Polish Journal for American Studies
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Rob Kroes Decentering America: Visual Intertextuality and the Quest for a Transnational American Studies PolishPolish Journal Journal for for Polish Journal for American Studies Studies American Journal for Polish Polish Journal for Tadeusz Rachwał Where East Meets West: On Some Locations of America Florian Zappe AmericanAmericanAmerican StudiesStudies Studies The Other Exceptionalism: A Transnational Perspective on Atheism in America YearbookYearbook of theof the Polish Polish Association Association for for American American Studies Studies Anna Pochmara Vol. 12 (Spring 2018) Enslavement to Philanthropy, Freedom from Heredity: Vol. 12 (Spring 2018) Amelia E. Johnson’s and Paul Laurence Dunbar’s Uses and Misuses of Sentimentalism and Naturalism Paulina Ambroży Performance and Theatrical A ect in Steven Millhauser’s Short Story “The Knife-Thrower” Thematic Section | Vol. 12 (Spring 2018) Vol. Transnational American Studies Here and Now Edited by Agnieszka Gra , Ludmiła Janion, Karolina Krasuska Warsaw 2018 www.paas.org.pl Polish Journal for American Studies Yearbook of the Polish Association for American Studies Vol. 12 (Spring 2018) Warsaw 2018 MANAGING EDITOR Marek Paryż EDITORIAL BOARD Izabella Kimak, Mirosław Miernik, Jacek Partyka, Paweł Stachura ADVISORY BOARD Andrzej Dakowski, Jerzy Durczak, Joanna Durczak, Andrew S. Gross, Andrea O’Reilly Herrera, Jerzy Kutnik, John R. Leo, Zbigniew Lewicki, Eliud Martínez, Elżbieta Oleksy, Agata Preis-Smith, Tadeusz Rachwał, Agnieszka Salska, Tadeusz Sławek, Marek Wilczyński REVIEWERS Tomasz Basiuk, Aneta Dybska, Paweł Frelik, Paweł Jędrzejko, Agnieszka Kotwasińska, Anna Krawczyk-Łaskarzewska, Zuzanna Ładyga, Jadwiga Maszewska, Urszula Niewiadomska-Flis, Tadeusz Pióro, Małgorzata Rutkowska, Piotr Skurowski, Justyna Wierzchowska TYPESETTING AND COVER DESIGN Miłosz Mierzyński COVER IMAGE Jerzy Durczak, “Colors for Sale” from the series “Santa Fe.” By permission. http://www.flickr.com/photos/jurek_durczak/ ISSN 1733-9154 eISSN 2544-8781 PUBLISHER Polish Association for American Studies Al. Niepodległości 22 02-653 Warsaw paas.org.pl Nakład 200 egz. Wersją pierwotną Czasopisma jest wersja drukowana. Printed by Sowa – Druk na życzenie phone: +48 22 431 81 40; www.sowadruk.pl Table of Contents ARTICLES THEMATIC SECTION Transnational American Studies Here and Now Edited by Agnieszka Graff, Ludmiła Janion, Karolina Krasuska Agnieszka Graff, Tomasz Basiuk, Karolina Krasuska Introduction. Transnational American Studies: Histories, Methodologies, Perspectives ..................................................................................... 7 Rob Kroes Decentering America: Visual Intertextuality and the Quest for a Transnational American Studies ..................................................................... 21 Tadeusz Rachwał Where East Meets West: On Some Locations of America .................................... 31 Piotr Skurowski Looking Back, 2018-1916: The Cosmopolitan Idea in Randolph Bourne’s “Transnational America” .................................................... 43 Grzegorz Welizarowicz Feel Like a Gringo: Transnational Consciousness in Los Angeles Punk Rock Songs ............................................................................. 55 Florian Zappe The Other Exceptionalism: A Transnational Perspective on Atheism in America .............................................................................................. 75 VARIA Karolina Korycka Louisa May Alcott’s “Behind a Mask, or a Woman’s Power”: The Woman as an Actress, Femininity as a Mask .................................................. 91 Anna Pochmara Enslavement to Philanthropy, Freedom from Heredity: Amelia E. Johnson’s and Paul Laurence Dunbar’s Uses and Misuses of Sentimentalism and Naturalism .......................................................................... 113 Michał Choiński Hyperbolic Bodies for Sale: The Figurative Representations of Prostitutes in Tennessee Williams’s Early Works ............................................... 129 Elżbieta Rokosz-Piejko Adapting, Remaking, Re-visioning: Alex Haley’s Roots in a Triangular Relationship with Its Two Television Adaptations ................................................. 143 Elżbieta Horodyska Heterotopic Domestic Spaces in Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping ............... 153 Klara Szmańko Defamiliarizing Blackness and Whiteness in Gloria Naylor’s Linden Hills ........ 169 Paulina Ambroży Performance and Theatrical Affect in Steven Millhauser’s Short Story “The Knife-Thrower” ................................................................................................. 185 Ewa Antoszek The U.S.-Mexico Border as a Palimpsest in Ana Teresa Fernández’s Art ........... 197 Paweł Marcinkiewicz The Color of Avant-Garde: Kenneth Goldsmith’s “The Body of Michael Brown” .................................................................................. 211 REVIEW ESSAY Zbigniew Maszewski What Is “New” in Faulkner Criticism? .................................................................... 225 REVIEWS Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera, After American Studies: Rethinking the Legacies of Transnational Exceptionalism (Jacek Romaniuk) .. ....................... 237 David Parrish, Jacobitism and Anti-Jacobitism in the British Atlantic World, 1688-1727 (Irmina Wawrzyczek) .. ......................... 239 Susan Farrell, Imagining Home: American War Fiction from Hemingway to 9/11 (Anna Branach-Kallas) .................................................. 242 Ewa Barbara Łuczak, ed., Ernest Hemingway (Jarosław Hetman) ....................... 246 Hillary L. Chute, Disaster Drawn: Visual Witness, Comics, and Documentary Form (Małgorzata Olsza) .. ......................................................... 252 Klaus Lösch, Heike Paul and Meike Zwingenberger, eds., Critical Regionalism (Elżbieta Horodyska) ............................................................. 257 CONTRIBUTORS ..................................................................................................... 261 Thematic Section Transnational American Studies Here and Now Edited by Agnieszka Graff, Ludmiła Janion, Karolina Krasuska Agnieszka Graff, Tomasz Basiuk, Karolina Krasuska Introduction Transnational American Studies: Histories, Methodologies, Perspectives For several decades—notably, since the turn of the twenty-first century—the field of American studies has been expanding beyond its long established intellectual framing by adopting a consciously transnational approach, as well as a more determined interdisciplinary approach. This change is not just one in scope, but one in political orientation. The“ transnational turn” is above all a turn away from American exceptionalism. Each of the essays included in this thematic cluster addresses transnationalism: some do so explicitly, as their theme, others rely on it as a conceptual frame. They all originated as papers presented at the conference of the Polish Association for American Studies titled Transnational American Studies: Histories, Methodologies, Perspectives held at the American Studies Center, University of Warsaw in October 2016. The present introduction begins with a brief overview of the various “turns” that preceded and led to the transnational turn; it offers a definition of transnationalism as a theoretical perspective in American studies and goes on to ask what the field’s evolution has implied in the cultural/intellectual/political context of post-1989 Europe, especially Poland. To what extent has it affected hierarchies of knowledge production and distribution? How has the promise of transnationalism resonated with Polish Americanists? Have we accepted the political impulse behind it—its anti-exceptionalism, critiqued by some as anti-Americanism? Our aim is not to offer conclusive answers to these questions, but rather to provoke critical reflection and debate. It is our belief that scholarship benefits from occasional methodological self-scrutiny and that the transnational turn has had sufficient resonance to occasion such historicizing reflection and discursive re-constitution of the field. Needless to say, the meaning of transnationalism in American studies depends on who is asking, as well as when and where the question is asked. Paradigms, Turns, Perspectives Prior to the Transnational Turn Vernon Louis Parrington wrote in Main Currents in American Thought (1927) that he has “chosen to follow the broad path of our political, economic, and social development, rather than the narrower belletristic” (xvii). Thereby, he prospectively defined American studies as interdisciplinary while implicitly affirming the primacy of U.S. perspectives and assuming that the audience would be American, as well (consider the pronoun “our” in this quote). The project was thus quite different from 8 Agnieszka Graff, Tomasz Basiuk, Karolina Krasuska José Marti’s “Nuestra America” and even opposed to it. The field has since fared particularly well at the crossroads of literature and history, without usually venturing to other disciplines, as evidenced also by the work of the generation of scholars that followed the founders, including the literary scholar F.O. Matthiessen and the historian Perry Miller. History and literature were the unquestioned center of scholarly interest for the myth-and-symbol school, whose founders include Henry Nash Smith, Leo Marx, and John William Ward—their main preoccupation was to capture and define what made American culture special, different, in short—exceptional. Revisionary positions adopted by Annette Kolodny,