task, that we will happily do for you - free of charge!

We're Here to Help!

We are dedicated to making your work more accessible and visible and thus offer extensive services to support the upload of your academic work to our subject repository. 

1. Send us your publication list via email 
2. We review which entries can be archived according to German copyright laws and international publisher policies
3. We send you our assessment
4. We digitize publications that have been print-only thus far
5. With your permission, we upload PDFs of your work and send you a persistent link

We look forward to working together with you in this endeavor. If you have questions or feedback, please let us know and get in touch. 

Learn more about The Stacks.

This is an updated version of the original news item published on November 9, 2020

Das Zertifikat soll drei Wirkungsfelder bedienen:

1. Forschende sollen anhand des Siegels vertrauenswürdige Publikationsdienste erkennen.
2. Förder- und Träger-Institutionen sollen erkennen, welcher Aufwand hinter dem Betrieb eines solchen Publikationsdienstes steckt und welchen Mehrwert eine standardisierte und nachhaltige Open-Access Publikationsinfrastruktur mit sich bringt.
3. Betreiber*innen erhalten mit dem Kriterienkatalog eine Orientierung beim Aufbau und Betrieb von Open Access-Repositorien.

Für Interessierte liegt die ausführliche Fassung des Zertifikats in deutscher und englischer Sprache vor.

Wir danken unseren Göttinger Kolleg*innen, die uns bei der Umsetzung unterstützt haben, und den DINI-Gutachter*innen für die professionelle Zusammenarbeit! 

The Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission, tasked with the coordinating the commemoroation of the 1921 events is a great entry point to familarize yourself with the discourses around the massacre itself, Greenwood, as the place where it happened, and the continued debates about whose history is being communicated. 

Databases and Archives

National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC)

• The NMAAHC has compiled its resources relating to the massacre in Greenwood in their "Tulsa Objects in the NMAAHC Collection" 
• Try search filters such as "Tulsa Race Massacre,"  "Tulsa," or "Greenwood"

African American Newspapers (Series 1 & 2)

• Research contemporary news coverage of the 1920s related to the events in Tulsa through the African American Newspapers database which was licensed by the FID AAC
• Learn more about the database here

Oklahoma State University

• Browse the digitized materials of "Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921" - Collection

Smithsonian Institution

• The Smithsonian Institution presents in its collection cluster "Tulsa 100" different facets of their collections to engage with the Tulsa Race Massacre from different perspectives.
• The episode "Confronting the Past" of the Smithsonian's podacst Sidedoor provides an overall understanding of the events and their devastating impact.

Library of Congress

• Find search strategies and selected articles on the topic: https://guides.loc.gov/chronicling-america-tulsa-race-riots/introduction 

Teaching the Tulsa Race Massacre

#TulsaSyllabus

• #TulsaSyllabus is source curated by Dr. Alicia Odewale (University of Tulsa) and Dr. Karla Slocum (University of North Carolina Chapel Hill) that offers reading lists and syllabi about different aspects of the Tulsa Greenwood District.

Tulsa Historical Society and Museum

• The THSM has curated a great online exhibit "The Attack on Greenwood" that offers engaging materials.
• The society has made available many audio recordings of interviews with survivors and contemporaries of the Tulsa Race Massacre.
• Find legal documents of course cases and reports of the Red Cross that document immediate reactions to the massacre.

Oklahoma Historical Society

• The Oklahoma Historical Society provides the offical report "Tulsa Race Riot" (2001) by the Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa race Riot of 1921
• Find a historical overview of the events, their socio-political contexts, their immediate aftermath, and their long-term effects: https://www.okhistory.org/learn/trm 

Tulsa and Greenwood in Literature, Art, and Culture

The Greenwood Art Project commissioned several artists to install public artworks arouond Tulsa on occasion of the Centennial. (Find a report on the project's opening on Artnet.)

Works of the artist Crystal Z. Campbell that reflect on the Tulsa Race Massacre.

Fire in Beulah (2001), a novel by Rilla Askew

Dreamland Burning (2017), a novel by Jennifer Latham

"The Case for Reparations" (2017), a story by Ta-Nehisi Coates

"The Massacre of Black Wallstreet" (2019), a webcomic by Natalie Chang

"Watchmen" (2019), TV-series by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons

Currently in the News

"A Century after the Race Massacre, Tulsa Confronts Its Bloody Past" (NPR), May 24, 2021

"American Terror" (Smithsonian Magazine), April 2021

"The Tulsa Race Massacre at 100: An Imperative fpr International Accountability and Justice" (Stanford Law School), February 11, 2021 

"Coffins Unearthed as the Search for Victims of the Tulsa Race Massacre Continues" (National Geographic), October 26, 2020

"Many Tulsa Massacres: How the Myth of a Liberal North Erases a Long History of White Violence" (National Museum of American History), August 25, 2020

"The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre and the Financial Fallout" (Harvard Gazette), June 18, 2020 

Litlog ist ein studentisches eMagazin, gegründet am Seminar für Deutsche Philologie der Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, das sich den praktizierten Dialog zwischen Wissenschaft und Kultur zum Ziel gesetzt hat. Das Spektrum dieses Dialogs reicht von kulturanalytischen Essays über literaturkritische Beiträge und Berichte zum literarischen wie kulturellen Leben, insbesondere in Göttingen, bis hin zu wissenschaftsjournalistischen und genuin wissenschaftlichen Artikeln.

Geführt wird dieser Dialog in erster Linie vom wissenschaftlichen und kulturellen Nachwuchs: von den Studierenden der Göttinger Universität, die als Redaktionsmitglieder, als freie Mitarbeiter:innen, als Autor:innen, Reporter:innen und Ideengeber:innen Litlog mit Inhalt füllen. Dabei will Litlog zugleich einüben ins öffentliche Schreiben: ins Schreiben für Leser:innen, nicht für Gutachter:innen; ins interessante, ins informative, ins unterhaltende Schreiben.

Litlog-Artikel können Rezensionen von Büchern, Filmen, Serien oder Musikalben oder Essays zu literarischen, kulturellen oder wissenschaftlichen Themen sein, beziehungsweise Interviews mit interessanten Personen aus dem Kulturbetrieb oder auch Reportagen aus der lokalen Kulturszene. Auch für andere Ideen und Formate sind wir offen. Veröffentlicht werden die Texte auf unserer Website, die mit Features wie einem Infoboxen, Bebilderung, Verschlagwortung, Veranstaltungskalender und Bücherkarussell eine schöne Plattform für journalistische Arbeitsproben bietet.

Unter der Rubrik "In English" finden die Litlog Leser:innen viele Inhalte auch auf Englisch.

Mitmachen

Du studierst eine Philologie oder ein ähnliches Fach an der Uni Göttingen und möchtest einen Artikel für Litlog schreiben? Dann wende Dich gern mit einer konkreten Idee oder einfach so an info@litlog.de oder litlog@uni-goettingen.de. Falls Du ein kürzlich erschienenes Buch oder eine Veranstaltung besprechen möchtest, bemühen wir uns um ein Rezensionsexemplar oder Pressekarten. Für englischsprachige Bücher können wir auf die Hilfe des FID AAC zurückgreifen. Wir helfen Dir in einem gründlichen Redigat, an Deinem Text zu arbeiten. Wenn er dann veröffentlicht ist, kannst Du ihn als Referenz angeben. Litlog ist für Studierende da: Solange Du mit Sprache umgehen und ein bisschen mit Texten arbeiten kannst, sind keine weiteren Vorkenntnisse vonnöten.

In 2014 Robert X. Browning, the director of the C-SPAN archives at Purdue University has established the book series The Year in C-SPAN Archives Research, in which six volumes have been published so far. The first volume, The C-SPAN Archives: An Interdisciplinary Resource for Discovery, Learning, and Engagement (2014), offers an introduction to the tools of the archive and a series of case studies focusing on rhetorical and historical aspects, but also including approaches from the social sciences. The following volumes extend the disciplinary spectrum to political science, journalism, psychology, computer science, media and communication studies and other disciplines. The latest two publications in the series focus on president Trump’s first term and the evolution of political rhetoric in the United States.

At the beginning of 2021 Purdue University Press announced that the series will from now on be available in open access on the institutional repository Purdue e-Pubs.

The database contains such eminent publications as Freedom’s Journal, which is considered to be the first African American newspaper in the United States, Frederick Douglass' famous North Star, and Marcus Garvey's Negro World, but also many regional, lesser known papers. The search interface of the database will be easy to navigate for users already familiar with Readex's America's Historical Newspapers. It allows the browsing of titles by such criteria as title, date range or location, but also offers more advanced search options, and tools for citation and download.

Both series of African American Newspapers can be accessed here: Series 1 and Series 2

Similarly to our recently announced database Gender: Identity and Social Change wide accessibility is guaranteed through a national license for Germany that allows all users of German university libraries to explore the collection via the database information system DBIS.

Please share the news!

And if you would like to make a request for future databases, fill out this form and let us know.

The “Gender: Identity and Social Change” database is an excellent collection of primary sources for the study of women and their life realities starting in the 18th century and throughout the 19th and 20th century. Clustered according to thematic areas such as Women’s Suffrage, understandings of the body, historical views on leisure and entertainment, or the men’s movement, the database provides excellent primary resources from Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Thus, it will serve all members of our diverse research community.

Search the collections now!

Highlights from the collections include

• The Munby Papers, which consist of writings both by Arthur Munby and his wife Hannah Cullwick

• Letters of readers of The Feminine Mystique to the author Betty Friedan

• Materials on the Suffrage Movement in New Zealand

• Papers of the evolution of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs in Canada

• Materials about the status and treatment of African American women in the US (1968-2004); including the pamphlet of the Combahee River Collective 

• Issues of the periodical The British Workwoman (1864-1987)

A very helpful function of the database is its Chronology tool with which yoou can trace and visualize historical developments and events. It is a timeline that lists historical events, court decisions, and publication dates according to thematic areas, thus enabling you to gain a cohesive or comparative overview of your research interests. You can also create your own list of materials and make it fit your specific analytical needs.

The database, so far, has sourced materials from the following institutions:

1. The Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America  
2. Trinity College, Cambridge
3. Michigan State University Libraries
4. Hagley Museum and Library
5. Bryn Mawr College
6. The John Rylands Library, University of Manchester
7. Mary Evans Picture Library
8. Glenbow
9. The University of Melbourne

Enjoy exploring!

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Nach den Grußworten des stellvertretenden Direktors der SUB Göttingen, Dr. Armin Müller-Dreier, und Dr. Karolin Bubke (Universitätsbibliothek Oldenburg), Mitglied der Kommission für Fachreferatsarbeit des VDB, eröffnete die Projektleiterin des FID AAC, Dorothea Schuller, den inhaltlichen Teil des Programms. In ihrem Vortrag „Do Libraries Dream of Electric Books?“ erörterte sie sowohl Herausforderungen bei der Namensgebung des FID, bei Lizenzverhandlungen für die überregionale Bereitstellung elektronischer Ressourcen, als auch die Anforderungen an das Erwerbungs- und Sammlungsprofil, um die oft interdisziplinär arbeitenden Wissenschaftler*innen möglichst umfassend mit der benötigten Spezial-Literatur versorgen zu können.

Ein wichtiger Baustein im Open Access-Konzepts des FID AAC ist das Fachrepositorium „The Stacks“, das von den Projektmitarbeiter*innen Dr. Tomasz Stompor und Wiebke Kartheus vorgestellt wurde. In ihrem Vortrag sprachen die beiden über das Sammlungskonzept des Repositoriums, das neben den traditionellen Zweitveröffentlichungsformaten auch „Graue Literatur“—Konferenzprogramme, Syllabi, Vorträge, etc.—veröffentlicht, um die Bandbreite des wissenschaftlichen Arbeitens besser abbilden zu können. Darüber hinaus wurden die Maßnahmen zur Einwerbung und Öffentlichkeitsarbeit vorgestellt, die zu erwartenden Hürden und Grenzen angesprochen und die wichtige Rolle der Fachreferent*innen als Multiplikatoren diskutiert.

Die Inhalte beider Vorträge wurden durch interessierte und produktive Diskussionen bereichert und vertieft. Fragen und Anregungen zu den Vor- und Nachteilen einer Veröffentlichung im Fachrepositorium wurden ebenso besprochen wie Details im täglichen Arbeitsablauf. Die Diskussionen im Anschluss an jedes einzelne Panel zeigten das Bedürfnis und die Wichtigkeit des professionellen Erfahrungsaustauschs und der Kompetenzbündelung. Sie prägten die Fortbildung sehr und trugen immens zum Erfolg der gesamten Veranstaltung bei.

Nach der Kaffeepause rückte der Bereich der Digital Humanities und des Forschungsdatenmanagements ins Zentrum der Aufmerksamkeit mit einer Einführung in das Projekt Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities (DARIAH-DE). Dr. Andrea Bertino präsentierte einige Forschungstools, die es Wissenschaftler*innen ermöglichen sollen, ihre gesammelten Daten zu analysieren, visualisieren oder zu annotieren und somit allumfänglich zu erschließen. Die Vorstellung der dazugehörigen Forschungsumgebung TextGrid mit ihrem Daten-Repositorium TextGrid Repository und der Software TextGrid Laboratory problematisierte erneut die komplexe Situation von Doppelstrukturen und bestätigte den beträchtlich Kommunikationsbedarf, um das Potential dieser Dienste für die Zielgruppe nutzbar zu machen. Den Blogbeitrag zu Dr. Bertinos Vortrag sowie die dazugehörige Präsentation finden sie hier.

Zum Abschluss des ersten Fortbildungstages und im Gegensatz zu den abstrakten Ideen und der digitalen Beschaffenheit von Bibliothek, Archiv und Wissensvermittlung führte Dr. Christian Fieseler das Fachpublikum durch die historischen Räume und Bestände der SUB Göttingen, die seit ihrer Gründung 1734 – aufgrund der Personalunion von Hannover und Großbritannien – Bücher zum englischsprachigen Kulturraum sammelt. Anknüpfend an diese Sammlungsgeschichte wurden noch ein paar seltene Kostbarkeiten aus der England- und Amerikasammlung der SUB gezeigt. Als Highlights seien hier zwei Ausgaben des Kolumbus-Briefes von 1493, die Erstausgabe von Herman Melvilles Moby-Dick (1851), die mit aufwendigen Holzschnitten illustrierte Ausgabe von Geoffrey Chaucers Gesamtwerk der Kelmscott Press (1869) und eine handsignierte Ausgabe von Oscar Wildes The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) erwähnt. Derart inspiriert wurden viele Gespräche beim gemeinsamen Abendessen vertieft.

Der zweite Fortbildungstag begann mit dem Fachvortrag „Fiction Meets Science Meets Library“ von Dr. Anna Auguscik (Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg). In ihm stellte sie die Fragestellungen und Interessenschwerpunkte des von der Volkswagenstiftung geförderten Forschungsprojektes „Fiction Meets Science“ vor. Dieses beschäftigt sich nicht nur mit englischsprachigen Romanen, die sich mit Naturwissenschaften auseinandersetzen, sondern setzt sich auch aktiv für den Wissensaustausch zwischen Schriftsteller*innen und Naturwissenschaftler*innen ein. Dr. Auguscik trat darüber hinaus mit der Frage an das Plenum, wie sie ihre eigenen Forschungsdaten nutzbar machen kann und konnte so den Bogen zu den am Vortag geführten Gesprächen spannen. Sie und ihr Kollege und Projektmitbegründer Prof. Dr. Anton Kirchhofer sorgten mit ihrem Interesse und Diskussionsbeiträgen für einen angeregten und produktiven Transfer zwischen Wissenschaft und Fachreferat und demonstrierten so die Wichtigkeit der Rolle der Fachreferent*innen als Vermittler*innen zwischen Forschung und Infrastruktur.

Auch der nächste Programmpunkt bot viel Gelegenheit zum professionellen Dialog: An drei Thementischen konnten die Teilnehmer*innen die Themen „Aufgabenprofil Fachreferat“, „Digitale Tools“ und „Informationskompetenz/Vernetzung (mit Lehre)“ intensiv besprechen und im Anschluss die Ergebnisse der großen Runde präsentieren. Es zeigte sich wieder, wie wichtig der persönliche Erfahrungsabgleich mit den Kolleg*innen gerade für die Arbeit im Fachreferat ist, da die institutionellen Vorgaben und Arbeitsprofile sehr unterschiedlich sind. Das neue Format kam diesen Bedarf entgegen und war durch die hohe Teilnehmerzahl besonders effektiv. Um dem Wunsch der Anwesenden zu entsprechen, den Dialog über die Veranstaltung hinaus weiter zu führen, hat der FID AAC den E-Mail Verteiler für Anglistik-/Amerikanistik-Fachreferent*innen wieder aufleben lassen.

Zum Abschluss hielt Medea Seyder, Bibliotheksleiterin der Bibliothek des John-F.-Kennedy-Instituts für Nordamerikastudien an der Freien Universität Berlin, einen Vortrag über die Sammelschwerpunkte der Bibliothek. Als Projektpartnerin des FID AAC ist die JFKI-Bibliothek mit ihren umfassenden  Zeitungs-, Comic- und Graphic Novel-Beständen sowie der großen Sammlung an nordamerikanischen Filmen und TV-Serien ein wichtiger Faktor für die Umsetzung der gesteckten Ziele und die Versorgung der deutschen Fachcommunity mit wichtigen Primärquellen. Das Sammeln audiovisueller Medien bereitet vielen Bibliotheken allerdings auch Probleme, wollen sie ihren Nutzer*innen langfristig Zugang zu Schallplatten, CDs, oder Tonbändern gewähren. Als nächste große Herausforderung für Bibliotheken wurde die Lizenzierung von Streaming-Diensten benannt und erste Erfahrungen mit dem On-Demand Streaming-Dienst Kanopy ausgetauscht.

Mit diesem Beitrag endete die Fortbildung für Fachreferent*innen der Anglistik/Amerikanistik. Die institutionellen und wissenschaftlichen Herausforderungen und Veränderungen mitzugestalten und mitzuversorgen bleibt sicherlich spannend und anspruchsvoll. Aber mit einem guten Netzwerk, zu dessen Stärkung diese Veranstaltung hoffentlich beigetragen hat, lassen sich viele Hürden leichter überwinden.

The greeting by University Vice President for Study, Teaching and Internationalization Daniela Wawra and the opening remarks by the organizing team both made clear that discussing notions of 'fact' and 'truth' is crucial in an era that is increasingly suspicious of science and experts. While facts and expertise are more important than ever to make sense of our complex surroundings, great parts of the public have lost their trust in educational, political, and social institutions and base their understanding of reality more on ideology and sentiment. In this Post-Truth Era then, the organizers stated, it is paramount to analyze the dynamics that nurture misinformation, filter bubbles, and fake news. As usual, however, the PGF not only invited papers related to the main focus of the conference but also welcomed presentations on diverse topics in American Studies.

The conference started with a panel on "Identity, Sexuality, and Narratology" and was chaired by Isabel Kalous (Gießen). It brought together three distinct perspectives and methodologies in approaching questions related to these three categories. In his talk "Closeted Narratology" Florian Zitzelsberger (Passau) called for an update of the structuralist narratological concept of metalepsis. He argued that metalepsis, understood as a transgression of internally hierarchized narrative worlds, could be analyzed as a queer signifying practice if the normativizing structuralist framework from which it originated was to be reevaluated. Selina Foltinek (Bayreuth) spoke to the advantages of taking a postcritical approach in analyzing narratives from different time periods about female same-sex relationships. In "The Creative Potential of Literature" she demonstrated how phenomenological and reparative readings that focus on positive knowledge can be employed to examine social issues and shift public debates away from an overemphasis of the hermeneutics of suspicion. In her presentation "Transmedial Negotiations of Sexual Violence in When They See Us" Mascha Helene Lange (Leipzig) discussed how the Netflix series by Ava DuVernay strategically intervenes into racialized and stigmatizing discourses surrounding the story of the so-called Central Park Five. Lange showed how the seriality of the narrative, together with its uses of intertextuality and metalapsis, work to reframe these discourses and reestablish themes of justice and truth.

In their efforts to open up the conference to a broader public, the organizers arranged the panel discussion "Fake News? Europe und die USA im Desinformationszeitalter" with four professionals who engage with fake news in different contexts: the politician Christian Filsek (SPD), who was part of the official NSA investigation committee in 2014; the author and journalist Bettina Horaczek, whose work focuses on the political and social effects of right-wing propaganda in Europe; Carolin Jansen, member of the federally funded project DORIAN - Exposing and Combating Fake News; and Johannes Völz, professor of American Studies at the University of Frankfurt, whose most recent work deals with populism, polarity, and fake news in the US. Two hours of constructive discussion covered a lot of ground, including the effects of echo chambers and algorithms on our daily news consumption, the cultural dimensions of populism and polarization within Western democracies as well as the influence and rhetorics of sentimentality on public debates.

The panel was also quite successful in formulating concrete solution strategies for the audience: Teaching media literacy has to be prioritzed on all levels of education and public debate. Journalism should not report disproportionately about recent societal and political developments and should more often reflect on the metalevel of events to illuminate the bigger picture. Specifically for American Studies scholars in Germany two important points were raised that need attention and further discussion: 1) American Studies scholars are underrepresented in news coverage on recent developments in the US to contextulalize and explain their (historic) reasons and (long-term) effects because 2) American Studies as an academic field has arguably stopped to offer action models and frameworks useful for public debate. Therefore, such was the overall consensus of the discussion, it is crucial to continuously and relentlessly discuss and reflect upon the current political climate on the platforms each participant is given.

Day two of the conference started with a large panel on the "Transnational Dimensions of American Studies" and was chaired by Juliann Knaus (Graz). First speaker of the day was Chang Liu (Heidelberg) who traced the "Afterlife of American Musical Waste" in China to examine how the global politics and economics of waste leave physical as well as cultural imprints on nations along the lines of class, race, and ethnicity. Chris Katzenberg (Bochum) then talked about "Postindustrial Urban Change across the Atlantic" and the urban 'ghetto' in the 21st-century contexts of urban reform, social mobility, and transatlantic exchange. Third speaker of the panel was Natasha Anderson (Mainz) who reflected in her talk "Outsiders Looking in" on the mediating and defamiliarizing role of three non-US-American comedians as political commentators within the American media landscape.

After a short intermission, Julia Wewior (Wuppertal) continued with her talk "Conflating War and Migration" in which she talked about the exception discourse in the novel The Framing of Bones. She showed how the novel's depicition of Haitian migrant bodies in the Dominican Rebpublic as unimaginable, unintelligible, and ungrievable anticipates problems of the post-truth era and offers strategies to work through them. In her paper "Legacies of Im/Mobilization" Sigrid Thomsen interrogated the cane field as place of extreme violence and im/mobility in the work of Edwidge Danticat, Junot Diaz, and Roxanne Gay. She thus spoke to the importance of sugar-related discourses of place and non-place in Caribbean narratives. 

Next on the agenda was the new format of the poster session "The Many Faces of American Studies." Five early career scholars presented their projects and ideas accompanied by their poster to smaller groups of participants. These groups, selected according to icons chosen at the registration, travelled from poster to poster every thirteen minutes. It was a very engaging format that enabled lively and direct discussions with the presenters and furthered a deeper understanding of the status and scope of the respective projects.

• Axelle Germanaz (Erlangen-Nürnberg) presented the current state of her timely research on "The American White Power Movement, National Myths, and the Logics of Exceptionalism" that examines how American myths such as the 'City upon a Hill' relate to far-right rhetorics on the internet and elsewhere in the context of white supremacy and fake news. 
• Raja-Léon Hamann (Halle-Wittenberg) introduced his audience to his anthropological research on "Being and Becoming Gullah Geechee" that critically investigates how identity movements in the current age of post-truth and appropriation relate to and resist established notions of creole, pidgin, and 'primitivism.' 
• In her presentation "Nineteenth-Century Digitized German-American Newspapers," Jana Keck (Stuttgart) explained the intricacies of her digital approach to the study of German-American Culture as well as her critical and programming methodology for investigating the reuse of newspaper segments.
• Bethany Webster-Parmentier (Flensburg) shared the concepts that lie at the center of her project "Indigenous North American Gothic: Narratives of Presence, Strength, and Survivance" in which she investigates the intersections and potentials of Native American Gothic storytelling and the Western Gothic tradition that has been predominately white and anthropocentric.
• Christina Wurst (Tübingen) then presented her poster on "Implicit Controversial Discourses on Gender in Pop Culture Fan Spaces" in which she analyzes the dynamics of rhetorics of gender in online fan discussions about Captain Marvel and the most recent Star Wars movies.

The afternoon session was an interactive workshop on "Teaching American Studies," led by Viola Huang from the SKILL-project at the University of Passau. The 90-minute-workshop was aimed at answering questions of how and why university teachers do what they do and offered strategies how to mediate knowledge, knowledge production, and knowledge use via new media and technologies. Special focus lay on teaching media literacy, a practice central to democracy, participation, and critical thinking. Huang emphasized the importance of conveying skills to produce knowledge rather than consuming or collecting knowledge and showed ways in which new media can be integrated in the classroom in meaningful ways. To explore these ways further, the participants were divided into six groups according to interest and were tasked to discuss and conceptualize different aspects of the American Studies classroom and give short presentations about the group's results at the end; these aspects included "space," "content," and "digitization and technology." The short presentations at the end of the group activity powerfully showed the potential of teaching American Studies with a focus on media literacy, but also exemplified the challenges and hindrances in implementing new approaches.

The day ended with the "PGF Meeting" during which the PGF-representative for the GAAS, Judith Rauscher, shared her annual report. Furthermore, COPAS: Current Objectives of Postgraduate American Studies, the peer-reviewed journal that publishes the proceedings of the annual PGF meetings, as well as the Libary AAC introduced their services and possibilities, such as the subject repository The Stacks where the conference's program has been archived. The meeting was followed by networking opportunities during a visit to the historic Christmas Market and dinner afterwards. Unfortunately, the representatives of the Library AAC could not stay for the third and final day of the PGF conference, but if the last day was anything like the first two, it was engaging, people-oriented, scholarly excellent, and well-organized. Thank you for such a welcoming atmosphere in which young American Studies scholars discussed their own projects and the challenges of fake news, post-truth, and populism in a productive and solution-oriented way.

For those of you who cannot make it to London, we would like to introduce you to TATE’s digital archive that holds more than 52.000 items, which can be viewed online and also includes many digital reproductions of William Blake’s works. The archive focuses on “documenting the history of fine art practice in the UK” and its scope exceeds mere art objects, but also includes such material as “letters, writings, sketchbooks, audio-visual material, photographs, ephemera, press cuttings and objects.” As such, it presents a valuable trove of sources for art historians and researchers with a focus on Great Britain. The digitized section is only a fraction of the TATE Archive that describes itself as “the world’s largest archive of British art," and the majority of its materials can only be accessed on site. During a five-year program called Archives & Access, the collection has been supplemented by a series of digital tools that support its exploration and the research of its objects. Additionally, the program also included the development and implementation of measures to foster outreach, education, and participation.

The digital reproductions of William Blake’s works in the TATE Archive are available as low resolution images through a CC-BY-NC-ND (3.0 Unported) license. Given their date of origin, the majority of William Blake’s works are available in the public domain and there are many libraries and websites that provide digitized versions of his texts and reproductions of the plates. Still, William Blake’s work is unique in its complex interrelation of text, image, and the underlying technologies of production, reproduction and editing. Not every digital archive is able to account for this intermedial complexity to the full extent. The most comprehensive and state­-of-the-art digital archive that documents William Blake’s oeuvre is The William Blake Archive hosted by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and sponsored by the Library of Congress, the University of Rochester, and the Scholarly Editions and Translations Division of the National Endowment for the Humanities. This archive has been an ongoing project since 1996 and has evolved into a cutting edge resource that provides a variety of digital research tools (e.g. lightbox, transcription, full-text search) and meticulous documentation of its holdings (provenance, full editorial information). It includes the complete Illuminated Books, commercial book illustrations, and various other visual works and manuscripts of the artist. The collection is being updated continuously and you can subscribe to the archive’s newsletter to stay informed about current additions.

The title was well chosen for this conference as it can be read in two ways: 1) "Mediating Mountains," i.e. how mountains are mediated by other means such as film, literature, or photography, and 2) "Mediating Mountains," i.e. how mountains' physical and abstract presence mediates our way of thinking about nature, the environment, or history. Having these two interrelated perspectives of how mountains shape our reality opened up the floor for many interdisciplinary discussions.

The Keynotes

Three keynotes explored the way in which mountains are framed and utilized in visual culture, yet placed their respective examples within different historical, ideological, and experiential contexts, thus covering much more ground than their primary texts. Jennifer Peterson, Chair of the Department of Communication at Woodbury University, gave her keynote lecture “Highroads and Skyroads: Cinematic Mountains and the US National Park Service” on Friday afternoon. During her talk, she traced the evolution of the concepts of wilderness, modernity, and the Anthropocene with regards to mountains by analyzing and historicizing informational films about US National Parks in the West that were produced by the US National Park Service and the US Department of the Interior during the 1920s and 1930s. Peterson convincingly outlined the influence of roadbuilding, auto-mobility, and fossil capitalism by framing these films within the dynamics of advertisement and ideas of ‘wilderness’ and recreation—ideas that only emerged outside of nature spaces. The material Peterson presented attested to the tenuous relationship between onscreen nature spaces promising recreation, nature, and freedom on the one hand, and the obsession with technology, mobility, and cars on the other. Promoting automobiles against the backdrop of great mountainous scenery, said Peterson, not only speaks to the historically grown dependence on technology but also to the creation and promotion of recreation in National Parks for the masses.

The effects of these promotional nature films were later illustrated in a screening of four silent films—among them Roads in Our National Parks (1927), Land of the Lofty Mountains (1936), and The Olympus Country (1936)—accompanied on piano by Gregor Blösl. It became clear how these films combined the story of opening up the land via roads with emotional and scenic visuals to create an affective American narrative of conquering the Western wilderness.

In his keynote lecture “Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy: Two Landscapes of the Anthropocene 1970 and 2014,” Sean Cubitt, professor of Film and Television at Goldsmiths, University of London tries to think about imagination without romanticizing or pathologizing it in order to illustrate that the Anthropocene is a shared, participatory dystopian imagination that is always threatened by the tyranny of the present. By comparing two film adaptations of the traditional Chinese story Tracks in the Snowy Forest, Cubitt investigated how the way in which mountains are imagined on screen has changed over time and what these changes can tell us about the collective imaginary at two important points in time. He linked the CGI-technology of the 2014 movie by Tsui Hark back to the stage props and set paintings of the 1970 movie, in order to point to a continuation of a mechanism that constantly references mountains to imagine the mountains in their symbolic function as projection screens of a collective imagination. And this mechanism, Cubitt concluded, is relentlessly repeated in the Anthropocene.

The final keynote by Sascha Pöhlmann, titled “Thereness: Video Game Mountains as Limits of Interactivity,” concluded the official part of the conference on Sunday. Pöhlmann, who is interim Professor of North American Literature and Culture at the University of Konstanz, conceptualized the mediation of mountains with “thereness” which describes the experiential quality of mountains in video games. Using three mountain-centered games—Celeste (2018), Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy (2017), and Mountain (2014)—he explained how mountains are employed in these games to invite and resist being engaged by humans. Interestingly, you can’t really play with the mountains in these games, nor do they serve as scenic backgrounds or pathos-driven metaphors. The fact that these games put limitations on the power-and-control mechanisms that players have become used to, not only elevates the existence of the mountains to an experience beyond ourselves, Pöhlmann argued, but also offers the opportunity to analyze underlying criticisms of power, consumerism, or social normativity that these limitations evoke.

The Panels

The great variety and quality of the seventeen panels substantiated the benefit of using mountain studies as a lens through which to approach, analyze, historicize, and negotiate North America. The sheer number of contributions and selected talks exemplifies the usefulness of this angle within the American Studies community in Austria, Germany, and beyond. Ranging from different disciplines such as film studies in the panel “Mountain Cinema” to musicology in “Mountains and Music” to social history in “Appalachia: Sacred Space and Spiritual Ecology,” the panel selection spoke to the breadth of scholarly engagement. Panels such as “Ecological Narratives,” “Mountains and Masculinity,” and “Mountains as Figures of Identity” exemplified the productivity of analyzing mountains to explore notions of genre, gender, or identity. Other crucial mountain-related aspects such as femininity, whiteness, American colonialism, the Native American genocide and adjoining considerations of racism, displacement, and social justice, were often implied in Q&As and discussions, yet were not part of the official program. To more fully make use of the academic productivity of mountain scholarship, extra effort should be put to encourage work in these areas.

The panel “Photographic Construction of Mountains” chaired by Ingrid Gessner (Vorarlberg) brought together four perspectives that negotiated mountain photography. Sabine Sielke’s (Bonn) “Revisiting Brokeback Mountain, or: How Mountains Matter” read mountains in Ang Lee’s 2005 film as liminal space for the transgression of norms in which the power of the imaginary—informed by the Western genre as much as by Melodrama—, the visual memory—informed by artists such as Ansel Adams, Edward Hopper, and William Eggleston—, and the repertoire of meaning that mountains symbolize come together to negotiate class, homosexuality, as well as the natural. In her talk “The Power of Collective Vision: Landscape, Visual Media, and the Production of American Mountains,” Danielle Raad (Amherst) reflected upon Jean Baudrillard’s concepts of the Premodern, the Modern, and the Postmodern to investigate how mountain images have been appropriated to fit national narratives, as exemplified by panoramas and stereoscopes. Special focus lay on the way personal experiences are mediated by preformulated images that often exclude alternative conceptions of landscape e.g. by Native Americans or African Americans. Hannah Zindel (Lüneburg) traced the historical impact of alpine ballooning in her talk “Aerial Alps: Balloon Photography and Mountain Modeling in the 19th Century.” She focused on the work of geologist Albert Heim and Eduard Spelterini, balloon captain and photographer, who embarked on numerous balloon flights across the Alps to improve cartography through photographs and reliefs. Ballooning, first undertaken to understand mountains better, facilitated the production of natural reliefs a craft that, as shown, is as much scientific as it is artistic. Discussing Barry Goldwater’s landscape photography of Arizona, Susann Köhler (Göttingen) investigated both of Goldwater’s personas—the politician and the amateur-photographer—in her talk “‘Down the Rugged Canyon Route’”. Reading the photographs against the backdrop of his political career and understanding how the two aspects intersect, shed light on the politics and aesthetics of this conservative politician.

“Building Mountains: Visual Landmarks and Narrative Functions,” the panel on architecture, was chaired by Robert Winkler (Gießen). Unfortunately, Sabrina Mittermeier (Augsburg) could not attend. Therefore, the panelists Julia Lange (Hamburg) and Wiebke Kartheus (Göttingen) were able to expand upon their talks a little bit more and left enough room for a lively discussion afterwards. In her talk “Taking Bauhaus to the Mountains: Capitalism, Modernism, and the Aspen Jet Set,” Lange delineated the history of Bauhaus architecture in the Rocky Mountains and illuminated the question of how Aspen—the mining town-turned-high-class-ski-resort—could become a Mekka for Modernist architecture. As so often in American local history, the vision of an individual, in this case William Paepcke, was the driving force behind a cultural phenomenon. Kartheus followed the trajectories of ongoing architecture projects at the Denver Art Museum and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in her talk “From the Rocky Mountains to the Hollywood Hills” to explore how both institutions implement their surroundings to narrate themselves, their collections, as well as their communities. Pre-formulated imaginaries, she argued, that are activated by the collections themselves or broadly-disseminated images in the media are called-upon by the art museums to place them within the American West, whose art tradition is not as well-established as in the the Eastern part of the country.

During the last session on Sunday morning, the panel “Commodifying Verticality: Symbols, Systems, and Snow” took a systemic approach to explore commercially-driven dynamics surrounding mountains. Carolin Roeder (Berlin) tied commodification to professionalization in mountain climbing during her presentation “How Hard Is Hard? Climbing Grades and the Classification of Verticality in the Twentieth Century.” She explained how understanding the complex notions of difficulty grading can be used as a productive angle to investigate tensions between the individual and the collective, the objective and the subjective, and the global and the local, that were so prevalent in the 20th century. Ultimately, she concluded, the essence of mountain climbing is the experience of verticality, an experience that through the system of difficulty grading has become shareable. In her talk “Logos on Everest” Rachel Gross (Munich) followed the question of how specialized sports attire and equipment became everyday wear. Taking an approach that combines business history with the history of mountain climbing and outdoor clothing gave a great perspective to understand the development of sponsor-climber-partnerships over time and the effects of well-placed sponsorships during mountain tours with regards to increased popularity and profits. Jesse Ritner (Austin) looked at snow-making systems in his talk “Making Snow and Designing X-Games: Technological Innovation and the Production of a New Ski Culture.” Using the technology and history of snow-making as his trajectory, Ritner explored how the ever-presence of snow and its altered materiality changed the course of ski-tourism in the US since the late 1940s and ultimately led to the formation of a new subculture—snowboarding and extreme skiing—that is now on its way into the mainstream by way of commercialization as exemplified by the X-Games.

The status of Appalachia as one of the US mountain regions that are most present in the collective imaginary was well reflected in the conference program and showed a strong commitment to a cross-cultural, mountain-focused cooperation. Appalachia was not only represented in many panels and presentations that focused on this region, its history, geology, literature, and ecology, but also by the numerous scholars from the region who were present and shared their expertise in many conversations. The in-depth knowledge of the region became especially apparent in the panel discussion on Saturday night during which Jessie Blackburn, Associate Professor and Assistant Chair of the English Department at Appalachian State University, and Cameron D. Lippard, Chair of Sociology at Appalachian State University, presented on current re-formulations of Appalachian economics in relation to alcohol. Blackburn thematized Appalachian mountain vineyards and the way in which historical, cultural, regional, recreational, and environmental subjectivities are mediated in relation to wine making and tasting. “Bottling Steep Slopes” gave an excellent overview about these positive developments in the region but was also concerned with the difficulties of stigma and stereotypes that resonate with Appalachia. At the same time, she argued, wine tourism has to sell ‘nostalgic’ and ‘authentic’ notions of the region to stay profitable and to create a sense of heritage and the ‘posh rural’ that can be bottled and taken to the metropolitan areas. Nonetheless, said Blackburn, the wine industry offers a way out of the reliance on fossil capitalism.

Contrary to the expected longevity of wine making in Appalachia, the re-emergence of distilleries that produce moonshine can only be described as short-lived, according to Lampard. With the popularity of craft beer, there was also a found-again interest in making moonshine starting around 2008 when distilleries were legalized, Lippard stated during his talk “Modern Moonshine: the Revival of White Whiskey in the Twenty-First Century.” Moonshine with its connotations of prohibition, illegality, poverty, and individual legends presented a curios product to outsiders, who would buy an experience. Nowadays, however, many legal distilleries have to expand to making other forms of alcohol such as gin or rum; or have to put their moonshine into barrels in order to guarantee a more stable business model. In his talk, Lippard could relate the story of moonshine in Appalachia and its problematic past and present not just through rhetoric but also by offering ‘Original Appalachian Moonshine’ to an audience eager to learn.

The 46^th annual conference of the AAAS on “Mediating Mountains” was an excellently organized, engaging event beautifully framed by the Alps and brought to life by an expert community interested in exchanging ideas and experiences. Christian Quendler and Cornelia Klecker did an outstanding job in hosting this event and the Advisory Committee selected great speakers and thought-provoking topics, thus providing a sound basis for all scholarly discussions.