Transnational Mediations: Negotiating Popular Culture between Europe and the United States

• Antragsteller: Professor Dr. Christof Decker
• Fachliche Zuordnung: Europäische und Amerikanische Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaften
• Förderung: Förderung von 2015 bis 2016
• Projektkennung: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Projektnummer 284033579

In the course of the 20th and 21st Centuries, American media have been continually received, adapted and transformed by European cultures. Initially based on the competition among the early film industries located in France, Italy, and the United States and con¬tinuing with today¿s global dominance of web-based companies such as Google or Facebook, these productive exchanges entail complex economic, aesthetic, and cultural negotiations. American media productions setting the stan¬dard for popular forms of storytelling and en¬tertainment have become the benchmark against which local European productions have to compete. Yet, the dynamic and scope of these negotiations has been ambiguous, ranging from instances of American cultural imperialism to the subversion of rigid social hierarchies in Europe via the adaptation of American cultural productions. More often than not, they have revolved around the transatlantic exchange of creative ideas and the cross-fertilization of media and art productions. The authors in this volume¿senior scholars from nine different countries with an impressive track record of research¿believe it is high time to critically explore the myriad forms these cultural negotiations take. They situate them conceptually in three guiding paradigms of transnational research: first, the notion of cultural encounters as interrelated with technological, political, institutional, and economic forces; second, the idea of culture as style created through the meeting of global and regional or local traditions; and finally, the contested concepts of exchange between national cultures being based on essential traits or, alternatively, on provisional, temporary, and strategic constructions of identity. This publication pursues core arenas of transnational cul¬tural exchange including photography, film, fashion, television, and the new media. It asks not merely how American media pro¬ductions were received in different Euro-pean cultural contexts but how they shaped the idea of distinct yet interconnected and shared Euro¬pean identities.

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