American Studies in Stereo: Perspectives from the Nordic Nations
This paper is based upon a lecture given at the bi-annual meeting of the
Nordic Association for American Studies in 1997.
I must confess some diffidence in speaking for the Nordic countries. While I
have traveled and lectured in them all, I only know Denmark well, and even
so cannot claim to be an authority on Danish culture, much less Finland,
Sweden, or Norway. Yet I can claim some expertise about what has occurred
in the institution of American Studies during the past 15 years, having been an
officer of the Nordic Association for American Studies, President of the Danish
chapter, and a member of the Danish-American Fulbright board for eleven
years. The following remarks were tested as a plenary lecture before the 1997
conference of the Nordic Association.1 It has three sections, which correspond
to the past, present and future of American Studies in Scandinavia. I begin
with a historical sketch, then compare American Studies in the Nordic
countries with the home-grown American product, and finally examine the
prospects for development.
Any work on this subject almost must begin with reference to Sigmund
Skard's two volume study published four decades ago, under the title
American Studies in Europe. Skard compared how Europeans viewed American
in the nineteenth century to his own day, by looking at each country in turn,
emphasizing how the reception of American culture, indeed the selection of
what was worth studying about the United States, varied considerably. While
generalizations were difficult, he did see some broad patterns.2 In the
nineteenth century "America remained the arsenal of European radicalism, the
hope of the down-trodden, "the Common Man's Utopia."3 In contrast, at the
1
same time, to most European governments, the United States "was not only
repugnant politically and socially, but it was an upstart culturally."4 The
United States was long viewed as a mere provincial extension of British
culture, and its books, art, and other cultural productions were not collected or
put into libraries and museums. Even today the scholar interested in American
materials from before 1900 often finds Nordic collections sadly deficient.
Given the lack of resources, few nineteenth-century scholars focused on the
new nation. Europe as a whole was not much different. With a few stunning
exceptions, such as Alexis de Tocqueville and Max Weber, most European
scholars simply ignored America, though there were many interesting travel
books written about the United States for the general reader.
World War I increased European interest in the United States, as it was
becoming a great power. I find it highly suggestive that in France the first
chairs in American subjects were created during 1917, just as America was
entering the War. By 1920 the US had the largest economy in the world, and
during the interwar years research foundations began to sponsor transAtlantic travel by academics for the first time. (A century earlier Tocqueville
may have been the first person to have had a grant, and fortunately he
exploited it to do many other things besides study prisons. )
In the 1930s interest in the US increased, but so did antagonism to it,
most obviously in Germany, but also in other nations. America was often
viewed as a cultureless land with an enormous industrial plant. Attacked by
intellectuals of both right and left, for different reasons to be sure, the US was
no longer seen as the land of revolution (that was now Russia) but rather of
capitalist democracy.
To narrow the focus, each of the Nordic nations had a different early
relationship to American Studies. Sweden and Norway displayed somewhat
more interest, presumably because both sent larger numbers of immigrants to
the United States, and began to send them earlier, than Finland and Denmark.
2
For example, Skard notes that in the 1870s the first rektor of Goteborg
University wrote a book about American literature. Even so, in all the Nordic
countries academic interest in the US was sporadic. Long into the twentieth
century there were no chairs in American history, geography, or literature. In
the public schools American literature made only slow progress. In 1958,
Skard correctly saw how the Second World War had dramatically intensified
interest in things American, and realized that this was more than a simple
response to America's rise as a world power. Just as importantly, after the
Nazi occupation of Denmark and Norway, after the concentration camps,
German culture had lost the prestige and pre-eminence it had long held in
academic life. Nordic scholars no longer looked to Germany, but rather to
Britain and the United States. (The reorientation toward the Anglo-American
world has lasted a half century, but in recent years one cannot help but note a
returning interest in the reunited Germany.)
However, the eclipse of Germany did not immediately transfer
attention to America. In the 1950s departments of English focused on Britain
and enshrined Oxbridge pronunciation as the standard, while giving only
grudging recognition to American English. In most universities American
literature and history were not required, and few theses were written on
American subjects.
Yet English did become the first foreign language in
secondary education, and increasingly,
American materials entered the
curriculum. Beyond these generalizations about all of the Nordic countries,
clearly Norway early took the lead, not least due to Skard's leadership.
Sweden and Denmark created fewer permanent positions for Americanists in
the 1950s, and Finland lagged the furthest behind. Indeed, the first tenured
position in an American subject came as late as 1978 in Tampere, which began
an American Studies program there in 1984. The second position in American
literature came only in 1996, at Helsinki university. By this time Sweden had
well developed programs in American literature at Uppsala; Denmark had
3
created two Centers for American Studies (Odense, 1992, and Aarhus, 1996);
and Norway had significant concentrations of Americanists in both Oslo and
Bergen.
Looking back four decades after Skard wrote his magisterial book, it is
obvious that the Nordic countries have made great strides toward
institutionalizing American Studies. The tiny library holdings he found have
grown much larger. There are much improved catalogues, and the possibilities
of interlibrary loan are far better. The internet provides daily contact with
fellow specialists anywhere on the globe. The Nordic Association for
American Studies (NAAS) did not exist in 1958, and had it existed there would
have been few potential members. Today NAAS has almost 300 members.
Then it had no journal; in 1998 it celebrated its thirtieth year.
But if progress is unmistakable, the road has been neither smooth nor
straight. In the 1960s anti-war protest fuelled anti-Americanism. At that time I
was still in the United States, and as a fellow protester and conscientious
objector to the Vietnam War, I sympathize with those who marched and
carried signs outside the American embassies. But protesters often were
unable to distinguish between anti-war and anti-American sentiments. The
majority of US American Studies scholars were against the Vietnam War, so it
seems ironic and misguided that their field of study suffered cutbacks. The
first Center for American Studies in Denmark almost was established as early
as 1970 at Århus University, but the prevailing political climate made this
impossible and a quarter century passed before that university had one.
Copenhagen University apparently suffered a similar fate. When I came there
to teach in 1987, I found that American literature was not a required course,
that no courses in American history were offered in the history department,
and that the English faculty retained its strong orientation to Britain. To some
extent, in all the Nordic countries, with the possible exception of Norway, the
Vietnam era delayed the growth of the field. Even in Norway the leading
4
scholars in the field felt it necessary to write a letter during the height of the
anti-Vietnam War protests, disavowing their support for the US position, but
asserting their continued interest in studying the United States. In contrast,
during these very years American Studies inside the United States grew
rapidly in part because its scholars offered powerful critiques of violence in
America, of racism, and of the mythology of manifest destiny.
History departments became especially anachronistic as a result of
isolating themselves from American developments. To my amazement, in the
late 1980s some Nordic historians still thought the Turner frontier thesis was a
compelling argument, and Richard Hofstadter’s work from the 1950s, The Age
of Reform, was still taken by some to be a basic text. In the past decade,
however, the many student exchanges with the United States, as well as the
continual movement of scholars to and from America via the Fulbright
Program, have raised the level of knowledge and the intensity of interest so
much that English departments have hired more historians, even if history
departments remain Eurocentric.
As this sketch of American Studies in the Nordic countries suggests, the
field differs in many ways from American Studies in the United States.
Visiting scholars, notably Fulbrighters, need some orientation if they really
want to adapt to the new teaching and research environment. Of course, a few
try to bring all their research materials with them and some try to teach as
though they were still in the US, in which case the students do most of the
adjusting. One can even argue that this is a good thing for the students,
though it is not, I believe, for the visiting faculty member.
Teaching American Studies within another culture is a kind of cultural
striptease, although not in the sense of removing layers of meaning to get to
an essence that lies beneath. Rather, American Studies abroad is a process in
which what seems to be natural turns out to be cultural. No matter how many
layers of meaning one examines, there is always another one underneath.
5
Things which a visiting American assumes to be universal turn out to be
cultural. Take the university as an example. The Nordic university is quite
unlike its American counterpart. Nordic students select their major before
arriving at the university and take almost no electives in other departments..
They are on average older. They seldom seek out faculty for personal advance.
They pay no tuition, and they are far more financially independent of their
parents than American students. There are no intercollegiate sports teams, no
fraternities, no parents’ weekends, no homcoming weekend, no alumni
newsletter, no fund drives, and no graduation ceremonies. Almost all faculty
are in labor unions and salaries are determined almost enitrely on the basis of
seniority, with no merit increases and no yearly evaluations.
The Nordic field of American Studies differs in at least five
fundamental ways from the same discipline in the US. First, despite the field's
progress since World War II, it is rather present-minded. Many Nordic faculty
still think that the Americans have no history. I have heard a Nordic professor
declare that US history until the twentieth century belongs only in the
footnotes to world history. Judging by enrolments and thesis topics, students
generally share this preference for the recent past, particularly the last 50
years.
Second, economic support for American Studies abroad generally
reflects this present-mindedness. From the Nordic side, the US needs to be
studied not so much because it is intrinsically interesting, but because it is a
superpower. Research and teaching on the centuries before it was a
superpower is generally weak. From the US side, American Studies has been
assiduously fostered by the Fulbright exchange and the USIS. This is another
way of saying that American Studies exists in the Nordic countries partly by
virtue of Washington's continual infusions of funds during the Cold War. The
policy motivation was strategic and present-minded, although happily the
scholars on the exchanges were free to pursue their own research and teaching
6
agendas. Yet such exchanges were part of a larger cultural offensive linked to
the defense of national security.5 Now that the Cold War is over, much of this
money is being withdrawn. Fulbright budgets for the Nordic countries shrink
year by year, despite the fact that the Nordic countries themselves have
increased their contributions to the exchange. Indeed, in Denmark, more than
50% of the budget now comes from the Danes.
Fortunately for the field of American Studies, more permanent funding
for university appointments has begun to flow from within the various
ministries of education. (To what extent this is related to the end of the Cold
War is too large a topic to take up here.) In terms of permanent appointments,
American Studies now has a secure place.6 But this security is quite recent.
With the notable exception of Norway, most universities took a decade or
even a generation to move from exchanges to regular appointments in
American subjects. A survey course on the United States still is not required in
any Nordic university history departments. Before they retire, the current
generation of tenured faculty has fifteen to twenty years during which they
might change that situation.
If economic insecurity has declined, however, intellectual marginality
remains a fact of professional life. This is the third great difference. American
Studies still occupies a marginal space within the universities. Most university
students do not major in English, after all, and they take no courses on any
American subject. For most faculty in the Nordic countries American Studies
exists only on the margin of consciousness. To the shock of some American
professors, many people in the Nordic nations really are not all that interested
in the US except as another vacation destination, and as a negative contrast to
their welfare economies. And for reasons that I will come to shortly, that is
probably a healthy thing for the American visitor to encounter.
The lack of interest is reciprocal. Most Americans have only a shadowy
idea of the Nordic countries. They almost never speak any of the languages
7
and usually they do not understand their systems of government beyond the
phrase "welfare state." Geographically speaking, Americans often literally do
not know where Scandinavians are coming from. They often confuse Denmark
with Holland. They think that Copenhagen is the capital of Sweden or that one
can enjoy the midnight sun in Oslo, Goteborg, or Helsinki. Like all large
nations, the United States is mostly interested in itself. If outsiders write about
them, Americans are mildly interested if the comments are appreciative
(Alister Cooke, for example) or they take an interest if the critics are rigorously
in line with a currently popular trend (Umberto Eco or Jean Baudrillard). Even
US graduate students in the field of American Studies are only sporadically
aware of research done abroad.
This general American ignorance of the Nordic nations makes it
difficult for visitors to negotiate the fourth major difference between US and
Nordic American Studies. For once one crosses the Atlantic the field is, and
cannot avoid being, comparative. Every topic taken up implicitly has a
contrasting equivalent in the Nordic world. Abroad, American Studies
scholars inhabit two cultural and linguistic universes, which sometimes
intersect, but more often run parallel to or contradict one another. The bicultural psychology that develops is founded on a host of collisions,
refractions, and reinterpretations that they learn to live with.7 Such scholars
experience stereo cultural vision, in which comparisons provide a greater
sense of historical depth. An example here is the comparison of traditions in
painting or music, notably the invention of landscape painting in the Danish
and American traditions. Such comparisons can also make one aware of new
topics for research. In my case, Denmark provided a dramatic contrast to the
propensity, in the United States, to valorize the sublime in nature, architecture,
and technology. The Danish landscape and material culture have been
constructed to emphasize the small, the cozy (even the cute), and structures
built on a human scale. There are no skyscrapers, for example. This cultural
8
contrast contributed, in ways that are impossible to enumerate or fully
articulate, to the writing of American Technological Sublime.8
More often, those who live outside the United States experience flashbacks and flash-forwards as sequences from one culture reoccur in the other.
For example, a journalist called me earlier this week to discuss the extent to
which American media styles were being adopted by Danish politicians. The
most
common
scholarship
in
this
area
has
long
been
work
on
Americanization, including Steinar Bryn’s short book on Norway and a
collection of essays edited by Rolf Lundén and Erik Åsard on Networks of
Americanization in Sweden.9 The European upsurge of interest in this topic can
also be seen in the twenty essays published in Rob Kroes, et al, Cultural
Transmissions and Receptions: American Mass Culture in Europe.10
Americanists overseas also experience cultural dissonance, when two
incompatible cultural patterns slam up against one another. When Bill Clinton
came in Denmark in July of 1997, in the days immediately before his visit the
press discovered a major disagreement had developed between the American
embassy and local security people regarding the President's only open-air
appearance. The Americans wanted a huge crowd, and photo opportunities
for the media as Clinton made his way through the throng. The Danes
apparently had imagined a stately wave from the rostrum as the President
addressed a carefully screened public. The American approach came from US
electoral politics, in contrast to Danish politicians who do not "work" crowds"
and seldom attract 50,000 people either. The solution to this particular
disagreement was to cordon off a square and to ask all who came in to pass
through metal detectors, a procedure that took hours. Another example of the
clash of customs emerged in a recent news story. A Danish couple in New
York City parked their baby carriage next to a restaurant and went inside,
leaving the child behind. This is quite common in Denmark, where
kidnapping is rare, but it shocked New York restaurant employees. When the
9
Danes refused to bring the child inside, the restaurant called the police, who
came to the scene, had them arrested, and kept mother and child apart for
some time. The Danish press headlined this story for several days.
There are also many such cases of cultural selection and amplification,
in which one aspect of a culture is taken up and exaggerated by the other. For
example, a particular song by Louis Armstrong, "Wonderful World" is
endlessly replayed on Danish radio and television, and has been appropriated
for advertising. The song is seldom heard in the US, no doubt because in it
Armstrong seems the stereotype of the happy Negro, and his lyrics appear to
Americans to gloss over racial injustice. (But are Danes are wrong to hear the
song in their own way?) Similar recontextualizations occur during the
transmission and reception of all aspects of culture, and this realization led me
and a British colleague to invite 13 other scholars to contribute to a volume on
American Photographs in Europe.11 These essays examined such things as the
reception of American art photography at German exhibitions from 1893-1929,
the arrival of the Kodak camera in Britain and the response to its
democratization of image-making, the role of photography in immigrant
writing, the reception of American photography in France after World War II,
and the "Family of Man" photographic exhibit in Moscow during the Cold
War. In these and many other cases, the representation of America is not a
simple matter, but rather one of selection, recontextualization, and (often
unanticipated) response.
Finally, one sees in the daily news the selective (in)attention of one of
our two cultures to the other. The Nordic nations seldom bulk large in the
American press, and on both sides there is a tendency to cover only the
sensational events such as riots, shipwrecks, assassinations, and natural
disasters. Detailed cultural analysis is rare.
This is only a partial list, of course. My point is that American Studies
scholars living in the Nordic countries develop a creolized consciousness, a
10
complex awareness of similarity and difference that deepens over the years. It
is often difficult to convey this tapestry of perceptions to visiting American
academics, some of whom can only see the Nordic (and the larger European)
world with one eye and hear it with one ear. Full stereo perception may only
come with language acquisition and cultural immersion, or in other words
after years abroad.
The problem of perceiving the US is different for most Nordic students,
who begin the study of the English language long before they reach
gymnasium. The content of that early training is only sporadically American.
Their free time is partly filled with American films, television programs, and
rock music, which collectively provide a highly stylized sense of the US. At the
gymnasium students (aged 17-20) read some American literature, but courses
are seldom organized in terms of cultural themes and historical developments.
The texts usually remain subservient to the goal of language acquisition. Those
who decide to study English at the university arrive with a spotty and
impressionistic knowledge of the US, and once there take a good deal of
coursework on British language and culture as well American courses. They
consciously compare the United States and Britain. This means that they
cannot get a great depth of knowledge of US culture before reaching the age of
21, or about when US students are completing their BA. As a result, Nordic
students who specialize in the United States only become deeply engaged in
the subject as adults, and their education is a highly self-conscious process.
In contrast, Americans are immersed in their own society and they can
have difficulty imagining or understanding a truly different culture. Even
when abroad, American magazines, television programs, and books are
everywhere to hand, creating a comfortable cocoon of familiar cultural
experience. They can easily spend a year abroad without ever loosing contact
with their home institution, and without missing much American news. I
believe it is harder now to become immersed in the host culture than it was
11
two decades ago, when I went to Spain. In 1977 I could not see a single
American TV program, there were few expatriates around, and virtually all
conversations took place in Spanish. But the spread of multinational
companies, the deregulation of European television, the increasing number of
exchange students, and the arrival of fax machines and e-mail have changed
that, leading many Americans to believe that a new global culture is emerging.
Such a belief is quite convenient, since it makes it unnecessary to learn the
language of the host country or to worry about cultural differences. Such a
belief in globalization preserves hearing and seeing the world in mono rather
than stereo.12
For this reason, Americans ideally ought to spend several years abroad,
realizing through contrast how profoundly every aspect of their lives is a
cultural product, and how resistant foreign cultures are to Americanization.
Every American Studies graduate student would benefit tremendously from
spending time abroad, in order to see the United States more clearly. One
understands foreign critics of the US better as a result, notably Alexis de
Tocqueville, Max Weber, Henry James, and Umberto Eco. And just as
importantly, from Europe a comparative perspective illuminates an
American's own sense of cultural identity.
African-Americans have been especially sensitive to these possibilities.
James Baldwin, who lived for several years in Paris during the 1950s, found
himself listening to Bessie Smith records and pondering his own identity,
which seemed easier to understand through contrast with a foreign culture.13
Interviews with African-American expatriates are quite revealing on this
point. While they often go abroad in order to escape American racism, usually
they find themselves more American than they realized.
An African-
American woman who sold everything she owned and moved to Africa found
that she missed American food, and that she did not really "fit. I just cannot fit.
My conduct is all different from theirs and they can't cope with me because of
12
my background." Indeed, after associating with Ghanians almost exclusively
for a long time, she felt "very lonely" and realized that she "had nothing in
common with many Ghanaians. You know, like being able to crack a joke and
have someone here really understand it." The greatest irony of all was that she
found herself turning to white Americans, "because they were the only people
here who understood my need. Nobody else could understand what was
wrong with me, not physically, mentally. Because of our backgrounds, they
understood exactly how I felt, but nobody else."14
Overall, I am suggesting that there is a fascinating asymmetry between
the cultural position of Nordic students who enter the study of the US as
adults, seeking to acquire a new culture self-consciously and an American who
begins to understand the United States in a new way when abroad by
discovering unconscious assumptions and realizing how deeply and
thoroughly every aspect of his or her being is shaped by culture.
Such
realizations are especially useful to people who are specialists in American
Studies.
I use the word specialist intentionally, to point to a fifth difference.
While Nordic American Studies scholars remain to a considerable degree
generalists, their counterparts in the US are often becoming specialists. Indeed,
the creation of departments of American Studies can have the effect of
alienating the field from history, literature, art, and political science, the
departments that originally fostered it. At several universities this apprently
has effectively already happened. Those who go to the American Studies
national meetings are more and more concerned with minorities and
multiculturalism, to the increasing exclusion of whole subject areas. Scholars
in the history of business, diplomacy, law, formal political institutions, the
Colonial period, and so on have largely disappeared from the American
Studies Association meetings, even though they often are active as American
Studies faculty members on individual campuses. This means that Europeans
13
who only attend the ASA national meetings may get a lopsided view of the
field. No one relying on these conferences for guidance will encounter many
sessions about corporate America, about political parties, about the foreign
policy, about the first two centuries of American history, or about the history
of science and technology in the United States. American scholars interested in
such things go to other conferences. What was conceived of as a broadly
interdisciplinary field in the 1950s and 1960s has been changing year by year,
often in positive ways, especially in reaching out to Asian Americans, AfricanAmericans, women, Hispanics, and Native-Americans. The conventions have
grown to be enormous and the number of sessions huge, but the ASA no
longer represents the full range of subject matter offered at American
universities.
The ASA national convention is less interesting to me than it was 15
years ago. Subject areas where I do research, notably American photography,
business, science, material culture, technology, and comparative history, are
becoming increasingly marginal. In contrast, the European institution of
American Studies remains more congenial brings together a more diverse
group of Americanists, partly because Europeans have fewer choices. In the
US I might choose to attend the American Historical Association, the Modern
Language Association, the Organization of American Historians, The Society
for the History of Technology, or the Society for Environmental History, to
make a short list. But in Europe Americanists of diverse interests congregate
at the few venues available, notably those provided by the European
Association of American Studies and its sister organizations.
This sharing of diversity is often the case at individual universities as
well. When there are only half a dozen Americanists to cover all fields.
scholars all need and want to talk, and each must be something of a generalist.
The Nordic nations, and
Europe as a whole, tend to foster a little less
specialization, or perhaps one could call it specialization within a wider
14
context. The institutional and bi-cultural situation forces scholars to become
generalists when teaching and advising, and this often becomes evident in
research as well.
This outline of the differences between American Studies on two sides
of the Atlantic shows how Nordic scholars occupy a distinctive intercultural
location. Americans usually just assume that they are experts on their own
nation. They are native speakers, thoroughly imbued with their culture, and
they need seldom wonder about what everyday things mean. Not so the
Nordic student, who knows the US first in books, television, and fiction, and
only later in person. I tell my students when they go to the US that their
comparative view will give them insights, but I know they are dubious. Of
course, there are areas where they can feel confident, notably in four areas:
theory (where their mastery of languages gives them an advantage),
immigration studies, foreign policy as it touches their home country, and
comparative work. All of these are worthy fields, where Nordic scholars have
long stood in the first rank. But Nordic scholars need not restrict themselves to
these fields. As our own conference program shows, the comparative view
and the interdisciplinary context of Nordic American Studies makes possible
work of the highest quality in any area. Indeed, Americans can learn things
from a creolized perspective, from stereo vision, that they cannot learn at
home.
Yet all this being said, I am painting a somewhat idealized image, a
promise that is not always realized. Nordic scholars generally face retrograde
history departments that refuse to make US history a part of the required
curriculum. And there are problems making curricula interdisciplinary,
because of the way universities are structured. But nevertheless this potential
is increasingly being realized. Major American Studies funding has begun in
Finland. Sweden, Finland, and Denmark have committed themselves to
permanent senior Fulbright chairs, ensuring a continued yearly exchange and
15
dialogue at the highest levels. Nordic student interest in the US is strong and
growing stronger, as measured in exchanges with American universities and
enrolments in American Studies courses. The spread of the Internet is also
important, as it eases access to information. Another measure of improvement
is the ability of American Studies in Scandinavia, to attract excellent articles. It
seems conceivable that in the foreseeable future it could become one of the five
leading journals in the field.15 But the transformation of the biannual
conferences is perhaps the most striking example of maturation. In 1982
almost all the papers given at the NAAS conference in Copenhagen were
delivered by visiting Americans. The organizers of the following conference in
Bergen felt that it was time for Nordic scholars to take a more active role than
listeners at their own meetings, and they found no lack of qualified people in
their own ranks to supplement the American contribution. The opportunity to
give papers continued at the following meetings in Upsalla, Tampere, and
Reykjavik, and by the time of the 1992 NAAS conference in Odense more than
75 papers were given, mostly by NAAS members, and mostly in parallel
workshop sessions. Another concurrent sign of health is the appearance of
many young Ph.D. candidates in recent years. All of these things point to the
coming-of-age of American Studies in the Nordic countries.
It is maturing, but to what end? Are Nordic scholars about to embark
on grand comparative studies backed by massive funding? Is there a
distinctive Nordic school of thought in American Studies? Might one expect
soon the appearance of a Nordic Tocqueville? No doubt the United States
could benefit from a thorough-going analysis undertaken from abroad, of the
kind that Tocqueville once managed on his own, but which now would
undoubtedly require teamwork. Such a thing has been sponsored before,
notably in the seminal work of Gunnar Myrdal on American race relations,16
and it could be done again. Yet such an outcome can hardly be expected, as it
would require considerable funding over an extended time, plus the selection
16
and coordination of a team of researchers that would need to stay together
over a period of years. Such an expensive and long term project is unlikely,
but by no means impossible. Far more feasible is the emergence of new
teaching materials, notably interdisciplinary textbooks on the United States
seen from the creolized Nordic perspective, and aimed at non-Americans.17
If there is at present no Nordic school of American Studies, but perhaps
there could be. To paraphrase Emerson, "Your day of dependence, your long
apprenticeship...draws to a close."18 It is not likely that the new crop of Ph.D.
students will parrot American thinking. They will not model themselves on
Emerson's American scholar, but rather become European American Scholars.
For them, Emerson's project needs considerable revision. They will immerse
themselves not in transcendental Nature but in comparative culture. They will
not automatically defer to American colleagues, but test their ideas against
Nordic experience. Because they see the United States in stereo, they cannot
fail to develop new and valuable perspectives.
In conclusion, then, American Studies in the Nordic countries is ready
for new departures. The field has been fully institutionalized in recent
decades. It now faces the usual dangers of a successful organization:
complacency, over-specialization, petty rivalries, and imitation of others
rather than self-development. I hope that in two decades a scholar will look
back and find that in the 1990s Nordic Americanists seized their opportunities.
I hope that a generation from now its journal will be considered one of the best
in the field. I hope that the values of international exchange will then be so
obvious to those who fund such ventures, and that it will become virtually
obligatory for graduate students and young teachers in America to go abroad
for a period of their education. Whatever happens, I feel certain that American
Studies will thrive in the Nordic nations in a creolized form, making its own
distinctive contribution.
17
Notes
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
I want to thank Dale Carter, Orm Øverland, and Markku Hendriksen for their comments
and responses to that earlier version of the talk. They bear no responsibility for the views set
forth in the present paper.
The subject of the European view of America is vast, of course, but aside from the major
figures such as Alexis de Tocqueville and Lord Bryce, one might begin with the eighteenthcentury debate on the New World as chronicled in Henry Steele Commager and Elmo
Giordanetti, Was America a Mistake? (New York: Harper and Row, 1967).
Sigmund Skard, American Studies in Europe. (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1958), p. 26.
A useful recent contribution to this area is Richard P. Horwitz, Exporting America: Essays on
American Studies Abroad (New York: Garland, 1993).
Ibid., p. 27
See Richard Pells, Not Like Us (New York: Basic Books, 1997) p. 62-63. See also Reinhold
Wagnleitner, Coca-Colonization and the Cold War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina,
1994).
The number of faculty in Slavic studies is still larger at many universities, but student
interest in things American has never been greater.
For more on bi-cultural perceptions based on living in the Nordic countries, see F. Richard
Thomas, Americans in Denmark: Comparisons of the Two Cultures by Writers, Artists, and
Teachers (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1990)
David E. Nye, American Technological Sublime (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1994.) The contrasts
between Danish and American culture were also important stimuli to a subsequent book,
Consuming Power: A Cultural History of American Energies (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1997).
Steinar Bryn, Norsk Amerikabilete: Om amerikanisering av norsk kultur (Oslo: Det Norske
Samlaget, 1992); Rolf Lundén and Erik Åsard, Networks of Americanization: Aspects of
American Influence in Sweden Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis No. 79, 1992).
Rob Kroes, et al, Cultural Transmissions and Receptions: American Mass Culture in Europe.
(Amsterdam: Free University Press, 1993.
David E. Nye and Mick Gidley, American Photographs in Europe (Amsterdam: Amsterdam
Free University Press, 1994).
I have a quarrel with multi-culturalism on this point, because it tends to use a small number
of theories to describe all cultures and can be reductionist.
James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son (New York: Bantam, 1955) pp. 99-149
Ernest Dunbar, The Black Expatriates: A Study of American Negroes in Exile (New York: Dutton,
1968), p. 63-64.
Most would agree rather quickly about the first four journals in American Studies, even if
we debated their relative merits. I think here of the American Quarterly, American Studies,
(where I am a board member) Prospects, and the British Journal of American Studies. But what
are the next four after that? I dare say it would be impossible to reach consensus, not least
because most of the contenders are published in part or their entirety in their national
languages. American Studies in Scandinavia is entirely in English, of course, which gives it a
competitive advantage in reaching outside its membership for additional readers and
contributors.
Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy New York:
Transaction, 1996 (reprint of New York: Harper and Brothers, 1944).
For my own attempt, see David E. Nye. Contemporary American Society, third edition,
(Copenhagen: Academic Press, 1997)
This is a paraphrase of Ralph Waldon Emerson’s “The American Scholar.”
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