Essays in American Studies • Cross-cultural perspectives

Edited by:Madelain Danova

The book is published with the support of the Academic Foundation for English and American Studies, Sofia

This is the second book in the American Studies Series that has gathered the work of various academics from the field of American Studies who have been connected in one or another way to Bulgaria. This has given the specific focus of most of the essays, namely the cross-cultural approach to important issues from the fields of literary and cultural studies, historiography, political science and translation and reception theory. The essays look at such contested notions of today as race, ethnicity, national identity, multiculturalism, postcolonialism, gender, ideology, crisis-resolution and electoral practices. The cross-cultural perspective helps to overcome the rigid boundaries of the separate academic fields in search of the productive interdisciplinary overlappings within the humanities.

The collection will be of interest both to researchers and students from various disciplines and especially to those interested in the rapidly growing American Studies field. It can be used by university teachers and students alike to enrich their discussions in American and Bulgarian literature and culture, political science and history classes.

CONTRIBUTORS:

Vitana Kostadinova

Betty Grinberg

Milena Katsarska

Madeleine Danova

Sneja Gunew

Alexandra Glavanakova

Kornelia Slavova

James Deutsch

Vernon L. Pedersen

Kostadin Grozev

Nadia Boyadjieva

CONTENTS

Introduction - Madeleine Danova

Vitana Kostadinova

Images of America or the American Presence

in the Bulgarian Revival Period

Boukitza Greenberg

Bulgarski Knizhitsi and the First Translation of Uncle Tom s Cabin

Milena Katsarska

Construction of National Space Along the Railroad

in American and Bulgarian Literature

Madeleine Danova

Ethnic Ghosts and Supernatural Forces: The Notion of Race and the

Occult in the USA and Bulgaria at the Beginning of the 20th century

Sneja Gunew

Postcolonialism and Multiculturalism: Between Race and Ethnicity

Alexandra Glavanakova-Yaneva

A Post-Totalitarian Mis/Reading of Paul Auster's New York Trilogy

Kornelia Slavova

Disruptive Presence: Contemporary American

Women Playwrights on the Bulgarian Stage

James I. Deutsch

Folklore of the Academy

Vernon L. Pedersen

Russian Reds, Radical Roustabouts, and Unruly Women: Communism,

Gender and American Anxiety in the Early Depression

Kostadin Grozev

Left and Right in American Elections: The 1972 Campaign, the Idea

of Political Reform and the Left Wing of the Democratic Party

Nadya Boyadzhieva

The US and the Dissolution of Former Yugoslavia:

The Case of Bosna and Herzegovina

List of Contributors