TY - THES A1 - Adamik, Verena T1 - In Search of the Utopian States of America BT - Intentional Communities in Novels of the Long Nineteenth Century T2 - Palgrave Studies in Utopianism N2 - 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. KW - Gilbert Imlay KW - Nathaniel Hawthorne KW - Marie Howland KW - Sutton E. Griggs KW - W.E.B. Du Bois KW - Utopian communities KW - Intentional communities KW - Utopia KW - Nineteenth century KW - National narrative KW - Utopie KW - Kommunen KW - USA Y1 - 2020 SN - 978-3-030-60278-9 SN - 978-3-030-60279-6 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60279-6 PB - Palgrave Macmillan CY - Cham ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Adamik, Verena T1 - From Utopian Island to global empire BT - Alex Garland's the Beach JF - Utopian Studies N2 - 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. Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/doi: 10.5325/utopianstudies.31.3.0457 VL - 31 IS - 3 SP - 457 EP - 474 PB - Penn State University Press CY - University Park, Pa ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Adamik, Verena T1 - Making worlds from literature BT - W.E.B. Du Bois’s The Quest of the Silver Fleece and Dark Princess JF - Thesis eleven : critical theory and historical sociology N2 - 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. KW - African American literature KW - Eurocentrism KW - genre KW - intertextuality KW - race Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1177/0725513621993308 SN - 0725-5136 SN - 1461-7455 VL - 162 IS - 1 SP - 105 EP - 120 PB - Sage CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Adamik, Verena T1 - Alien Horrors BT - lovecraft and the racialized underclass in the age of trump JF - The Aliens Within : danger, disease, and displacement in representations of the racialized poor N2 - 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 à 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. Y1 - 2022 SN - 978-3-11-078974-4 SN - 978-3-11-078984-3 SN - 978-3-11-078979-9 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110789799-006 SN - 0340-5435 SP - 113 EP - 131 PB - de Gruyter CY - Berlin ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Adamik, Verena T1 - Boyle, T.C. T2 - The encyclopedia of contemporary American fiction 1980–2020 N2 - 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. KW - Boyle, T.C. KW - Amerikanistik KW - US Amerikanische Literatur Y1 - 2022 SN - 978-1-119-43173-2 SN - 978-11-19-43171-8 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119431732.ecaf0023 PB - John Wiley & Sons Ltd. CY - Hoboken, NJ ER -