Traveling Between Worlds: German-American Encounters

"This volume is an intriguing document for the new state of intercultural studies with regard to German-American history. Full of new discoveries in the realms of art collecting, poetry, women's standing, universities, social politics, and everyday life, the book illuminates the Atlantic not as the barrier but rather the bridge between the people of two nations. It sets clear parameters for the step from merely tracing cultural relations (and stereotypes) to an understanding of the...
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"This volume is an intriguing document for the new state of intercultural studies with regard to German-American history. Full of new discoveries in the realms of art collecting, poetry, women's standing, universities, social politics, and everyday life, the book illuminates the Atlantic not as the barrier but rather the bridge between the people of two nations. It sets clear parameters for the step from merely tracing cultural relations (and stereotypes) to an understanding of the transatlantic world as an ever-changing web of human interconnections. The essays complement each other in their reflection of both the ethnic traditions of the German-Americans and the intercultural encounters of the elites in the nineteenth century, raising new interest in the specifics of travels across the Atlantic and providing a new context to the much-debated facts of German emigration and American isolationism."--Frank Trommler, University of Pennsylvania
"With their focus on the variety and processes of transatlantic cultural and intellectual exchange, most of the essays in the two volumes under review here do reflect a significant shift in perspective in German-American Studies, away from the filiopietistic, quaint, or contributionist vein to serious engagement with theoretical discourses that shape the broader field of German Studies today. The editors are to be congratulated for producing volumes that may in fact help to bring German-American Studies back into the mainstream of that field." ---H-Net Book Reviews, May 2008
Nineteenth-century Germans and Americans were linked by emigration and ongoing interaction and cultural exchanges. In "Traveling between Worlds," six authors explore the German-American relationship, focusing on the topics of travel, cultural interpretation, ideological and intellectual transfer, the immigrant experience, and German-American poetry.
Contributors are: Christoph Mauch, Eberhard Bruning, John T. Walker, Thomas Adam, Gabriele Lingelbach, Andrew P. Yox, and Christiane Harzig.