@phdthesis{Adamik2020, author = {Adamik, Verena}, title = {In Search of the Utopian States of America}, series = {Palgrave Studies in Utopianism}, journal = {Palgrave Studies in Utopianism}, publisher = {Palgrave Macmillan}, address = {Cham}, isbn = {978-3-030-60278-9}, doi = {10.1007/978-3-030-60279-6}, pages = {xiii, 248}, year = {2020}, abstract = {This book endeavours to understand the seemingly direct link between utopianism and the USA, discussing novels that have never been brought together in this combination before, even though they all revolve around intentional communities: Imlay's The Emigrants (1793), Hawthorne's The Blithedale Romance (1852), Howland's Papas Own Girl (1874), Griggs's Imperium in Imperio (1899), and Du Bois's The Quest of the Silver Fleece (1911). They relate nation and utopia not by describing perfect societies, but by writing about attempts to immediately live radically different lives. Signposting the respective communal history, the readings provide a literary perspective to communal studies, and add to a deeply necessary historicization for strictly literary approaches to US utopianism, and for studies that focus on Pilgrims/Puritans/Founding Fathers as utopian practitioners. This book therefore highlights how the authors evaluated the USA's utopian potential and traces the nineteenth-century development of the utopian imagination from various perspectives.}, language = {en} } @article{Adamik2021, author = {Adamik, Verena}, title = {From Utopian Island to global empire}, series = {Utopian Studies}, volume = {31}, journal = {Utopian Studies}, number = {3}, publisher = {Penn State University Press}, address = {University Park, Pa}, doi = {doi: 10.5325/utopianstudies.31.3.0457}, pages = {457 -- 474}, year = {2021}, abstract = {This article discusses how Alex Garland's The Beach (1996) engages with conceptions of utopian islands, nation, and colonialism in modernity and how it, from this basis, develops a different spatiality that reflects on a more deterritorialized form of imperial domination within late twentieth-century globalization, as exercised by the United States. The novel is shown to subvert, but not to abolish, two spatial formations that originated in early modernity: nation and utopia. Building on Jean Baudrillard's elaborations regarding simulation and simulacra, the article argues that The Beach creates a hyperreal narrative that does away with the idea of isolated, bounded spaces and that in form and content corresponds with the worldwide dominance of the United States at the end of the twentieth century.}, language = {en} } @article{Adamik2021, author = {Adamik, Verena}, title = {Making worlds from literature}, series = {Thesis eleven : critical theory and historical sociology}, volume = {162}, journal = {Thesis eleven : critical theory and historical sociology}, number = {1}, publisher = {Sage}, address = {London}, issn = {0725-5136}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1177/0725513621993308}, pages = {105 -- 120}, year = {2021}, abstract = {While W.E.B. Du Bois's first novel, The Quest of the Silver Fleece (1911), is set squarely in the USA, his second work of fiction, Dark Princess: A Romance (1928), abandons this national framework, depicting the treatment of African Americans in the USA as embedded into an international system of economic exploitation based on racial categories. Ultimately, the political visions offered in the novels differ starkly, but both employ a Western literary canon - so-called 'classics' from Greek, German, English, French, and US American literature. With this, Du Bois attempts to create a new space for African Americans in the world (literature) of the 20th century. Weary of the traditions of this 'world literature', the novels complicate and begin to decenter the canon that they draw on. This reading traces what I interpret as subtle signs of frustration over the limits set by the literature that underlies Dark Princess, while its predecessor had been more optimistic in its appropriation of Eurocentric fiction for its propagandist aims.}, language = {en} } @article{Adamik2022, author = {Adamik, Verena}, title = {Alien Horrors}, series = {The Aliens Within : danger, disease, and displacement in representations of the racialized poor}, journal = {The Aliens Within : danger, disease, and displacement in representations of the racialized poor}, publisher = {de Gruyter}, address = {Berlin}, isbn = {978-3-11-078974-4}, issn = {0340-5435}, doi = {10.1515/9783110789799-006}, pages = {113 -- 131}, year = {2022}, abstract = {H. P. Lovecraft's oeuvre abounds with stereotypes of the racialized poor. As scholars have noted, Lovecraft's work turns those he viewed as 'Others' into 'aliens.' Poor people of color (as opposed to the orderly White rural population and White working class) in Lovecraft's stories are foreign, diseased, and criminal, and they threaten social and cosmic orders as they are in league with a nebulous entity that waits to wreak indescribable havoc. This chapter analyzes three 'Lovecraftian' novels published in 2016 - Cassandra Khaw's Hammers on Bone,Victor LaValle's The Ballad of Black Tom, and Matt Ruff's Lovecraft Country. These works elucidate the connection of Trump's 2016 rhetoric in campaign and presidential speeches and the White supremacist imagery used by Lovecraft. In these novels, the racialized poor have a special connection to an astronomical, evil entity {\`a} la Lovecraft. As carriers of numinous genes or parasitic entities (literally having 'an alien within') they become empowered. They thus occupy a pivotal position in forestalling or bringing about the destruction of societal order; that is, of White supremacy. Exploring the alleged risk posed by this 'underclass,' these works seem to foretell current representations of protesters as 'riotous mobs' that threaten the body politic Trump sought to make great (and White) again.}, language = {en} } @incollection{Adamik2022, author = {Adamik, Verena}, title = {Boyle, T.C.}, series = {The encyclopedia of contemporary American fiction 1980-2020}, booktitle = {The encyclopedia of contemporary American fiction 1980-2020}, publisher = {John Wiley \& Sons Ltd.}, address = {Hoboken, NJ}, isbn = {978-1-119-43173-2}, doi = {10.1002/9781119431732.ecaf0023}, year = {2022}, abstract = {T.C. Boyle, or Thomas Coraghessan Boyle, is probably best known for his 1995 novel Tortilla Curtain , which quickly became a staple of high school and college syllabi. Tortilla Curtain deftly illustrates what Boyle does best: acerbically tracing the irrationality that governs human thought and the resulting contradictory and often unethical behavior (mostly in relation to xenophobia, environmentalism, and the intersections of gender). Despite often casting a critical eye over US American society, Boyle's works are accessible reads with fast-paced and eventful plots. This combination has produced a number of international bestsellers. In fact, Boyle is so popular in Germany that translations of his works have been published before the original versions came out in English. However, his talent for depicting the impotence of reason in the face of base desires, selfishness, group dynamics, and indoctrinated ideologies is also a weakness: at times, Boyle's satire reproduces what it means to criticize, coming close to naturalizing the hedonistic, prejudiced, and emotionally charged behavior of his characters.}, language = {en} }