Introduction: Digital Pedagogy in American Studies

As we are writing the introduction to this special issue we are looking back on the online summer semester 2020, which has profoundly and perhaps lastingly impacted how we do American Studies, not least by pushing us to embrace digital technologies to an extent unimaginable half a year ago. Did we really need a viral pandemic to provide the necessary push for some of our colleagues to become (more) digitally naturalized? Of course not. On the other hand, we would have appreciated practical guidelines and offers of technical support for our digital teaching ideas (as most universities have provided them in the last months) much earlier. Yet, most of these offerings were merely technological or only contained a list of tools available. How can we think critically about our tools, and how can we implement them successfully?