Transatlantic Exchanges: Between the American South and Europe

The project intends to extend the area of research explored in an earlier project (which received a very positive evaluation by an outside examiner in 2004) to include transatlantic exchanges in both directions and in various art forms and media. While retaining its foundation in a fusion of imagological and American Studies approaches, the new project will strengthen the comparative and interdisciplinary dimensions by integrating questions and categories used in Cultural Studies paradigms and pay special attention to the importance of race, class and gender in transatlantic interactions and their reflection in various discourses. (cf. the ideological aspects of the cultural exchange and the imagological consequences of working class fiction from the American South since then ). After archival work on fiction writers such as Fl. O`Connor, E. Welty and C. McCullers the investigation will expand an earlier study of the reception of the distinct traditions of Southern fiction in Continental Europe (here an update of a publication which appeared in 1996 is intended) by the exemplary examination of plays from this region (for instance, by T. Williams, H. Foote, and L. Hellman), of popular music, as well as selected films which had a formative influence on twentieth century culture in the Old World and helped to shape various facets of the image of the Southern region(s) (cf. J. Kirby, Media-Made Dixie). Further attention will be paid to the various phases of transatlantic migrations of Southern men and women, whites and African Americans, who moved to Continental Europe in the era of Prohibition and segregation (archival work at Yale and Princeton Universities, after research in Georgia, South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas will be necessary), as well as to the contributions of European exiles, some of whom found their way to Southern institutions and exerted a degree of influence on their academic environments. The give-and-take of the two large spheres facing each other across the Atlantic will, on the one hand, be examined by studying further published and unpublished travelogues of Southern writers and artists in Continental Europe and the exploitation of their impressions in various media. The project will, on the other hand, also involve the collection of further evidence for the observations of Europeans traveling through Dixie in the twentieth century and for the impact of their perceptions and representations in carefully selected cases. Here interdisciplinary collaboration with German, British, and other European experts on the imaginative use of Southern settings and contexts will be inevitable. Some of the results of the research project will be used for an international colloquium (under the auspices of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the British Academy) scheduled to take place in Vienna in Sept./Oct. 2006 and for the preparation of its proceedings as well as for a monograph.

The project intends to extend the area of research explored in an earlier project (which received a very positive evaluation by an outside examiner in 2004) to include transatlantic exchanges in both directions and in various art forms and media. While retaining its foundation in a fusion of imagological and American Studies approaches, the new project will strengthen the comparative and interdisciplinary dimensions by integrating questions and categories used in Cultural Studies paradigms and pay special attention to the importance of race, class and gender in transatlantic interactions and their reflection in various discourses. (cf. the ideological aspects of the cultural exchange and the imagological consequences of working class fiction from the American South since then ). After archival work on fiction writers such as Fl. O`Connor, E. Welty and C. McCullers the investigation will expand an earlier study of the reception of the distinct traditions of Southern fiction in Continental Europe (here an update of a publication which appeared in 1996 is intended) by the exemplary examination of plays from this region (for instance, by T. Williams, H. Foote, and L. Hellman), of popular music, as well as selected films which had a formative influence on twentieth century culture in the Old World and helped to shape various facets of the image of the Southern region(s) (cf. J. Kirby, Media-Made Dixie). Further attention will be paid to the various phases of transatlantic migrations of Southern men and women, whites and African Americans, who moved to Continental Europe in the era of Prohibition and segregation (archival work at Yale and Princeton Universities, after research in Georgia, South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas will be necessary), as well as to the contributions of European exiles, some of whom found their way to Southern institutions and exerted a degree of influence on their academic environments. The give-and-take of the two large spheres facing each other across the Atlantic will, on the one hand, be examined by studying further published and unpublished travelogues of Southern writers and artists in Continental Europe and the exploitation of their impressions in various media. The project will, on the other hand, also involve the collection of further evidence for the observations of Europeans traveling through Dixie in the twentieth century and for the impact of their perceptions and representations in carefully selected cases. Here interdisciplinary collaboration with German, British, and other European experts on the imaginative use of Southern settings and contexts will be inevitable. Some of the results of the research project will be used for an international colloquium (under the auspices of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the British Academy) scheduled to take place in Vienna in Sept./Oct. 2006 and for the preparation of its proceedings as well as for a monograph.