Einführung in die Amerikanistik/American Studies (review)

Udo Hebel begins this German-language introduction to our interdisciplinary field with a familiar question, drawn from Janice Radway's provocative 1998 ASA presidential address—"What's in a name?"—and crafts a meticulously executed, 478-page answer that is always mindful of nomenclature, scholarly scope, and institutional imperatives. The title of the work contains two options, "Amerikanistik" and "American Studies." "Amerikanistik" acknowledges the analogy to the study of other linguistic/cultural groups ("bezeichnet als Analogiebildung zu Philologien wie Anglistik, Germanistik, Romanistik den universitären Studiengang") and marks the field as the systematic study of the language and literature of the United States ("Wissenschaft von Sprache und Literatur der Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika"), a powerful designation in the German university system. "American Studies" proclaims an allegiance with the domestic, U.S. configuration of the field as an investigation, across disciplinary lines, of the totality and complexity of cultural productions, processes, and institutions in the U.S. ("der Gesamtheit und Vielfalt der kulturellen Produktionen, Prozesse und Institutionen in den USA"). Thus Hebel embraces both the classic definition of American Studies, as articulated by Henry Nash Smith in his 1957 American Quarterly article, and the turbulent history of the field, both its institutional formations and its interactions with the culture, particularly from the 1960s onward. Thus, the double name substantiates the field in the German university system and establishes an interdisciplinary focus for both teaching and research. A lot is invested in a name, it turns out, particularly outside the United States where the study of American culture(s) has to compete with other, compelling interdisciplinary enterprises—European Studies and Transatlantic Studies, for example—on the shifting terrain of post-Bologna European Union universities.

This is the finest, most systematic, university-level, single-authored introduction to American Studies that I know of. Throughout, Hebel defines terms ("Zum Begriff") through references in both German and English. He offers students opportunities for further exploration ("Zur Vertiefung") through enticing excerpts, lists, and chronologies. The text begins with an overview of resources and ends with a very useful bibliography. In my experience teaching in universities within the European Union, it appears to me that Hebel intends first year or second year students as his main audience. A useful recapitulation of American cultural history, almost 150 pages long, would certainly give undergraduates plenty to hang on to but might be repetitive for some advanced students who might use it as a reference tool. His discussion of ideologies and identity construction is the foundation for a full American Studies curriculum: freedom, democracy, and individualism; the frontier thesis; pluralism; the land of unbounded opportunity, the self-made man, and the protestant work ethic; the immigrant nation between melting pot and multi-ethnicity; and a section on exceptionalism and the virtually untranslatable "Sendungsbewusstsein" ("consciousness of mission" doesn't capture the missionary zeal) among them. Later on, a full chapter reviews the major approaches to the study of American culture, from the Myth/Symbol School to post-structuralist approaches, the fracturing of perspective caused by the culture wars of the 1980s, and the current vogue of transnationalism. Leading the student into the text is a strategically-placed cultural mapping of the United States: basic understandings of "America" pass through the interdisciplinary filter of landscape study before the term itself is problematized in the rest of the text.

The qualities of Hebel's book stand in higher relief through comparison with a popular text currently in use in universities in Europe and beyond, American Civilization, the 5th edition (only the 4th, 2005, was available to me) issued in 2009. Because this is an English-language text, it can be marketed more widely, but it loses Hebel's focus. While David Mauk, the principal author, does cover major themes in American culture, he provides little historical context; because Hebel's text is written for an audience with which the author is familiar, there is a more confident "Fachlichkeit" (roughly, substance pertaining to the field) throughout. Because American Studies is configured differently...