Foreword
by Reinhard Isensee

While in the last century, the "American Century," the presence of America has become ubiquitous on a global scale, be it in the economic or political realm, the dissemination of American culture worldwide has been particularly promoted through visual images in the mass media that construct various and often contradictory narratives about what America or the United States is conceived of vis-à-vis other nations, societies and cultures. It is these images and their imaginary power that have influenced and inspired people from around the world to think about and engage in America in various ways both on the theoretical and practical level.

This inspiration and interest also informs the volume presented here. In contrast to the numerous studies that have explored the nature and functions of visual narratives of American (popular) culture inside and outside the United States this volume, however, takes a particular approach and offers a fresh format. On the one hand, it features contributions to the study of contemporary American visual media in a transatlantic perspective that is informed by the challenges to rethink the role of (national) cultures at a time when global political and economic conflicts are increasingly grounded in and derived from different and often opposite cultural values. On the other hand, the volume discusses the visual aesthetics and functions of selected representations of American society and culture in American media such as film and TV through the particular lens of advanced and doctoral students and thus provides distinct readings of American cultural discourses.

The aim of these readings is especially directed towards diagnosing and explaining the themes and visual strategies in constructing narratives about cultural (re-)definitions of the United States both in terms of national identity and the politics of culture in a global age. Situated in the current critical debates in media studies on both sides of the Atlantic, the contributions explore specific moments of the production and reception of media in the US and abroad, offer close readings of selected cultural imaginations in contemporary American media in film and TV, investigate the contemporary economic, political and cultural impact of American media on the popular imaginary both domestically and internationally as well as problematize comparative approaches to media representations of American society in a transcultural context.

Hence, the essays collected in this volume reflect the keen interest and intellectual involvement of students in the present academic discourses on the significance of (media) culture in creating and conditioning spaces of identity formation beyond national borders and the accompanying conflicts.

What is also remarkable about these essays is the fact that they are the result of several annual conferences organized by students of the American Studies Program at Humboldt University Berlin in the past five years. Initiated as an effort to foster an academic dialog among students from various disciplines of the humanities, such as sociology, cultural studies, media studies, philosophy, history, and English and American studies, these conferences have evolved into an outstanding opportunity that offers an interdisciplinary forum for presenting and discussing the academic work by students.

The outcome of these conferences not only reflects their continuous intellectual engagement in the study of the United States but also shows the students' academic accomplishments as the essays in this volume demonstrate. Therefore, one can only congratulate the student organizers to the academic success of these conferences and at the same time encourage the students to continue their commitment to participate in these dialogs.