Nightmare Envy and Other Stories

The way American studies was shaped in its early days by pressures of the Cold War is, by now, an old story, but George Blaustein's Nightmare Envy and Other Stories expands and corrects this perception by describing how the formation of the field was also crucially shaped by World War II. American studies was, in part, the product of U.S. attempts to reconstruct Europe, and Blaustein's research in the archives of the Salzburg Seminar in American Civilisation, which was set up in 1947, reveals a wealth of valuable new information about the social “mission” of American studies. Blaustein also considers the significance of Japan, discussing the establishment of a Tokyo Seminar in American Studies in 1950, and showing how William Faulkner's 1955 visit to Japan was driven by an effort to remodel defeated Axis countries according to American values. A larger contribution of this work thus lies in its explication of how a transnational dynamic has been integral to American studies since the beginning. Blaustein has also unearthed fascinating material, by Johann Friedrich Schönemann, about the development of American studies in Germany during the Nazi period of the 1930s, at a time when America itself was positioned as the “enemy” (p. 26

Aesthetics · American studies · Archaeology · Art · Art history · Civilization · Culture of the United States · Epistemology · Explication · Literature · Nightmare · Period (music · European history and politics · History · Philosophy · Psychology

• Teaching American Studies in the Nordic Countries

  Open Access•Jenny Bonnevier, Adam Hjorthén•American Studies in Scandinavia•2024

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