Definitions

Question 1

Culture

Answer 1

All material and symbolic practices of a society, which serve as systems of orientation or interpretation - culture is organised in discourses

Question 2

American Studies

Answer 2

A mixture of historical and literary scholarship including questions of urban studies, media studies especially interested in structures of social differentiation: race, class, gender, ability, age etc.

Question 3

American Exceptionalism

Answer 3

The idea that America is not only different from other states but rather different from all states because it has a specific, perhaps divine mission in world history. In this sense it is unique exceptional and “the greatest country in the world”

Question 4

Checks and Balances

Answer 4

The separation of powers (executive, legislative, judiciary) through specific institutions (presidency, Congress, the courts)

Question 5

Trickster

Answer 5

Mythological figure in indigenous American cultures: a transformer, boundary crosser who is both good and bad, male and female; often a friend and teacher for the human beings, somebody who stole fire from the gods. He is often called “Coyote”. Related to Brer Rabbit, Till Eugenspiegel, Reinike Fuchs

Question 6

Conquest according to Stuart Hall

Answer 6

An act of taking possession that goes along with the idealisation or vilification of the indigenous population through projection and the impositions of European categories and the failure to respect difference

Question 7

Invisible Bullets

Answer 7

Indigenous people believed that they were being killed by the white people through “invisible bullets” - they died from diseases (such as smallpox) which the Europeans brought to America

Question 8

City upon a Hill

Answer 8

John Winthrop used this phrase from the bible to tell hid Puritan brethren what he expected of them: to be a shining example of Christianity and perfection for the whole world. Perhaps the origin of American Exceptionalism

Question 9

Predestination / Providence

Answer 9

Providence, according to the Puritans, is the book of history, in which all events, past or future, are pre-determined by divine will. As a result all human actions, fates, ideas are predestined/ foretold.

Question 10

King Phillip’s War / Metacomet’s War

Answer 10

Colonial/Intercultural war between the white population of New England (the settler colonialists) and the Wapanoag Nation with their sachem (chief) Metacom. It killed 40% of the indigenous population in New England; prisoners were sold into slavery; the power of the indigenous nation was broken.

Question 11

American Enlightenment

Answer 11

Also called the Age of Reason, period that led up to the American Revolution, characterized by writings from John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin etc. Culminated in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution with the Bill of Rights (“all men are created equal” etc.)

Question 12

Federal style in Architecture

Answer 12

The Palladian style of architecture (imitations of Greek and Roman architecture) imported from Europe to America by Thomas Jefferson to serve as a symbol for the new republic - it suggests learning, democracy, civilization but also empire, whiteness and elitism.

Question 13

Age of reform

Answer 13

Period spanning the end of the Early Republic and the Ante-Bellum era, in which a variety of reform movements emerged: abolitionism, temperance, the Sunday School movement, penitentiary reform, dietary reform etc.

Question 14

Nativism

Answer 14

Anti-Immigration movement in the 1840s and 1850s (Know Nothing Movement, American Party) that was Anti-Catholic, Anti-Irish and Anti-German. It wanted to reserve America for those born in America

Question 15

Cult of True Womanhood

Answer 15

Aka the cult of domesticity: a new (sentimental) image of women as the angel in the house, characterized by the four cardinal virtues of domesticity, purity, piety and submissiveness.

Question 16

Tocqueville’s America

Answer 16

Alexis de Tocqueville, French noblemen, travelled through America in the 1830s. He wrote ‘Democracy in America’, in which he described the American character, notably individualism, restlessness, materialism, tyranny of the majority etc.

Question 17

Manifest destiny

Answer 17

The idea (in the 1830s) that it is the divine mission of the United States to overspread the entire American continent because of its “superior” democratic institutions. A form of exceptionalism, beginning of American Imperialism

Question 18

Indian Removal

Answer 18

Policy of the United States against indigenous nations (e.g. Choctaw, Cherokee, Seminole, Chickasaw, Creek), which were evicted in the 1830s to the areas west of the Mississippi. This was a policy of ethnic cleansing, which resulted in thousands of deaths (Trail of Tears, 1830/31)

Question 19

Self-reliance

Answer 19

The concept, made famous by Ralph Waldo Emerson, the time has come for individuals and America as a whole to leave behind imitation (of European ideas) and to rely on ones own, true self. Part of the transcendentalist and romantic discourse of self-improvement

Question 20

Middle passage

Answer 20

The transportation of millions of people from Africa to the Americas on slave ships. Many died during the passage. For the others it remained a traumatic climax and symbol of their deportation

Question 21

Fugitive slave law

Answer 21

A law according to which fugitive slaves from the South have to be returned by the North. Part of the Compromise of 1850 between North and South, it actually deepened the tensions between North and South and led (among other things) to Stowe’s novel ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’

Question 22

Minstrel Show

Answer 22

Popular entertainment show emerging in the 1830s with skits, variety acts, dancing ad music performed by white people in blackface. It made fun of black people ad affirmed several stereotypes about African Americans

Question 23

Plessy vs. Ferguson

Answer 23

Racist Supreme Court decision (from 1896) in which segregation in the South (i.e. Jim Crow laws) were upheld through the formula “separate but equal”. The decision was valid until 1954.

Question 24

Indian Removal Act

Answer 24

Several acts (1851, 71 etc.) according to which members of indigenous nations were moved to reservations in the West. From 1871 on no Indian tribes were recognised as independent nations and indigenous people were treated as individuals and “wards” of the federal government.

Question 25

Turner Thesis

Answer 25

Frederick Jackson Turner suggested in 1893 that the American character and American democratic sentiment were formed through the frontier between civilisation and wilderness. He succeeded to establish the myth of the West and rugged individualist, but his thesis is today largely rejected

Question 26

Realism

Answer 26

Western movement in the arts (starting in France in the 1850s) as a reaction to Romanticism and Sentimentalism. Realists rejected the demand for morality in the arts and turned with a vengeance to mundane topics such as business, science, technology, the social question and modern problems of life

Question 27

Gilded Age

Answer 27

Term coined by Mark Twain for the era of big business in America in the post-bellum time. The Gilded Age was perceived as characterised by materialism, corruption, exploitation and pro-business ideology

Question 28

Horatio Alger

Answer 28

Writer of books for boys in the 1870s, 80s, and 90s, who invented the rags-to-riches formula. In his books, hard-working and energetic boys, who are also morally good, will rise in society and become “somebody” - myth of the self-made man

Question 29

Naturalism

Answer 29

A later version of realism (1890s+) which explored the philosophy of determinism and social Darwinism. Terms like the survival of the fittest, natural selection, the struggle for survival and the determination by strong forces/energies (instincts, the environment) apply

Question 30

Stream of thought

Answer 30

William James’s description of human consciousness. James describes cognition as a “stream of thought, of consciousness, of subjective life.” All experience takes place within this stream and is the only known reality for the individual. The law is: “absolute insulation” (within the individual), “irreducible pluralism” of sense impressions.

Question 31

Modernism

Answer 31

Name for various cultural movements in the West (Europe, USA, Latin America) which reacted to the sense of social breakdown, alienation, acceleration and automation of modern life. It reacted against the ordered ideas of Victorianism, Realism and tradition.

Question 32

Armory Show

Answer 32

Art Exhibition in New York in 1913, which introduced modernist art to America. First American contact with Picasso, Matisse, Brancusi, Gaugin etc.

Question 33

Film Noir

Answer 33

Modernist American Cinema in the late 1930s and the 1940s working with the low key lighting (noir), which reacts to the modern experiences of urbanisation, the rise of suburbia, changes in manners and values, alienation, the transformation of gender roles, middle class life and doubts about the future

Question 34

Harlem Renaissance

Answer 34

Lively and multifaceted cultural movement centred in Harlem, New York, which produced African-American art (literature, paintings, photography, film, music) characterised by pride and self-assertion, yet haunted by the trope of “primitivism”.

Question 35

Popular Culture

Answer 35

Popular forms of entertainment, which were exploited by the culture industry since the end of the 19th century (shows, parks, radio, film, newspapers, serial novels etc.). According to Ostendorf they are characterised by a belief in the common man, egalitarianism, liberalism, the moral community and pragmatic problem solving

Question 36

Populism

Answer 36

Agrarian Protest Movement after the Civil War calling for the support of the “common man” (read: farmer). Objects: Cheaper money (free silver), nationalisation of railroads, graduated income tax, direct election of senators. Partly haunted by white supremacy

Question 37

Progressivism

Answer 37

Reform movement at the end of the 19th Century in reaction to the Industrialisation and the problems of the Gilded Age. It called for government activities against corruption and social misery (e.g. muckraking journalism) and for more efficiency in all areas of society.

Question 38

Social Realism

Answer 38

A return to realist techniques with modernist literature in order to explore questions of poverty, history, middle class life

Question 39

Civil Rights Movement

Answer 39

African American protest movement led by MLK and others. It insisted in non-violent action and civil disobedience and organised demonstrations, boycotts, sit-ins and legal interventions.

Question 40

Counterculture

Answer 40

Youth movement in the 1960s inspired by the civil rights movement, opposing militarism (Vietnam), technocracy, bureaucracy, conformism. It was influenced by philosophy, psychoanalysis and Buddhism.

Question 41

Black Panther Party

Answer 41

Militant African-American organisation founded in Oakland, CA, inspired by Malcolm X and Marxism. The Panthers patrolled with arms and organised community social programs (breakfasts, libraries etc.) It was discredited and destroyed by the FBI.

Question 42

Postmodernism

Answer 42

International movement in the arts that embraces eclecticism, historical nostalgia, play, paradox, dissonance. Important themes are identity, history, consumer culture, loss of orientation and the disbelief in grand narratives

Question 43

Grand Narratives

Answer 43

Aka meta narratives, belief systems which claim to explain the course of history and the necessities of the future in a comprehensive and normative way (Liberalism, Marxism, Christianity, Judaism, the Islam etc.)

Question 44

Orientalism

Answer 44

imitation or depiction of Middle Eastern, South Asian and East Asian cultures by writers, painters etc. from the West. Very often, the East has served as “the other” and has been essentialised as underdeveloped, barbaric, exotic, wild etc. with a patronising point of view.

Question 45

Hybridity

Answer 45

The suggestion that on account of various colonialism and neo-colonialisms (including globalisation) cultural identities are not marked by essential/natural qualities but by blends, mixtures, appropriations and imitations of diverse elements.

Question 46

Post/Neo-colonialism

Answer 46

Theoretical orientation which explores the consequences of colonizations, de-colonizations and (capitalist, neo-liberal) neo-colonizations. These consequences are present in questions of identities (hybridity, nostalgia), observations (orientalism, colonial gaze), migrations (Diasporas, borderlands) and forms of power (subalternity, hegemony, othering).

Question 47

Gender performance

Answer 47

The idea that gender (socially sanctioned masculine or feminine behaviour) does not “naturally” follow biological sex, but is in fact a publicly supported or a suppressed performance, which has a normalising consequence

Question 48

WPA Photography

Answer 48

Documentary photography sponsored by the Roosevelt Administration in the New Deal through the Works Progress Administration. Examples are Lange’s Migrant Mother and works by Walter Evans and others.