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In the ten-year anniversary issue: After the greeting and opening address by GAAS President Peter Schneck and a greeting by Udo Hebel, general editor of Amerikastudien / American Studies, Christina Oppel, Anna Rapp, and Anna Thiemann look back at the productive 2008 meeting of the Postgraduate Forum and offer an introduction to their research institution (English Department at Westphalian Wilhelms-University Münster). With San Francisco’s City Hall as a case in point, Susanne Leikam examines the role of visual representations in the aftermath of the 1906 Earthquake and Fire. Marie-Louise Löffler analyzes the portrayal of motherhood in Jewelle Gomez’s “Louisiana 1850” (1991), and Carmen Dexl discusses representations of violence, race, and masculinity in James W. Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912). US Tribal Colleges are viewed as tools in individual and community empowerment in Anne Grob’s contribution. Lars Schmeink investigates concepts of dystopia and (moral) agency in the video game Bioshock (2007). Christina Rickli contrasts 9/11 media footage to Hollywood’s (filmic) reaction to the terrorist attacks, and Elisabeth Siegel, focusing on Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2005), reflects on the role visual representations play in the construction of a collective 9/11 memory. Exploring the implications of the torture photographs of Abu Ghraib, Katrin Dauenhauer questions the representability of pain. In his reading of Frank Rich’s The Greatest Story Ever Sold (2006), Sebastian M. Herrmann scrutinizes distinctions between and ambivalences about ‘fiction’ and ‘reality.’ [Read COPAS Volume 10 (2009)]

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If you are interested in having your work published in COPAS, visit the online style sheet to read about submission guidelines.

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Follow what is happening in the postgraduate forum of the German Association for American Studies. [Read the invitation and call for papers for the 2009 meeting]

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