American studies in dialogue : radical reconstructions between curriculum and cultural critique / Matthias Oppermann.

"Grew out of my dissertation at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin"--P. [9]

Includes bibliographical references (pages [274]-291) and index.

Histories of curricular innovation -- 1. American studies as curricular innovation : interventions into narratives of field formation -- 1.1. "A subject so familiar and so simple" : American literature and American civilization in the college curriculum -- 1.2. Money, Jingoism, and folklore? American studies after World War II -- 1.3. Bridging the schisms of culture and method : "Peaux rouges" and "Mandarins" in Minnesota -- 2. Maturity and midlife crises : radical teachers, cultural turns -- 2.1. Quantitative growth and organizational structures in the 1960s and 1970s -- 2.2. Cultural experts and literary amateurs in the early 1960s -- 2.3. Radical teaching contra cultural consensus? -- 2.4. Collaborators, computers, problem-solvers : Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Davis (re-)considered -- Trajectories of transformation -- 3. Multiculturalism as radical critique : American studies beyond the nation -- 3.1. Social movements, European theory, and the search for resistance -- 3.2. Contextualizing cultural studies : the political work of cultural critique -- 3.3. Dialogics beyond borders : American culture studies -- 3.4. From coverage to contact zones : curricula of comparative U.S. cultures -- 4. American studies in the age of digital cultures -- 4.1. American studies and new media -- 4.2. Culture and database : George Allen's curse, Chris Crocker's cupcake -- 4.3. New media -- New American studies? -- Expansions of the field-imaginary -- 5. American studies and the learning paradigm -- 5.1. Understanding student learning -- 5.2. Novice, expert, and beyond -- 5.3. Does American studies have "signature pedagogies"? -- 6. From best practices to next practices -- 6.1. Going meta : towards a scholarship of teaching in American studies -- 6.2. Pedagogies and epistemologies : notes from the visible knowledge project -- 6.3. Digital storytelling : adaptive, embodied, and socially situated.