eJournals Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik 47/1

Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik
0171-5410
2941-0762
Narr Verlag Tübingen
10.24053/AAA-2022-0008
2022
471 Kettemann

Stefan L. Brandt and Michael Fuchs (Eds.). Space Oddities: Difference and Identity in the American City. American Studies in Austria 16. Wien: Lit Verlag, 2018.

2022
Philipp Reisner
Stefan L. Brandt and Michael Fuchs (Eds.). Space Oddities: Difference and Identity in the American City. American Studies in Austria 16. Wien: Lit Verlag, 2018. Philipp Reisner The twelve essays assembled in this volume emerged from the 2014 conference of the Austrian Association for American Studies in Graz, Austria (“Space Oddities. Urbanity, American Identity, and Cultural Exchange”). The title of this anthology of essays, “Space Oddities,” derives from David Bowie’s eponymous iconic song from 1969 about an astronaut leaving the world and floating among the stars. The liminal space, in both a temporal and a spatial sense, that is described in the lyrics, served as inspiration for the conference. In their introduction entitled “Space Oddities and American Cities,” the editors Stefan L. Brandt and Michael Fuchs contextualize Bowie’s song for the purposes of the conference, pointing out that “the American city (and America) was, conceptually, founded outside the geographic borders of the United States of America” (22) and that the defining spatial oddity of our time is the fact that “our daily urban - that is, inevitably local - activities have global effects” (23). They offer a useful spectrum of related tropes from American culture such as the famous statement on SPACE by Charles Olson (1910-70), namely, “the central fact to man born in America” and John Winthrop’s “City Upon a Hill,” which they see as anticipating the ‘Open City’ of the Early Republic, an ideal that was never fully realized, but supplanted by the reality of contested spaces (10-11). In the first essay, “Of Other American Spaces: The Alterity of the Urban in the U.S. National Imaginary,” Robert T. Tally, jr., drawing upon Edgar Allan Poe, examines the subordinate role of urban spaces in conceptualizations of ‘Americanness,’ detecting an awkward correspondence between the growing urban populations and the ideal of settling open rural spaces, a topic he further explores in his essay collection on different aspects of the spatial humanities (Topophrenia: Place, Narrative, and the Spatial Imagination, Indiana University Press, 2018). Markku Salmela next turns to the roles of peripheries in American literary urbanism, demonstrating their central role in the American imagination. Both Tally and Salmela offer a wide theoretical and textual framework, which helps to put the subsequent more specialized essays into perspective. AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Band 47 · Heft 1 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen DOI 10.24053/ AAA-2022-0008 Rezensionen 160 The next two essays address questions of ethnicity in relation to American cities: in “The White Space of the Metropolitan Battlefield,” Johan Höglund discusses the restoration of white masculinity in the urban battlefields of recent alien invasion movies in reference to The Avengers (2012). In “The Last of the Skyscrapers: Urban Myths and Dystopian Realism in Indian Killer’s Seattle,” Fiorenzo Iuliano reads Sherman Alexie’s 1996 novel Indian Killer as a work of dystopian realism, addressing its use of urban myths. The next three contributions focus on queer spaces in American cities: In “Mapping the Ephemeral Community in Larry Kramer’s Faggots and Andrew Holleran’s Dancer from the Dance,” Linda Heß discusses two novels published in 1978 anticipating queer theory and the ephemerality of space. She also examines representations of the divisions within the gay community. In “‘The ghetto is coming out’: Charles Rice-Gonzáles’ Chulito and the Emergence of Queer Puerto Rican Fiction in The Bronx,” Sina A. Nitzsche examines the Puerto Rican gay community in New York City in the Hispanic ‘ghetto’ of Hunts Point, in the Bronx. Eric C. Erbacher discusses the short-lived TV series Looking (HBO, 2014-15) in his contribution entitled “Post-Gay San Francisco? The Queering of Urban Space in the TV Series Looking.” He suggests that the series risks becoming an active agent in the whitewashing of problems of real-life gays and thus in the commodification and “neoliberal commercialization” of gay history and identities (158). Similar questions turn up in Sarah Lahm’s contribution “‘Yas Queen’: Postfeminism and Urban Space Oddities in Broad City,” where she identifies the capitalist critique lurking behind this television series’ feminist engagement. In “Of Roaches, Rats, and Man: Pest Species and Naturecultures in New York Horror Movies,” editor Michael Fuchs examines the representation of rats and cockroaches in horror movies that are set in New York City, arguing that the use of such images even within popular cinematic culture is a particularly complex matter (195). The final two contributions move from the academic to the experiential sphere. In “Invading Amerika: Why Not? The Werkbundsiedlung,” William Tate offers a meditative manifesto for more sustainable home design in the United States in the form of a broad textual collage, delineating his attempt to transfer the spirit of the modernist Viennese Werkbundsiedlung to Virginia in his design school. Continuing in the spirit of collage, Peter Chanthanakone in his contribution entitled “The Virtual Reality of America” relates his experience as a producer of 3D animated short films, explaining how his work draws on the built environment of cities by using mashups of places and objects. Though the title and introduction may lead the reader to expect a more thorough treatment of music in relation to the topic of the (American) city, the emphasis is on novels, film and TV series (four of the ten academic contributions deal with novels, two with film and two with TV series). In their brevity, these essays offer important snapshots of the manifold facets of the American city with a strong focus on its cultural imaginary. In general, one may hope that the field moves beyond its engrained focus on the larger American cities while becoming more aware of the burgeoning historical research especially on ethnic aspects of American cities in recent years. Since the publication of Rezensionen 161 this volume, many studies on the American city and American identity have been published, both along the general thematic line of this volume (such as Exploring the Spatiality of the City across Cultural Texts: Narrating Spaces, Reading Urbanity, edited by Martin Kindermann and Rebekka Rohleder, Springer 2020; Sean W. Maher, Film Noir and Los Angeles: Urban History and the Dark Imaginary, Routledge 2020), and notably on John Winthrop’s “City Upon a Hill” (Daniel T. Rodgers’s seminal As a City on a Hill: The Story of America’s Most Famous Lay Sermon, Princeton University Press 2018, followed by Abram C. Van Engen, City on a Hill: A History of American Exceptionalism, Yale University Press, 2020). It is together with these more recent volumes that this collection is best read. Philipp Reisner Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz