Ambivalent Americanizations

Popular and Consumer Culture in Central and Eastern Europe


1. Edition, 2008
281 Pages

ISBN: 978-3-8253-5488-6
Product: Book
Edition: Hardcover
Subject: Anglistik/Amerikanistik
Series: American Studies – A Monograph Series, Volume No.: 165
Available: 13.05.2008

Keywords: Ideologie, amerikanische Kultur, Mitteleuropa, Massenkultur, Amerikanisierung, Aufsatzsammlung, Kulturtransfer, Konsumkultur, Okkupation, polnische Gesellschaft, Konsumgesellschaft, Jazz


This volume explores the ‘Americanization’ of Central and Eastern Europe during and after the Cold War. It seeks to revisit and expand this critical concept by investigating previously overlooked perspectives and new comparative constellations.
The Iron Curtain has frequently been seen as a tightly sealed border between East and West. However, as the contributions to this collection illustrate, it proved remarkably permeable for American goods and lifestyles which generated and gratified a range of often ambivalent desires and fantasies.
This book attends to the ensuing ‘messiness’ of cultural transfer and mixing, as well as to the role ‘America’ has played in these processes. In twelve case studies, a broad spectrum of disciplinary angles and diverse geo-biographical horizons come together to examine the elusive dynamics of ambivalent Americanizations in areas such as music, television, and material culture.

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Tomáš Pospíšil in: Amerikastudien / American Studies, 55, 2 (2010), 287ff

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Aniko Kapornaki in: H-Soz-Kult, http://hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/rezensionen/2009-2-006

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Thomas Austenfeld in: American Literary Scholarship, 2005-1, 489