Entitled “The European Imagination of the Americas”, the eleventh annual graduate student history symposium on transatlantic history took place on Thursday, October 28th 2010 at the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA). On the presenter’s side, there were six graduate students from across the United States as well as a distinguished keynote speaker from Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas. The first of the two panels dealt with the Europeans’ expectations and mental ‘baggage’ reflected in accounts of travelers and literature to both the United States and Mexico, whereas the second panel focused on the opposition of fiction and reality, and the process of identity formation. Each panel was moderated and commentated by a historian from UTA.
SIMONE DE SANTIAGO RAMOS (Denton, Texas) analyzed the Navy diaries of two German brothers who traveled repeatedly to the United States in the 1920s and 1930s. Both were fascinated with the new technology but also critical of the “fakeness” and lack of a social net they encountered in the New World, the “Schlaraffenland” as they called it. The different visits bequeathed different visions, and the way they viewed the U.S. and were treated (“they hated us Germans”) were severely affected by the changes to the political climate back home in Europe.
The second presentation by RACHEL NEY (Evanston, Illinois) consisted of a postmodern approach to memory, offering an alternative to traditional history-writing. In his novel “The Mexican Deam”, the French author Le Clezio attempted to imagine Mexico’s presence if European intervention in Amerindian time had not occurred by reengaging with the past and creating a romantic vision of the pre-Cortezian world. Quoting the Argentine-Mexican philosopher Enrique Dussel, Ney underlined the necessity of engaging a non-Eurocentric vision for a reevaluation of modernity and its relation to culture. Since Amerindian culture did not survive into modernity, postmodernity could enable the return of memory and, thus, a cultural becoming by creating a ‘virtual space of in-between where cultures can meet’.
GREG KOSC (Arlington, Texas) made the third presentation. His work deals with the confrontation between British hunters and Native Americans, the ‘Noble Savages’ at the end of the nineteenth century. Central to his analysis, based on British hunting accounts, were the categories of race and gender: Indians were considered ‘racially inferior’, indolent, unintelligent, lacking work ethic, and they did not comply with Western standards of manliness. They were considered unable to assimilate and depicted as primitives as they were seen to be degenerate and unfit in a Darwinist perspective.
The second panel was opened by JULIA BROOKINS (Chicago, Illinois). Dealing with immigrant acculturation, she argued that nationality and race is key to the understanding of American citizenship. Her primary sources were letters and memoirs taken from U.S. and German archives as well as the Texan-German press, in particular the “Neu Braunfelser” and “San Antonio Zeitung“. In most accounts, Germans accepted the anti-Mexican rhetoric, which, according to Brookins, was an indication for an adherence to a colonial discourse. Mexicans were depicted as immoral and lazy, and Tejanos even compared to Gypsies in Europe. But with the rise of political nativism during the economic depression of the 1850’s and 1860’s Germans and Ethnic Mexicans created an alliance against Anglos and joined political interest groups emerged.
MICHAEL BEATTY (College Station, Texas) presented his work on migration from the Germanic States of Europe to the Missouri river valley. He focused on Gottfried Duden’s immigrant prospectuses from 1829, which studied the geography and physical features of America, such as climate, vegetation, flora and fauna. It was suggested by his commentator Thomas Adam that he leave the outdated push-pull concept for migration processes behind and instead engage an approach that considers travel guides as images that need to be decoded by historians.
PAWEL GORAL (Arlington, Texas) gave the last presentation entitled “Cultural Imperialism or Intercultural Transfer: German Western Films and the Cold War” in which he analyzed the tradition of German Western and its importance of this film genre for the formation of East and West German identities. The film genre, originally a narrative of freedom and the American way of life, was approached differently in the Federal Republic of Germany and German Democratic Republic. The first regarded culture as a crucial battlefield in a setting of cold war liberal consensus, whereas in the latter, the genre was modified to serve the purpose of demonstrating anti-Americanism, antifascism and anti-imperialism.
The keynote speaker, MEREDITH MCCLAIN (Lubbock, Texas) talked about “Karl May’s Imaginary Llano Estacado and its Impact”, illuminating the connection between the Llano Estacado, an area in the Texas pan handle and German Karl May fans of the twenty-first century, passing by an oasis discovered by Coronado in 1541, a Bavarian image on a Texan banknote, “Old Shatterhand”, the 1913 foundation of a Munich Cowboy Club and Indian Clubs in Siemensdorf, Germany. She concluded with the immigrant Heinrich Schmitt (1836-1912) being an incarnation of May’s imagination of life at the American Frontier. Her speech had been preceded by an introduction to the life of the German author Karl May by Pawel Goral and the showing of the documentary “Karl May and the West” on the previous day by the Center of Greater Southwestern Studies at the UTA library.
Conference Overview:
Karen Beasley (Arlington, Texas): Introduction
Beth Wright (Arlington, Texas): Welcome
Panel I:
Stephanie Cole (Arlington, Texas) Moderator Panel
Simone de Santiago Ramos (Denton, Texas): ‘Wie herrlich ist das schöne Amerika!’: Reception and Perception of German Sailors in America.
Rachel Ney (Evanston, Illinois), Memories Yet to Come Back: Le Clezio’s Revolution of Time in The Mexican Dream.
Greg Kosc (Arlington, Texas): An Atavistic and Obsolete Race?: Native Americans in British Hunting Accounts.
Steven Reinhardt (Arlington, Texas): Commentator Panel I
Panel II:
Elizabeth Cawthon (Arlington, Texas): Moderator Panel
Julia Brookins (Chicago, Illinois): Tejanos and Mexicans in the German-Texan Experience, 1844-1870.
Michael Beatty (College Station, Texas): Regions Especially Advantageous for ‘New Settlement’: The Physical Geography of America in German Immigrant Prospectuses of the 1820s and 1830s.
Pawel Goral (Arlington, Texas): Cultural Imperialism or Intercultural Transfer: German Western Films and the Cold War.
Thomas Adam (Arlington, Texas), Commentator Panel II
Meredith McClain (Lubbock, Texas): Karl May’s Imaginary Llano Estacado and its Impact.