Search results for "American studies"
showing 10 items of 10 documents
El proceso de transculturación en Puerto Rico : el Partido Nacionalista como instrumento de liberación (1898-1965)
1986
Teaching American Realism in Germany
2019
Starting with a critical introduction to the problematic beginnings and US-supported rise of American studies in pre– and post–WWII Germany, this chapter looks at the teaching of American realism and its development in a nation strongly influenced by US culture. Based on archival research, a statistical evaluation of annual bulletins, and information collected from fifty practitioners, the chapter offers the first quantitative and thematic analysis of course offerings at German universities (1953–2016), the first comparison of the relative importance of American realist literature in German university courses and research publications from German-speaking countries (2000–2015), and the firs…
Rethinking Community Quality of Life in Latin American Countries
2017
The community is a totality which is meaningful to the people that form part of it. In this sense community is more than a geographic concentration; it is a concept that implies the inclusion of diversities and their being allowed to share within it. It is related to social support, intersubjective, participation, consensus, common beliefs, and a joint effort which aims at a major objective: intense and extensive relationships. Quality of life is a multidimensional concept (Bramston 2002) and comprises objective and subjective components (Cummins and Cahill 2000). Quality of life in the community is a specificity of quality of life in general, and community well-being is also a predictor of…
Diversity and Life Writing in the Transnational Classroom
2018
For this chapter, Alfred Hornung locates the origin of Germany’s diversity studies in the postwar era, during which Germany experienced gradual transculturation, especially due to the presence of African American soldiers, but also due to the appearance of American cultures in the media, the introduction of American studies in German universities, and the teaching of multi-ethnic authors in American literature courses. On the basis of international pedagogical experience, Hornung demonstrates that life writing lends itself particularly well to the representation and recognition of diversity and suggests how inclusion can be furthered. The focus of this chapter’s transnational classroom comp…
Reggae Outernational: Borders and Trans/National Identity in Jamaican Popular Music
2020
International audience; The history of post-1945 Jamaican popular music is one of constantly changing borders. Despite efforts on the part of the Jamaican state to turn reggae into Jamaica’s exclusively national music and a tourist attraction, reggae and its related subgenres remain to this day a minority culture of the underground, in Jamaica itself and in the many places around the world where it is produced and performed. Recent research on the history of Jamaican popular music suggests that it cannot easily be contained within strictly national borders. Reggae can rather be seen as a focal point around which an incipient alter/native, working-class Jamaican identity is built, both insid…
Latin-American Studies on Well-Being
2014
This chapter aims to describe Latin-American studies on well-being from two different perspectives: the hedonic (life satisfaction, positive and negative emotions) and the eudaimonic (psychological well-being) traditions. An analysis of research articles published between 1998 and 2012 was conducted. The introduced key words were: happiness, life satisfaction and well-being and the search was limited by language of publication restricted to Spanish and Portuguese. Results were analyzed by country of origin, type of well-being study and the inclusion of cultural variables. Those studies focused on what people understood about psychological well-being and the meaning assigned to it are descri…
Welfare State Development, Individual Deprivations and Income Inequality: A cross-country analysis in Latin America and the Caribbean
2019
Several scholars have confirmed the role that the welfare state (WS) plays in reducing poverty, promoting equality and ensuring the common wellbeing. One of the limitations of the scholarship has been the conceptualization and operationalization of the WS and poverty as one-dimensional variables. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between welfare state development –as a one-dimensional and multidimensional variable-, single-dimensions deprivations and income inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean, before and after controlling for demographic and cyclical factors. The WS is operationalized taking into account its multidimensional nature. Three individual deprivat…
The Inner Border: Edward Hopper’s Reimagining the Frontier
2020
International audience
Literature, Simulation, and the Path Towards Deeper Learning
2019
This paper investigates the role of teaching literature for deeper learning. It draws on models of simulation, which have usually been more common in psychology, law, and political science. Teaching literature may be ideally suited for deeper learning since literary texts can be seen as experimental social action. Each text confronts its readers with ethical choices. This property of literature as a medium can in turn be transformed into new models for teaching literature. Ultimately, literary simulations can hence constitute a path towards civic education and social responsibility. Such approaches, in turn, may contribute not only to discussions of the “relevance” of the humanities as such…
Finns and the Indigenous People in the Great Lakes Region: Playing with Settler Myths in Late 20th- and Early 21st-Century Finnish American Fiction
2022
This chapter explores the Finnish settler migration mythology through a selection of Finnish–American literature produced in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The idea is to shed light on the ways in which these texts create, spread, and perpetuate the settler myths. A close reading of literary texts can offer the opportunity to refocus, reframe, and reconceptualize Finnish experiences in North America. The chapter demonstrates that these texts can be approached as reinforcing the Finnish–Indigenous myth. They feature perennial images and themes as well as familiar one dimensional and/or glamorizing and sugarcoating stereotypes, such as shared lore and mysticism, sauna–sweat lodge sim…