Mark Twain’s novel fragment “3, 000 Years Among the Microbes” (1905) tells the story of the formerly human, now microbial protagonist “Huck” Bkshp. Huck reports from the retrospective of three thousand years of microbial time on the challenges of existence as a microbe in the body of the Hungarian immigrant and “tramp” Blitzowski. Migration and epi- and pandemic events enter into an often-fatal relationship. For many migrants, the desolate health care systems of their home countries were often one of the reasons for leaving in the first place. However, both during transit and on arrival at their destinations, they are exposed to no less precarious situations. Moreover, they are often perceived as a threat themselves. Against the backdrop of the lived pandemic experience of nineteenth-century cholera, Twain’s text depicts the hardships of migration in a literary original way and thus can be read as a paradigmatic literary manifest for the meeting point of transnational American studies and the Medical Humanities. In Twain’s novel fragment, the human-microbial protagonist Huck carries cholera, one of the deadliest pandemic threats of the nineteenth century. When immigrating into his host’s immigrant body, Blitzowski, he also becomes a carrier of the disease. That migrants bring fatal diseases is a topos not only in the (hi-)story of American immigration. Border closures and entry bans are often the first measures during disease outbreaks. However, epi- and pandemics cannot be excluded. As the impossibility of containment is a central topic of Twain’s narrative, I argue, it also can be seen as an early imagination of the emerging concept of “Planetary Health,” which, especially by focusing on recent microbiome research, rethinks the entanglements of human and more-than-human migrations in the face of current and future states of crisis.
{"title":"Migration in Times of Pandemic: Mark Twain’s “3,000 Years Among the Microbes” and the Prospect of Planetary Health","authors":"Davina Höll","doi":"10.5070/t814262477","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5070/t814262477","url":null,"abstract":"Mark Twain’s novel fragment “3, 000 Years Among the Microbes” (1905) tells the story of the formerly human, now microbial protagonist “Huck” Bkshp. Huck reports from the retrospective of three thousand years of microbial time on the challenges of existence as a microbe in the body of the Hungarian immigrant and “tramp” Blitzowski. Migration and epi- and pandemic events enter into an often-fatal relationship. For many migrants, the desolate health care systems of their home countries were often one of the reasons for leaving in the first place. However, both during transit and on arrival at their destinations, they are exposed to no less precarious situations. Moreover, they are often perceived as a threat themselves. Against the backdrop of the lived pandemic experience of nineteenth-century cholera, Twain’s text depicts the hardships of migration in a literary original way and thus can be read as a paradigmatic literary manifest for the meeting point of transnational American studies and the Medical Humanities. In Twain’s novel fragment, the human-microbial protagonist Huck carries cholera, one of the deadliest pandemic threats of the nineteenth century. When immigrating into his host’s immigrant body, Blitzowski, he also becomes a carrier of the disease. That migrants bring fatal diseases is a topos not only in the (hi-)story of American immigration. Border closures and entry bans are often the first measures during disease outbreaks. However, epi- and pandemics cannot be excluded. As the impossibility of containment is a central topic of Twain’s narrative, I argue, it also can be seen as an early imagination of the emerging concept of “Planetary Health,” which, especially by focusing on recent microbiome research, rethinks the entanglements of human and more-than-human migrations in the face of current and future states of crisis.","PeriodicalId":38456,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Transnational American Studies","volume":"28 5","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135775464","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Translation of "Odysseus in Liverpool: Bob Dylans 'Roll on John.'" In Weltliteratur interkulturell: Referenzen von Cusanus bis Bob Dylan, edited by Heike C. Spickermann, 129-140. Heidelberg: Winterverlag, 2015.
译文："奥德修斯在利物浦：鲍勃-迪伦的《Roll on John》"。In Weltliteratur interkulturell: Referenzen von Cusanus bis Bob Dylan, edited by Heike C. Spickermann, 129-140. Heidelberg: Winterverlag, 2015.
{"title":"Odysseus in Liverpool","authors":"Heinrich Detering, Hannah Kontos (translator)","doi":"10.5070/t814261883","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5070/t814261883","url":null,"abstract":"Translation of \"Odysseus in Liverpool: Bob Dylans 'Roll on John.'\" In Weltliteratur interkulturell: Referenzen von Cusanus bis Bob Dylan, edited by Heike C. Spickermann, 129-140. Heidelberg: Winterverlag, 2015.","PeriodicalId":38456,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Transnational American Studies","volume":"29 2","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135775461","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle has been read as a critique of unfettered capitalism in the urban space of Chicago at the beginning of the twentieth century. This essay argues that this capitalist critique may gain further depth when read through the intersection between transnational American studies and medical humanities. Through the perspective of the Lithuanian character Jurgis Rudkus, the narrative turns on its head xenophobic claims of immigrants as a health menace to the US American nation. In so doing, it engages the field of medicine in two significant ways. It counters the claim that immigrants have no knowledge of hygiene by looking at white tables through immigrant eyes; and it critiques the fact that the US medical system has become inhumane in its increasing economization. Reading Sinclair’s novel in dialogue with historical studies of migration and contagion at the beginning of the twentieth century as well as with other naturalistic texts such as Frank Norris’s The Octopus, I suggest that The Jungle anticipates current debates about health care and health justice, as they have recently been addressed in Barack Obama’s autobiography A Promised Land.
{"title":"Hygiene, Whiteness and Immigration: Upton Sinclair and the “Jungle” of the American Health Care System","authors":"Mita Banerjee","doi":"10.5070/t814262476","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5070/t814262476","url":null,"abstract":"Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle has been read as a critique of unfettered capitalism in the urban space of Chicago at the beginning of the twentieth century. This essay argues that this capitalist critique may gain further depth when read through the intersection between transnational American studies and medical humanities. Through the perspective of the Lithuanian character Jurgis Rudkus, the narrative turns on its head xenophobic claims of immigrants as a health menace to the US American nation. In so doing, it engages the field of medicine in two significant ways. It counters the claim that immigrants have no knowledge of hygiene by looking at white tables through immigrant eyes; and it critiques the fact that the US medical system has become inhumane in its increasing economization. Reading Sinclair’s novel in dialogue with historical studies of migration and contagion at the beginning of the twentieth century as well as with other naturalistic texts such as Frank Norris’s The Octopus, I suggest that The Jungle anticipates current debates about health care and health justice, as they have recently been addressed in Barack Obama’s autobiography A Promised Land.","PeriodicalId":38456,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Transnational American Studies","volume":"28 3","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135775297","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The article discusses David Chariandy’s novel Soucouyant (2007) in the context of critical disability studies and hemispheric American studies. In particular, it explores dementia as a cultural narrative that links the protagonist’s personal case of dementia to her traumatic experiences of US violence, abuse, and exploitation in the Caribbean, her forced migration in Trinidad, and unfulfilled hopes of integration into Canadian society after having immigrated in the context of Canadian labor and immigration programs in the early 1960s. The article explores the various levels of meaning dementia unfolds in Chariandy’s novel as critical reflection on memory work, racism, and colonial as well as neocolonial exploitation. It also relates the narrative structure of the novel to recent geriatric life-telling therapy used to restore individual dignity and identity to people suffering from dementia.
{"title":"Mental Illness as Cultural Narrative: Dementia, Im/migrant Experience and InterAmerican Entanglements in David Chariandy’s Soucouyant","authors":"Wilfried Raussert","doi":"10.5070/t814262479","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5070/t814262479","url":null,"abstract":"The article discusses David Chariandy’s novel Soucouyant (2007) in the context of critical disability studies and hemispheric American studies. In particular, it explores dementia as a cultural narrative that links the protagonist’s personal case of dementia to her traumatic experiences of US violence, abuse, and exploitation in the Caribbean, her forced migration in Trinidad, and unfulfilled hopes of integration into Canadian society after having immigrated in the context of Canadian labor and immigration programs in the early 1960s. The article explores the various levels of meaning dementia unfolds in Chariandy’s novel as critical reflection on memory work, racism, and colonial as well as neocolonial exploitation. It also relates the narrative structure of the novel to recent geriatric life-telling therapy used to restore individual dignity and identity to people suffering from dementia.","PeriodicalId":38456,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Transnational American Studies","volume":"30 5","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135775452","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article provides an innovative perspective on John Updike’s visit to Eastern Europe in the 1960s, including Bulgaria, as reflected in his short story “The Bulgarian Poetess” first published in The New Yorker on March 13, 1965. The inspiration for this interpretation is as much academic as it is anthropological. It comes from Updike’s use of my own surname, Glavanakova, which is not a common Slavic one, for the fictional character of the real-life Bulgarian poetess he met, whom researchers have established to be Blaga Dimitrova. Many have delved into the text aiming at a detailed and, more significantly, an authentic reconstruction of events, places and people appearing in the story (Katsarova 2010; Kosturkov 2012; Briggs and Dojčinović 2015). A main preoccupation of these analyses has been to establish the degree of factual distortion in Updike’s representation of the people and places behind the Iron Curtain. The pervasive imagery of the mirror, implying both its reflecting and doubling function, and the repetitive use of cognates associated with truth and honesty in the story suggest the focus of this article, which falls on the dynamics between authenticity and artifice from the perspective of autofiction by way of illustrating how one culture translates into another “at the opposite side[s] of the world” (Updike, “The Bulgarian Poetess”). In my interpretation, autofiction opens ample spaces for representations and discussions of identity and self-/reflexivity in a transcultural context.
{"title":"Authenticity and Autofiction: John Updike’s “The Bulgarian Poetess”","authors":"Alexandra K. Glavanakova","doi":"10.5070/t814257890","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5070/t814257890","url":null,"abstract":"This article provides an innovative perspective on John Updike’s visit to Eastern Europe in the 1960s, including Bulgaria, as reflected in his short story “The Bulgarian Poetess” first published in The New Yorker on March 13, 1965. The inspiration for this interpretation is as much academic as it is anthropological. It comes from Updike’s use of my own surname, Glavanakova, which is not a common Slavic one, for the fictional character of the real-life Bulgarian poetess he met, whom researchers have established to be Blaga Dimitrova. Many have delved into the text aiming at a detailed and, more significantly, an authentic reconstruction of events, places and people appearing in the story (Katsarova 2010; Kosturkov 2012; Briggs and Dojčinović 2015). A main preoccupation of these analyses has been to establish the degree of factual distortion in Updike’s representation of the people and places behind the Iron Curtain. The pervasive imagery of the mirror, implying both its reflecting and doubling function, and the repetitive use of cognates associated with truth and honesty in the story suggest the focus of this article, which falls on the dynamics between authenticity and artifice from the perspective of autofiction by way of illustrating how one culture translates into another “at the opposite side[s] of the world” (Updike, “The Bulgarian Poetess”). In my interpretation, autofiction opens ample spaces for representations and discussions of identity and self-/reflexivity in a transcultural context.","PeriodicalId":38456,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Transnational American Studies","volume":"30 6","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135775451","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The Indonesian poet and public figure Goenawan Mohamad published "Bandits" in the magazine Tempo, which was also published in the English version of Tempo. Reprinted by permission in the Journal of Transnational American Studies.
{"title":"Bandits","authors":"Mohamad Goenawan, Jennifer Lindsay (translator)","doi":"10.5070/t814261892","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5070/t814261892","url":null,"abstract":"The Indonesian poet and public figure Goenawan Mohamad published \"Bandits\" in the magazine Tempo, which was also published in the English version of Tempo. Reprinted by permission in the Journal of Transnational American Studies.","PeriodicalId":38456,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Transnational American Studies","volume":"30 4","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135775453","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Issue Introduction: Translating and Transnational American Studies","authors":"Alfred Hornung","doi":"10.5070/t814262481","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5070/t814262481","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":38456,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Transnational American Studies","volume":"30 3","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135775454","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Contributor Bios","authors":"JTAS Managing Editor","doi":"10.5070/t814262482","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5070/t814262482","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":38456,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Transnational American Studies","volume":"29 4","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135775459","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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