Publications 2011-2018
Charlotte A. Lerg, Susanne Lachenicht and Michael Kimmage: The Transatlantic Reconsiderd. The Atlantic World in Crisis. Manchester UP, 2018.
Is the Atlantic World in a state of crisis? At a time when many political observers perceive indeed a crisis in transatlantic relations, critical evaluation of past narratives and frameworks in Transatlantic Relations and Atlantic History alike become crucial. This volume provides an academic foundation to critically assess the Atlantic World and to rethink transatlantic relations in a transnational and global perspective.
The TransAtlantic Reconsidered brings together leading experts such as Harvard historians Charles S. Maier and Bernard Bailyn and former ERC scientific board member Nicholas Canny. All the scholars represented in this volume have helped to shape, re-shape, and challenge the narrative(s) of the Atlantic World and can thus (re-)evaluate its conceptual basis in view of historiographical developments and contemporary challenges.
Benjamin D. Lisle. Modern Coliseum. Stadiums and American Culture. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017. (A volume in the series Architecture | Technology | Culture)
From the legendary Ebbets Field in the heart of Brooklyn to the amenity-packed Houston Astrodome to the "retro" Oriole Park at Camden Yards, stadiums have taken many shapes and served different purposes throughout the history of American sports culture. In the early twentieth century, a new generation of stadiums arrived, located in the city center, easily accessible to the public, and offering affordable tickets that drew mixed crowds of men and women from different backgrounds. But in the successive decades, planners and architects turned sharply away from this approach.
In Modern Coliseum, Benjamin D. Lisle tracks changes in stadium design and culture since World War II. These engineered marvels channeled postwar national ambitions while replacing aging ballparks typically embedded in dense urban settings. They were stadiums designed for the "affluent society"—brightly colored, technologically expressive, and geared to the car-driving, consumerist suburbanite. The modern stadium thus redefined one of the city's more rambunctious and diverse public spaces.
Modern Coliseum offers a cultural history of this iconic but overlooked architectural form. Lisle grounds his analysis in extensive research among the archives of teams, owners, architects, and cities, examining how design, construction, and operational choices were made. Through this approach, we see modernism on the ground, as it was imagined, designed, built, and experienced as both an architectural and a social phenomenon. With Lisle's compelling analysis supplemented by over seventy-five images documenting the transformation of the American stadium over time, Modern Coliseum will be of interest to a variety of readers, from urban and architectural historians to sports fans.
Uwe Lübken, Martin Knoll and Dieter Schott eds., Rivers Lost, Rivers Regained: Rethinking City-River Relations. Pittsburgh, PA: Pittsburgh University Press 2017.
Many cities across the globe are rediscovering their rivers. After decades or even centuries of environmental decline and cultural neglect, waterfronts have been vamped up and become focal points of urban life again; hidden and covered streams have been daylighted while restoration projects have returned urban rivers in many places to a supposedly more natural state. This volume traces the complex and winding history of how cities have appropriated, lost, and regained their rivers. But rather than telling a linear story of progress, the chapters of this book highlight the ambivalence of these developments. The four sections in Rivers Lost, Rivers Regained discuss how cities have gained control and exerted power over rivers and waterways far upstream and downstream; how rivers and floodplains in cityscapes have been transformed by urbanization and industrialization; how urban rivers have been represented in cultural manifestations, such as novels and songs; and how more recent strategies work to redefine and recreate the place of the river within the urban setting.
At the nexus between environmental, urban, and water histories, Rivers Lost, Rivers Regained points out how the urban-river relationship can serve as a prime vantage point to analyze fundamental issues of modern environmental attitudes and practices.
Charlotte A.Lerg and Heléna Tóth: Transatlantic Revolutionary Cultures 1789-1861. Brill, 2017
Transatlantic Revolutionary Cultures, 1789-1861 argues that the revolutionary era constituted a coherent chapter in transatlantic history and that individual revolutions were connected to a broader, transatlantic and transnational frame. As a composite, the essays place instances of political upheaval during the long nineteenth century in Europe and the Americas in a common narrative and offer a new interpretation on their seeming asynchrony. In the age of revolutions the formation of political communities and cultural interactions were closely connected over time and space. Reciprocal connections arose from discussions on the nature of history, deliberations about constitutional models, as well as the reception of revolutions in popular culture. These various levels of cultural and intellectual interchange we term “transatlantic revolutionary cultures.”
Klaus Benesch and François Specq, eds. Walking and the Aesthetics of Modernity: Pedestrian Mobility in Literature and the Arts. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.
This book gathers together an array of international scholars, critics, and artists concerned with the issue of walking as a theme in modern literature, philosophy, and the arts. Covering a wide array of authors and media from eighteenth-century fiction writers and travelers to contemporary film, digital art, and artists’ books, the essays collected here take a broad literary and cultural approach to the art of walking, which has received considerable interest due to the burgeoning field of mobility studies. Contributors demonstrate how walking, far from constituting a simplistic, naïve, or transparent cultural script, allows for complex visions and reinterpretations of a human’s relation to modernity, introducing us to a world of many different and changing realities.
Martin Lüthe and Sascha Pöhlmann, eds. Unpopular Culture. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2016.
This collection includes eighteen essays that introduce the concept of unpopular culture and explore its critical possibilities and ramifications from a large variety of perspectives. Proposing a third term that operates beyond the dichotomy of high culture and mass culture and yet offers a fresh approach to both, these essays address a multitude of different topics that can all be classified as unpopular culture. From David Foster Wallace and Ernest Hemingway to Zane Grey, from Christian Rock and Country to Black Metal, from Steven Seagal to Genesis (Breyer) P-Orridge, from K-pop to The Real Housewives, from natural disasters to 9/11, from thesis hatements to professional sports, these essays find the unpopular across media and genres, and they analyze the politics and the aesthetics of an unpopular culture (and the unpopular in culture) that has not been duly recognized as such by the theories and methods of cultural studies.
You can download the editors' introduction as a PDF here.
Bärbel Harju mit Karsten Fitz. Eds. Cultures of Privacy. Paradigms, Transformations, Contestations. Heidelberg: Winter, 2015.
America has been hailed as the land of personal freedom, where the rights of the single citizen reign over the demands and expectations of the masses. Yet freedom of choice and the premium placed on private property also necessitated a counter force, a submission to authority, and pre-established patterns of behavior. And it led to a highly ambivalent notion of privacy, as an individual right situated between apparent opposites – private freedom and public order, liberalism and authoritarianism, (individual) autonomy and (communal) collectivity.
‘Cultures of Privacy – Paradigms, Transformations, Contestations’ addresses the nation’s struggles to harmonize these opposites, to reconcile the private and the public, both in a historical and comparative, transnational perspective. Individual contributions take issue with the staggering transformations of the public/private dichotomy, with the alleged erosion of privacy in the political arena, the “right to be let alone” in US legal culture, and the ambiguous hyperemphasis on the private in the media and in popular and literary culture (as in confessional blogs, social networks, and memoirs).
Sascha Pöhlmann. Future-Founding Poetry: Topographies of Beginnings from Whitman to the Twenty-First Century. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2015.
Although issues of futurity have become more and more central to literary and cultural studies in recent years, especially in environmental criticism, no scholarly work has yet addressed the topic of beginnings in American poetry in sufficient scope or detail or with adequate theoretical background. This book is a study of how beginnings are made in American poetry. It borrows Walt Whitman’s term “future-founding” to establish a theory of poetic beginnings that asks how poetry relates to notions of the future and how it imagines, constructs, and influences this future in the present. Furthermore, it seeks to change the way literary scholars think about futurity with regard to American poetry: they most often conceive of it in terms of newness alone, yet a deeper theorization of beginnings must open up new ways of understanding the complexities of this relation. With chapters on Whitman, William Carlos Williams, Langston Hughes, Muriel Rukeyser, Allen Ginsberg, and future-founding poetry after 9/11, this book explains how American poetry makes its beginnings, with what means and to which political and aesthetic ends, and how it addresses fundamental questions about the nature of futurity itself.
Julius Greve and Sascha Pöhlmann, eds. America and the Musical Unconscious. New York: Atropos Press, 2015.
Music occupies a peculiar role in the field of American Studies. It is undoubtedly recognized as an important form of cultural production, yet the field continues to privilege textual and visual forms of art as its objects of examination. The essays collected in this volume seek to adjust this imbalance by placing music center stage while still acknowledging its connections to the fields of literary and visual studies that engage with the specifically American cultural landscape. In doing so, they proffer the concept of the ‘musical unconscious’ as an analytical tool of understanding the complexities of the musical production of meanings in various social, political, and technological contexts, in reference to country, queer punk, jazz, pop, black metal, film music, blues, carnival music, Muzak, hip-hop, experimental electronic music, protest and campaign songs, minimal music, and of course the kazoo.
With contributions by Hanjo Berressem, Christian Broecking, Martin Butler, Christof Decker, Mario Dunkel, Benedikt Feiten, Paola Ferrero, Jürgen Grandt, Julius Greve, Christian Hänggi, Jan Niklas Jansen, Thoren Opitz, Sascha Pöhlmann, Arthur Sabatini, Christian Schmidt, Björn Sonnenberg-Schrank, Gunter Süß, and Katharina Wiedlack.
Christof Decker and Astrid Böger, eds. Transnational Mediations: Negotiating Popular Culture between Europe and the United States. Heidelberg: Winter, 2015.
In the 20th and 21st centuries, American media have been continually received, adapted, and transformed by European cultures. Initially based on the competition among the early film industries and continuing with today’s global dominance of American web-based companies, these productive exchanges entail complex economic, aesthetic, and cultural negotiations. The dynamic and scope of these negotiations has been ambiguous, ranging from instances of cultural imperialism to the subversion of social and cultural hierarchies. More often than not, they have furthered the exchange of creative ideas and the cross-fertilization of media and art productions. This publication highlights core arenas of transnational cultural encounters including photography, film, fashion, advertising, television, and the new media. It asks not merely how American media productions were received in different European cultural contexts but how they shaped the idea of distinct yet interconnected European identities.
With contributions by William Uricchio, Frank Mehring, Astrid Böger, Anneke Smelik, Maaike Feitsma, Hilaria Loyo, Juan A. Suárez, Gilles Menegaldo, Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet, Ralph J. Poole, Philip Schlesinger, Melvyn Stokes, Christof Decker, Tomáš Pospíšil.
Georgiana Banita and Sascha Pöhlmann, eds. Electoral Cultures: American Democracy and Choice. Heidelberg: Winter, 2015.
Presidential elections are essential to US culture, shaping the nation’s stability and global influence. This volume is the first to establish an interdisciplinary platform for a broad investigation of election mechanics and legacies. Historians, political scientists, literary scholars, and cultural theorists shed light on the narratives of election successes and failures. Beginning with the struggle for voting rights and extending to current representations of candidates and campaigns, Electoral Cultures examines elections as complex cultural phenomena. Analyzing political processes and personalities from Lincoln to Obama, the chapters query assumptions about democracy in the United States. The resulting survey significantly alters how we perceive the paradoxical American ideals of equality, individualism, and authenticity. In its sweeping scope and rich detail, the book opens up an incisive new scholarly field concerned with US political culture and its place in the world today.
Uwe Lübken and Rebecca Hofmann, eds., Shrinking, Sinking, Resurfacing? Small Islands and Natural Hazards in Historical and Current Perspectives. Special Issue of Global Environment 8 (1/2015, New Series).
Seen as insignificant due to their size, small islands have often been ignored by mainstream historical research. However, in a world facing climate change and rising sea levels, these places have turned into pioneer communities at the forefront of global environmental change. This special issue offers interdisciplinary perspective on natural hazards and the problem they cause for small islands. It offers a corrective to the focus on vulnerability, which neglects the fact that small island communities have thrived for centuries, often dealing with these challenges successfully. The case studies in this issue consider whether or not disasters define island life and whether there is something unique and instructive in how small islands deal with hazards.
Uwe Lübken and Frank Uekötter, eds., Managing the Unknown: Natural Reserves in Historical Perspective. New York: Berghahn Books, 2014 (Paperback 2016).
Information is crucial when it comes to the management of resources. But what if knowledge is incomplete, or biased, or otherwise deficient? How did people define patterns of proper use in the absence of cognitive certainty? Discussing this challenge for a diverse set of resources from fish to rubber, these essays show that deficient knowledge is a far more pervasive challenge in resource history than conventional readings suggest. Furthermore, environmental ignorance does not inevitably shrink with the march of scientific progress: these essays suggest more of a dialectical relationship between knowledge and ignorance that has different shapes and trajectories. With its combination of empirical case studies and theoretical reflection, the essays make a significant contribution to the interdisciplinary debate on the production and resilience of ignorance. At the same time, this volume combines insights from different continents as well as the seas in between and thus sketches outlines of an emerging global resource history.
Klaus Benesch and Miles Orvell, eds. Rethinking the American City: An International Dialogue. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014.
Whether struggling in the wake of postindustrial decay or reinventing themselves with new technologies and populations, cities have once again moved to the center of intellectual and political concern. Rethinking the American City brings together leading scholars from a range of disciplines to examine an array of topics that illuminate the past, present, and future of cities.
Rethinking the American City offers a lively and fascinating survey of contemporary thinking about cities in a transnational context. Utilizing an innovative format, each chapter opens with an iconic image and includes a brief and provocative essay on a single topic followed by an extended dialogue among all the essayists. Topics range from energy use, design, and digital media to transportation systems and housing to public art, urban ruins, and futurist visions. By engaging with key contemporary concerns—public and private space, sustainability, ethnic and racial divisions, and technology—this volume illuminates how global society has imagined American urban life.
Contributors: Klaus Benesch, Dolores Hayden, David M. Lubin, Malcolm McCullough, Jeffrey L. Meikle, David E. Nye, Miles Orvell, Andrew Ross, Mabel O. Wilson, Albena Yaneva.
Klaus Benesch, ed. Culture and Mobility. Heidelberg: Winter, 2014.
What connects the Baltimore Washington International Airport and South Korea’s Songdo International Business District? What are the cultural narratives that unfold from their bold visions of mobility and of the city in transit and transition? Put another way, what are the relations between modernity, mobile lifestyles, and urban spaces as we move deeper into what the French sociologist Marc Augé has called the age of ‘supermodernity’? Perhaps more importantly, are there alternative ways of thinking about mobility and the future of society in a rapidly shrinking, globally interconnected and, at the same time, socially and culturally divided world?
In their wide-ranging contributions geographers, political scientists, historians, economists, and cultural critics take a closer look at mobility in an American context (and beyond). Investigating aspects of American mobility from a decidedly transnational and transatlantic perspective, these essays conjoin in revealing mobility as a crucial constituent of what we call modernity. They also identify some of the negative consequences and challenges of mobility in an increasingly endangered global ecology.
Sascha Pöhlmann, ed. Revolutionary Leaves: The Fiction of Mark Z. Danielewski. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012.
Mark Z. Danielewski is routinely hailed as the most exciting author in contemporary American literature, and he is celebrated by critics and ans alike. Revolutionary Leaves collects essays that have come out of the first academic conference on Danielewski’s fiction that took place n Munich in 2011, which brought together younger and established cholars to discuss his works from a variety of perspectives. Addressing his major works House of Leaves (2000) and Only Revolutions (2006), the texts are as multifaceted as the novels they analyze, and they incorporate ideas of (post)structuralism, modernism, post- and post-postmodernism, philosophy, Marxism, reader-response criticism, mathematics and physics, politics, media studies, science fiction, gothic horror, poetic theory, history, architecture, mythology, and more.
With contributions by Nathalie Aghoro, Ridvan Askin, Hanjo Berressem, Aleksandra Bida, Brianne Bilsky, Joe Bray, Alison Gibbons, Julius Greve, Sebastian Huber, Sascha Pöhlmann, and Hans-Peter Söder.
Uwe Lübken (ed.), Environmental Change and Migration in History (Special Issue of Global Environment V (9/2012).
Evironmental migration is like a ghost; some insist they have seen it, while others deny its very existence. While “maximalists” argue that there is a direct causal connection between changes in the natural environment and the movement of people, “minimalists” point out that environmental factors in people’s decisions to migrate are difficult to detect and play a contributing role at best. Despite the great potential of a historical approach to environmental migration, historians themselves have also so far been remarkably silent on the topic. This special issue of Global Environment attempts to broaden the framework of the debate by adding historical depth to the analysis of environmental change and migration.
Uwe Lübken, Greg Bankoff and Jordan Sand, eds., Flammable Cities: Urban Conflagration and the Making of the Modern World. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2012.
In most cities today, fire has been reduced to a sporadic and isolated threat. But throughout history the constant risk of fire has left a deep and lasting imprint on almost every dimension of urban society. This volume, the first truly global study of urban conflagration, shows how fire has shaped cities throughout the modern world, from Europe to the imperial colonies, major trade entrepôts, and non-European capitals, right up to such present-day megacities as Lagos and Jakarta. Urban fire may hinder commerce or even spur it; it may break down or reinforce barriers of race, class, and ethnicity; it may serve as a pretext for state violence or provide an opportunity for displays of state benevolence. As this volume demonstrates, the many and varied attempts to master, marginalize, or manipulate fire can turn a natural and human hazard into a highly useful social and political tool.
Uwe Lübken and Christof Mauch, eds. “Uncertain Environments: Natural Hazards, Risk, and Insurance in Historical Perspective,” Special Issue of Environment and History (1/2011). 
Natural catastrophes are not just sudden events; they are also embedded in historical patterns of vulnerability and resilience. In modern societies, risk is one of the most important principles applied to the challenges that natural hazards pose and insurance is an ever more important tool of risk management. The contributions to this special issue of Environment and History all stress the fact, however, that environmental risk is not simply a phenomenon 'out there' but the result of social, scientific, economic and cultural processes. They also illustrate that the understanding of risk varies over time.
Barbara Hahn and Meike Zwingenberger, eds. Global Cities – Metropolitan Cultures: A Transatlantic Perspective. Heidelberg: Winter, 2011.
Globalization and urban networks are not a new phenomenon, but have gained momentum since the 1980s. The domination of capital over labor, the restructuring of employment, the polarization of class division and political conflicts have created an urban hierarchy with cities like Tokyo, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, London, and Paris at the top. However, smaller cities located in the semi-periphery form important links in the global network as well. In this volume authors with backgrounds in different fields of research such as geography, sociology, history, and political science look at global cities from various angles. The hierarchy of global cities and the restructuring process within global cities, public policy and urban politics, the rising vulnerability, urban governance, the political sector in Washington, DC, the assimilation of different migrant populations, and the culture of Dancehall Reggae are being discussed.
With contributions by Barbara Hahn, Susan S. Fainstein, Susan E. Clarke, Roger Keil, Karsten Zimmermann, Ulrike Gerhard, Kathleen Neils Conzen, Werner Zips, Caroline Nagel and Lynn Staeheli
