The Fiction of America

Performance and the Cultural Imaginary in Literature and Film

Susanne Hamscha

The Fiction of America

Susanne Hamscha

Distributed for Campus Verlag

350 pages | 13 color plates | 5 1/2 x 8 3/8
North American Studies
Paper $49.00 ISBN: 9783593398723 Published August 2013
The Fiction of America juxtaposes classic literature of the American Renaissance with twentieth-century popular culture—pairing, for instance, Ralph Waldo Emerson with Finding Nemo, Walt Whitman with Spiderman, and Hester Prynne with Madonna—to investigate how the “Americanness” of American culture constitutes itself in the interplay of the cultural imaginary and performance. Conceptualizing “America” as a transhistorical practice, Susanne Hamscha reveals disruptive, spectral moments in the narrative of “America,” which confront American culture with its inherent inconsistencies. 
Contents

Acknowledgments

Prologue

      The Fiction of America—America as Fiction

Act I

      Setting the Stage—or, Performing ‘America’ on the Streets of Philadelphia

Act II

      Will the Real American Please Stand Up! Americanness (Dis) Embodied

      Scenario 1, A Fish Called Emerson: The American Scholar and “Finding Nemo”

      Scenario 2, From Walden Pong to “Jurassic Park”: The Re(dis)covery of America

      Scenario 3, S(w)inging the Self: Whitman, “Spider-Man,” and the Body Politic

Act III

      American Idols: The Anatomy of Race and Gender

      Scenario 1, The Shark Has Pretty Teeth: Straight White Masculinity and Ethnic Ventriloquism in “Moby-Dick” and “Jaws”

      Scenario 2, Ghostly Femininity: Parody and Dissent in “The Scarlet Letter” and Madonna

Epilogue

      The Specters of America

Bibliography

Index

Review Quotes
D. E. Magill, Longwood University | Choice
“Scholars have increasingly asserted the constructed nature of national identities, but Hamscha extends that notion to produce a deconstructive reading of ‘America’ as a performed cultural identity that is haunted by its silenced voices and also rearticulated through their constant challenges to the dominant imaginary. . . . Hamscha’s work engages productively with theories of nation, identity, and form to disrupt easy understanding of America and its many productions. Recommended.”
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