AAAS Austrian Association for American Studies ÖSTERREICHISCHE GESELLSCHAFT FÜR AMERIKASTUDIEN

35th International Annual Conference October 24-26, 2008

Velden am Woerthersee

Almighty Dollar

http://www.univie.ac.at/Anglistik/aaas/

Cover image: “Silent screen star Mae Murray swoons in a scene presumably for Altars of Desire (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1927).” Frontispiece in Fred L. Reed, Show Me the Money! The Standard Catalogue of Motion Picture, Television,

Stage, and Advertising Prop Money (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2005).

AAAS Austrian Association for American Studies ÖSTERREICHISCHE GESELLSCHAFT FÜR AMERIKASTUDIEN

http://www.univie.ac.at/Anglistik/aaas/

PRESIDENT: HEINZ TSCHACHLER Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik A-9020 KLAGENFURT heinz.tschachler@uni-klu.ac.at

VICE PRESIDENT: KLAUS RIESER Universität Graz Institut für Amerikanistik Attemsgasse 25/II A-8020 Graz klaus.rieser@uni-graz.at

SECRETARY: ELEONORE WILDBURGER Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik A-9020 KLAGENFURT eleonore.wildburger@uni-klu.ac.at

TREASURER: EUGEN BANAUCH Universität Wien Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik Spitalgasse 2, Hof 8 A-1090 WIEN eugen.banauch@univie.ac.at

AAAS Austrian Association for American Studies ÖSTERREICHISCHE GESELLSCHAFT FÜR AMERIKASTUDIEN

Idea and Realization Heinz Tschachler Organizing Team Eleonore Wildburger (the rock upon which we built it all) Eugen Banauch (finances) Silvia Schultermandl (Graduate Student Forum) Maureen Devine (think tank, registration desk) Simone Puff (registration desk, public relations) Other Helping Hands Sabine Aigner (hotel reservations, local infrastructure) Helga Klopcic (secretarial work) Manuela Bernhardt (secretarial work, technical infrastructure) Karin Schmid-Gerlich (the angel from the U.S. Embassy) Supporting Institutions and Other Sponsors Bundesministerium für Wissenschaft und Forschung in Wien Embassy of the United States of America, Public Affairs Section, Vienna Austrian-American Educational Commission (Fulbright Commission) Forschungsrat der Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt (aus den Mitteln des

Landes Kärnten) Dekanat für Kulturwissenschaften der Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt Dr. Manfred Gehring Privatstiftung Kärntner Universitätsbund Kongressförderung Kärnten Verband der wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaften Österreichs (VWGÖ) Special thanks go to Mag. Othmar Resch and Casino Austria for hosting the conference at the Casineum.

Introductory Remarks

The dollar, Washington Irving wrote in 1837 at the height of a financial panic, is “daily becoming more and more an object of worship.” This saying is a useful reminder that from the colonial era, various forms of money have been more than mere commercial conveniences. They have also always been documents of culture, artifacts that speak to the identity of a group of people, a place, and a time. We can distinguish denominations not just by numerical symbols of perceived worth, but also by images that convey messages to and from the society that gives rise to them. Analyzing money culturally requires an eye on what is concrete, on how it speaks, on what it does, and on how it affects the inner world of real people, the ways they feel about life, the relations between individuals, or culture in general. Lectures and papers to this conference consider people’s engagements with the “Almighty Dollar,” from the most ordinary, mundane daily practices to the most extra-ordinary, life-changing ones. Such engagements can be found in literature, the arts, film, and popular culture. This leaves the possibility of topics wide open, yet in one way or the other, they all connect to the meanings of and the increasingly thin line between the Almighty Dollar and the people who make, use, and consume it. Lectures and papers present a multiplicity of theoretical frames and methodologies that grapple with questions concerning the cultural work of the national monetary icon. Some study the stories told about the Almighty Dollar, the images produced of it, the feelings associated with it, or the values placed upon it. Others consider the ways in which the Almighty Dollar has been classified and conceptualized, or the contexts within which it has circulated and the social and cultural practices that have enabled the circulation of the national money icon. On the other hand, studying the Almighty Dollar may seem gratuitous. One only needs to consider how the dollar has been performing against the euro. In addition, the euro has surpassed the Almighty Dollar in terms of the combined value of notes in circulation. In December 2006, it stood at €610 billion, equivalent at the time to $802 billion, compared with approximately $700 billion in United States currency. Thus, the euro is now the world’s most popular form of cash. Moreover, in America, the vast bulk of monetary transactions are now made by checks based on bank deposits or by credit cards; furthermore, nearly all dollars now exist electronically, though a lot of them seems to be mysteriously disappearing. Yet there are still some twenty-two billion paper bills as well as a similarly large amount of coins in circulation. We can safely assume, therefore, that dollars still function as vehicles of images and symbols that help constitute membership in American society, construct a sense of collectivity, and organize cultural life, often in quite unexpected ways.

Program

FRIDAY, October 24: 12 noon: registration desk opens 12:30-2pm – business luncheon (board meeting), place to be announced 2pm – Opening and Fulbright Award (in Casineum am See)

3-4:30 – Graduate Student Forum I (in Casineum am See); chair: Silvia

Schultermandl, Graz)

4:30-5 – coffee break 5-6:30 – workshop session I, WS 1: “The Almighty Dollar in the Movies” (in

Casineum am See) 7pm – grand opening (in Casineum am See) and

keynote lecture by Stephen Mihm (University of Georgia): “The Almighty Dollar at Home and Abroad: Transnational History and the Currency Question” (in Casineum am See)

8:30 – general meeting of AAAS SATURDAY, October 25: 9-10:30am – workshop session II, two parallel sessions in hotel seminar rooms:

WS 2: “Money – as in Currency” (SR Casino-Hotel) / WS 3: “In and Out of the American Dream I” (SR Hotel Post-Wrann),

10:30-11:00 – coffee break 11-12:30 - plenary lecture by Nadja Gernalzick (Mainz / Oldenburg):

“Sacrificial or Legal: Explanations and Aestheticizations of Money in American Novels” (in Casineum am See)

12:30-2pm - lunch break

2-3:30 – plenary lecture by Eva Boesenberg (Berlin): “Self-Made Women, Spent Men? Money and Gender in U.S. American Novels since the 1980s” (in Casineum am See)

3:30 – 4 – coffee break 4-5:30 – workshop session III, 2 parallel sessions: WS 4: “Popular Culture,

Ideas, and History” (SR Casino-Hotel) / WS 5: “In and Out of the American Dream II” (SR Hotel Post-Wrann)

6pm – buffet dinner (in Casineum am See) 7pm – book presentation: Heinz Tschachler, All Others Pay Cash (moderator:

Maureen Devine) 7:30pm - plenary lecture by Gerda E. Moser (Klagenfurt): “Pleasure, Ethics,

and the Economy – Learning from Paris Hilton” (in Casineum am See) social evening in Casino Velden SUNDAY, October 26: 9am - board meeting (new board) (SR Casino Hotel) 10-11:30 - Graduate Student Forum II (SR Casino Hotel)

farewell brunch boating trip on Lake Wörthersee (optional)

List of Workshops and Graduate Student Forums GRADUATE STUDENT SESSION I, Friday 3-4:30 Graduate Student Workshop I (Casineum) – Chair: Silvia Schultermandl

Manuela Schmied-Rathkohl, (University of Klagenfurt)

“Negotiating Difference - Teaching in Hutterite Colony Schools”

Leopold Lippert, (University of Vienna)

“Utopian Contemporaries: Queer Temporality and America”

Nicole Semmelrock, (University of Vienna)

“The Emmett Till Case and its Impact on American Culture and Society”

WORKSHOP SESSION I, Friday 5-6:30 Workshop 1: “The Almighty Dollar in the Movies” (Casineum) – Chair: Christian Quendler

Dakovic, Nevena (University of Arts, Belgrade)

“Depression in Hollywood: The Almighty and not so Mighty Dollar”

Poole, Ralph J. (Fatih University, Istanbul / Salzburg University)

“Blonde Bombshell and Homely Housewife: Selling the Woman in 1950s Hollywood Comedies”

Ogihara, Eriko (Technische Universität Dormund)

“Golden Peril? Monetary Representations of Asians in 1960s American Popular Culture”

WORKSHOP SESSION II, Saturday 9-10:30 Workshop 2: “Money – as in Currency” (SR Casino-Hotel) – Chair: Astrid Fellner Kern, Louis J. (Hofstra University) “In the Land of the Dollar, but Which

Dollar? The ‘Crime of ’73,’ the Free Silver Crusade, and the Populist Dollar”

Timpe, Veronika (University of Dortmund)

“Beyond Face Value: Images of Slaves on 19th-Century American Currency”

Loock, Kathleen (University of Göttingen)

“Goodbye Columbus, Hello Abe! – Changing Imagery on U.S. Paper Money and the Negotiation of American National Identity”

Workshop 3: “In and Out of the American Dream I” (SR Hotel Post) – Chair: Maureen Devine

Brandt, Stefan L. (Universität Siegen)

“The American Dream as Tall Tale: Lies, Parvenus, and ‘Big Men’ in The

Great Gatsby and Fargo” Bushgjokaj, Arben (University of Shkodra)

“What Money Can’t Buy: A Comparative Analysis of Money and Values in Fitzgerald’s The Great

Gatsby and in the Short Fiction of Two Albanian Writers of the Same Period (Migjeni & Koliqi)”

Merve Özman, (Hacettepe University, Ankara)

“Immigrant Dreams and Dollar Fetishisms: Reification and the Transformation of the American Dream into a Dream of Dollars”

WORKSHOP SESSION III, Saturday 4-5:30 Workshop 4: “Popular Culture, Ideas, and History” (SR Casino-Hotel) – Chair: Hanna Wallinger Neal, Valerie (National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution):

“Dollars and Sense: What is the U.S. Space Program Worth?”

Schwarz, Claudia (University of Innsbruck)

“Rich Americans Who Never Lived”

Fellner, Astrid M. (Universität Wien)

“‘It’s all About the Dough’: Paris Hilton in Austria”

Workshop 5: “In and Out of the American Dream II” (SR Hotel Post) – Chair: Walter Grünzweig Gerhardt, Christine (Universität Freiburg)

“Greenbacks: The Nature of Money in Tony Morrison’s Song of Solomon”

Podleśny, Damian (Jagellonian University, Krakow)

“Philip K. Dick's Characters Struggling to Make a Living”

Urbatsch, Katja (Justus-Liebig-University Giessen)

“Gold Standard versus Fiat Money: Money in Frank Norris’s McTeague (1899) and Don DeLillo’s Cosmopolis (2003) from the Perspective of the New Economic Criticism”

GRADUATE STUDENT SESSION II, Sunday 10-11:30 Graduate Student Workshop II (SR Casino Hotel) – Chair: Silvia Schultermandl

Feyersinger, Erwin (University of Innsbruck)

“Two Specific Narrative Structures in Animated Short Films: Situational Repetition and Fluid Transformations”

Fuchs, Michael (University of Graz)

Meta-Horror Now and Then: New

Nightmare and King Kong

Payman, Rezwan (University of Vienna)

“This Ain’t Tennessee: The Cultural Politics of New Country”

Abstracts

Boesenberg, Eva (Humboldt-Universität, Berlin)

“Self-Made Women, Spent Men? Money and Gender in U.S. American Novels since the 1980s”

Configurations of money and gender in U.S. American novels have changed significantly since the 1960s. Various social and political movements such as the civil rights, women's, Chicano/a, American Indian and gay and lesbian movements, as well as higher numbers of women in the workforce have revised still-influential views that defined economics and finance as part of the “men’s sphere” and posited femininity as incompatible with pecuniary power. On the other hand, Richard Nixon's severance of the link between the U.S. dollar and gold in 1971 established money as a purely symbolic discourse whose value was no longer certified by precious metal or other material objects. While this might encourage a less conspicuously gendered understanding of money, the male-dominated discourses of international finance and the stock exchange have continued to portray economic success as a measure of masculinity and vice versa.

My presentation will address the changing contours of money and gender in six novels published since the 1980s. Yet clearly, a discussion of literary representations of this subject cannot limit itself to the thematic level. Narrative technique – specifically, questions of narrative economy versus excess, authorial control versus dialogism, and monetary imagery – contributes significantly to a text's overall depiction of masculinity, femininity, and legal tender. Contrasting and relating financial and cultural capital, the novels examine the interrelations of money and literary language, which is frequently represented as the superior currency.

Focusing on texts by Tom Wolfe, Paul Auster, Don DeLillo, Alice Walker, Louise Erdrich and Mary Gordon, I will argue that constellations of money and femininity in contemporary U.S. American novels demonstrate a diversity and flexibility as yet unmatched in representations of money and masculinity. While female characters may begin to appropriate the paradigm of the self-made man, transforming it in the process (not least through their work as artists), male protagonists often seem to be stuck in a "masculinity crisis" generated by the erosion of financial dominance. Yet, the development of more productive, less hierarchical economic and gender relations both within literature and outside of it requires innovative images of money and masculinity all genders will eventually benefit from.

Brandt, Stefan L. (Universität Siegen)

“The American Dream as Tall Tale: Lies, Parvenus, and ‘Big Men’ in The

Great Gatsby and Fargo”

The American Dream is usually associated with those legendary self-made men who have worked their way up from rags to riches, from Horatio Alger to Nelson Rockefeller. In a number of autobiographical books and success stories (frequently published in journals and magazines), these men vividly sketch their unexpected path from poverty to prosperity and give advice to potential followers. However, there have always been counter narratives in which the miraculous careers of such social climbers are dismantled as shallow illusions,

crafted by a culture obsessed with wealth and upward mobility. Ever since the Gilded Age, the notion that everyone, regardless of their family background and social origin, can “make it,” has been ridiculed and parodied by major writers.

This tradition has been taken to a climax by representatives of the Lost Generation, most notably by Scott Fitzgerald whose biting satires poke fun at the American Dream. Both in his short story “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz” (1922) and his celebrated novel The Great

Gatsby (1925), Fitzgerald derides the money-centeredness and unscrupulous strife for success by which many parvenus during the Jazz age were driven. The myth of the American Dream, Fitzgerald reminds us, can only be upheld through the construction of success tales, the most memorable of which shows us an immensely wealthy man in his luxurious palace, surrounded by other rich people – an image Fitzgerald recreates through the figure of Jay Gatsby. The more we delve into the fictional world of gamblers and nouveau riches in The Great Gatsby, the more we realize that the characters’ real desires have to remain unfulfilled.

This deconstruction of the old equation of monetary wealth and personal happiness is taken to a new extreme in Joel Coen’s neo-noir comedy Fargo (1996). Not coincidentally set in the American 1980s, Fargo presents us with a squad of frustrated and angry crooks, all of them living in the land of the legendary giant Paul Bunyan, who destroy their own lives and that of their fellow citizens through their reckless greed for money. Yet, in a final twist, the film leaves us with the image of a humble policewoman, pregnant in the 7th month, and her equally modest husband who comes to appreciate the fact that one of his oil paintings has been picked as a motif for a 3-cent stamp. Fargo’s final recurrence to the themes of humbleness and faith, I will argue, constitutes a concession to the romantic structure of the American Dream that at first glance it seems to reject. Notably, the (anti-)heroes in Fargo are marked by an astonishing endurance that keeps them from abandoning their dreams. The characters in Fitzgerald’s tales are endowed with a similar feature, perhaps the most crucial trait commonly ascribed to Americans – the “extraordinary gift of hope” (as he puts it). This fundamental hope of Americans, I will contend, is far from being suspended in such tall tales of success and subsequent failure. On a much deeper level, it is reaffirmed and strengthened as a guiding principle.

Bushgjokaj, Arben (University of Shkodra)

“What Money Can’t Buy: A Comparative Analysis of Money and Values in Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and in the Short Fiction of Two Albanian Writers of the Same Period (Migjeni & Koliqi)”

This paper aims to present a comparative analysis of the effects of the powerful and powerless ‘almighty money’ in both the American and the Albanian societies of the 1920s and 1930s. First, The Great Gatsby is a highly symbolic meditation on 1920s America as a whole, in particular the disintegration of the American dream at a time of exceptional prosperity and material overabundance. Fitzgerald portrays the decay of social and moral values, evidenced by the cynicism, greed, and empty pursuit of pleasure that characterized this period. The wild desire for money and pleasure surpassed more noble goals and corrupted the American dream together with many life-essential values. Love, honor, individual integrity and identity, and other values were offered at the altars of greed, momentary pleasure, and unprecedented immediate wealth.

Similar issues affected the Albanian reality of this period. Even though, the country did not experience such an economical boom, essential moral and social values were threatened by the greed for money and pursuit of personal pleasure by a small circle of the Albanian

society. Two of the famous and powerful writers of this time, who wrote about such phenomena were Millosh Gjergj Nikolla, otherwise know as Migjeni and Ernest Koliqi. In much of their short prose, they treat these themes with a rare boldness, unmasking the harsh reality of wealth, power, and social class that destroyed people relationships and even lives. Pieces of prose that deal with these issues are “The Student at Home” and “The Story of One of Those Girls” by Migjeni and “A Merchant of Flags” by Ernest Koliqi. For the first time, the two writers were treating the destruction of the personality of the individual by the imposed conditions of a despotic society. In these short stories, Migjeni and Koliqi elaborate the idea that the spiritual life is conditioned by material possessions, and that spiritual and moral values are destroyed by extreme poverty and suppression of the few powerful ‘money holders.’ Such social conditions repress the feelings of young lovers who belong to different social categories. They kill their hopes and defer their dreams as seen in the short story “The Student at Home”. Every feeling and every ideal is seen through the lenses of making money and gaining more power and domination.

Dakovic, Nevena (University of Arts, Belgrade) “Depression in Hollywood: The Almighty and the not so Mighty Dollar” The concern of this paper is to explore the readings of the Dollar as icon and narrative constituent in the Hollywood genres of the thirties. The paper aims to expose the ways its opposed and controversial evaluations (symbolic and literal values), importance, and functions are cinematically shaped by genre narrative structure and visual representations (gangster film and musical vs. populist comedy). The interrelations of Dollar in reality and in films (real and cinematic dollar) persuasively link social spheres of finances, politics, arts and media. The thirties are the period of Great Depression as American dramatic, economic downturn. In Hollywood, it is the era of the blooming Studio System as combined genre and economical factors that determine the production.

In the genre array ranging from musical to gangster films the dollar directly reflects diverse economic and social positions, and more importantly connects with certain worldview and hierarchy of values. On one side the newly inaugurated genres like musical or gangster film give it the utmost importance while dollar symbolically represents the success in life, identity of the socially powerful figure, room at the top and universal measure everything could be traded for (“The silver dollar has returned to the fold, With silver you can turn your dreams to gold.”) On the other end is the populist comedy – Capra’s films like American

Madness (1933), It Happened One Night (1934), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) - that devaluates the dollar, deconstructs its symbolical, social, emotional, ethical value. The stories confirming the almighty dollar render it visibly glamorized and spectacularised (in musical and gangster films) while those lowering it on the scale of values systematically put it under erasure and render its presence invisible (populist comedy).

Feyersinger, Erwin (University of Innsbruck) “Two Specific Narrative Structures in Animated Short Films: Situational Repetition and Fluid Transformations” As heterogeneous as animated films may be, there are certain aesthetics that for historical and technical reasons have developed in different forms of animation similarly. In my presentation, I will discuss two forms of narrative and stylistic structures that are not usually used in live action films, but are very common in the various forms of animation. The first structure, owing much to the vaudeville background of moving pictures, can be described as a serial combination of loosely connected situations, mainly acts or gags. In cartoons especially this structure relies on the repetition and variation of a single configuration. The textbook example for this structure is of course Wile E. Coyote trying to catch the Road Runner. The second structure is a specific phenomenon of animation, but, as live action and animation become indistinguishable through the use of computer generated imagery, it is becoming more common in live action films. The character of this structure is constant transformation. Shapes move in time and space and gradually transform into new shapes. I will discuss different functions and implications of these two structures, mainly in the context of ambiguity and abstraction.

Fellner, Astrid M. (Universität Wien)

“‘It’s all About the Dough’: Paris Hilton in Austria”

My paper is an analysis of the politics of American popular and mass culture in Austria. Analyzing transatlantic processes of cultural transfer and exchange, my paper intends to examine how “American” texts/practices/products have been appropriated since the 1980s. Specifically, I want to look at recent “American” phenomena like the “it-girl” cult. Paris Hilton, whose popularity (among the working class in Vienna, for instance) has risen after she promoted Austrian sparkling wine in the shopping mall “Lugner City” and was a guest at the Opera Ball has become an ambivalent and contested symbol of “Americanness.” Admired, loved, sniggered at, disapproved of, and rejected at the same time, Paris Hilton constitutes an icon of “American culture” that evokes different reactions from different groups of Austrians. Analyzing the cult that has developed around Paris Hilton, I will show how these representations and representatives of “America” have been received and appropriated in Austria. What I find of particular interest is how “Paris Hilton” has been recontextualized as a powerful symbol of the “Almighty Dollar” that allows her to become a star at the Viennese Opera Ball rivaling Anna Netrebko.

Fuchs, Michael (University of Graz) Meta-Horror Now and Then: New Nightmare and King Kong Metareferences can occur in a number of forms and, more importantly, can have a number of different functions, which are determined by the socio-cultural contexts in which the films are made and received. By taking two exemplary films that could not be much farther apart in

terms of their temporal difference, the 1930s classic King Kong (the monster of which, in my reading, is the film business rather than the giant ape) and Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (a typically postmodernist piece that welcomes its viewers to “the desert of the real” and literally exposes its villain as rhetorical device) from the mid-1990s, this paper will show differences and similarities in terms of the forms and functions of metareferences in horror films from a historical perspective. Gerhardt, Christine (Universität Freiburg) “Greenbacks: The Nature of Money in Tony Morrison’s Song of Solomon”

Arguably, all of Toni Morrison’s novels explore the jumbled economy that is one of slavery’s lasting legacies. Where The Bluest Eye (1970) and Tar Baby (1981) investigate the psychological prices of African American economic success, Beloved (1987) and Paradise (1999) account for the difficulties of living with the repercussions of a system that reduced humans to property that can be bought and sold. The strained relationship to money as official medium of economic exchange and measure of value, which plays into all of these conflicts, is perhaps most forcefully expressed in Song of Solomon (1977). Song of Solomon is a novel that is so thickly lined with references to bills, wallets, loans and prices, to people craving, loathing, offering and refusing money, that it does in itself resemble a richly-expressive, poetically-charged ledger. Interestingly, this “ledger’s” complex monetary narratives of cost, profit, and loss are deeply interwoven with stories about the land as object of exchange, and about people’s troubled relationships to the natural environment. My paper investigates this correlation by linking the interrogation of economic relationships that have long been at the heart of African American criticism—such as the dilemma of the black middle class, and the economics of slavery—to equivalent discussions in environmental literary criticism—such as the eco-ethical dilemma of farming, and the environmental implications of private landownership. Song of Solomon, then, articulates the paradox invariably generated by an African-American economic relationship with the land whose very existence is grounded in slavery, and that only a leap of the imagination can make bearable.

Gernalzick, Nadja (University of Mainz/Oldenburg) “Sacrificial or Legal: Explanations and Aestheticizations of Money in American Literature”

The origins of money for the past one-hundred years have been found in sacrificial practices and constructions of the sacred in antiquity. However, an alternative theory of the origin of money has been recently proposed which traces money to the legal act that creates property. This recent theory about the origin of money runs counter to psychoanalytical compensation theories and to theories of delayed gratification as a foundation for interpretations of the economic system and its structures of power and distribution. While the use of ancient metaphors for the origin and functioning of money, interest, and speculation rests on highly influential Western cultural constructs, it does seem dissatisfying in attributing, to a greater or lesser degree, negative social effects to money and the monetary economy.

Especially in feminist studies, the continuing ratification of the demonization of the monetary economy since antiquity seems utterly out of touch with the abstracting

emancipatory and peace-giving qualities of money. Feminist analysis of the relation of money and gender also appears self-defeating if it subscribes to a sexualized equation of money and of circulation of money with semen without offering alternative images or explanations which are not gender-based and -biased, or which are, at least, woman-biased. Moreover, the questions have not yet been satisfactorily addressed in cultural-studies approaches to money if there is a difference to the cultural metaphorization of money in the tradition of U.S. monetary theory as compared to the European tradition, or if the essentialist theories of money as a representation of labor since Adam Smith are indeed still predominant in U.S. culture, as most literary critics of the culture of money seem to assume. This presentation traces the existing theoretical alternatives in the cultural theorizations and imaginations of money and in so doing investigates the application and aesthetics of monetary theory in U.S. American novels since the 19th century.

Kern, Louis J. (Hofstra University) “In the Land of the Dollar, but Which Dollar? The ‘Crime of ’73,’ the Free Silver Crusade, and the Populist Dollar”

The U.S. dollar had been grounded in a bimetallic standard since the time of Alexander Hamilton. But in the winter of 1872, as silverites later claimed, Sir Ernest Seyd, a British financier and monetary theorist, came to America with the unscrupulous and dishonorable intent of secretly moving U.S. currency to an exclusively gold standard in accordance with (and presumptively to be tied to the value of the British pound), and thus undermining American financial independence. When Congress passed a revised coinage bill in 1873, the silver dollar was no longer included as official legal tender; silver had been “betrayed.”

In fact, silver had appreciated in value, and those mining silver would have been the first to support its demonetization, for had silver remained part of the nation’s standard they stood to be ruined, since they would be providing more value in specie than the face value of the coin (the silver dollar). Congress had, in fact, carefully considered the coinage bill, and there had been open debate for several months before its passage. But from these events a mythic conspiracy theory was created—the little people had been duped and betrayed by the plutocrats and bankers, who wanted to create tighter credit as opposed to an inflationary currency that would had benefited mortgage holders and debtors. As a result, farmers, simple village folk, and the respectable poor found themselves squeezed by poverty and an endless cycle of debt.

The paper will examine the creation and propagation of the silverite paranoiac conspiracy theory that grew up around the struggle over the “demonetization” of silver and that manifested itself in such reductionist works as E.J. Farmer’s The Conspiracy Against Silver;

or, a Plea for Bimetalism in the United States (1886), Sarah E. Emery’s Seven Financial

Conspiracies Which Have Enslaved the American People (1887), Ignatius Donnelly’s Caesar’s Column (1891), Gordon Clark’s Handbook of Money (1896), William “Coin” Harvey’s bestselling Coin’s Financial School (1894) and L. Frank Baum’s “modern fairy tale,” The Wizard of Oz (1900).

The Populists appropriated the conspiratorial literature and theories of the silverites—a kind of monetary theory for dummies of the late-nineteenth-century—expanded it, deepened it, and darkened it by the addition of an anti-Semitic slant to the banking conspiracy of the East against the West, and made it a political vehicle for the 1896 Democratic presidential campaign of William Jennings Bryan. The paper will conclude with a consideration of the Bryanite financial platform, its debt to the silverites, its transformation of their ideas to the

national political stage, and its impact on fiscal and monetary policy and the idea of the dollar in the American popular mind at century’s end. Lippert, Leopold (University of Vienna) “Utopian Contemporaries: Queer Temporality and America” My paper may serve as a queer pamphlet about the present. Renouncing the “reproductive futurism” (Lee Edelman) that dominates so much of American discourse, I propose an alternative framework for the study of American culture. Utopian Contemporaries emphasizes the critical temporality of the queer now and analyzes its cultural potential to manifest alternative economies of memory and forgetting. In my argument, I hold that the seemingly futureless present functions as a performative rehearsal space to prepare and eventually communicate a new utopian social. I make the case that only the queer temporality of the moment can help renegotiate our understanding of relationality and community in America. Recognizing utopian contemporaries, the formerly heteronormative lines of belonging, kinship, and citizenship must be redrawn as a consequence. My analysis focuses on four “moments” of cultural representation in the United States that have taken place within the last decade. I investigate the utopianism in Moisés Kaufman’s play The Laramie Project (2000), a documentary answer to the Matthew Shepard murder that is still sparking debates in theatrical venues all over the country. I further examine the big-budget Hollywood movie My Best

Friend’s Wedding (1997), and theorize the momentousness of music and dance as locale for a reconfiguration of the American social. My third moment is happening on the Internet platform YouTube, where the streaming utopian vision of “Broke Trek” (2007) conflates the futurism of Star Trek with the queer negativity of the political prosthesis Brokeback Mountain. Finally, I state that the “retarded” sexualities displayed in John Cameron Mitchell’s Shortbus (2006) exorcize the deadly specter of AIDS and install a hopeful plurality of human relationships in America.

Loock, Kathleen (University of Göttingen) “Goodbye Columbus, Hello Abe! – Changing Imagery on U.S. Paper Money and the Negotiation of American National Identity”

Recent studies have argued that paper monies are not only economic phenomena but convey complex historical, cultural and political meanings (cf. Gilbert, Hewitt, Unwin). Imagery portrayed on banknotes generally provides an important expression of particular identity constructions that have helped to both establish new currencies and shape the nations in the past.

As a key historic personality of national significance, Christopher Columbus was represented on U.S. paper money. From 1862 to 1929, various banknotes were issued depicting images and narratives alluding to the discovery of America. While Columbus could be seen on the face and back design of the five-dollar banknote since 1863, he shared this symbolical space with the Pilgrim Fathers and Abraham Lincoln by 1914. Since 1929, the recto shows a portrait of Lincoln and the verso the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC. According to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, “portraits of Presidents of the United

States [and three more statesmen] have a more permanent familiarity in the minds of the public than any others.” In this paper, however, I will show that the very fact that Christopher Columbus disappeared from the five-dollar banknote reflects both the transformation of the national icon into an ethnic hero in the era of the so-called New Immigration and the orientation toward a more recent and more national American history. The changing design of U.S. banknotes in the 1920s thus reflects a negotiation of American identity that must also be analyzed against the background of contemporaneous international politics.

Mihm, Stephen (University of Georgia) “The Almighty Dollar at Home and Abroad: Transnational History and the Currency Question” In recent years, American Studies has become increasingly preoccupied with how the United States has been less a nation unto itself than but one player in a larger process of globalization that began in the early modern era. While much scholarly attention has focused on the nature of empire, the effects of immigration, and the global reach of mass culture, along with other traditional preoccupations of American Studies, there has been little interest in monetary issues. This talk offers a blueprint for situating the dollar in a larger, transnational history. It argues that from the very beginning, the dollar has been a product of transnational forces, even as it became increasingly identified, at home and abroad, with a single nation. This talk addresses the origins of the dollar as a derivative currency (tied to the Spanish piece of eight) through the opening decades of the nineteenth century, when other foreign currencies competed with and even supplanted the dollar within the United States. It then proceeds to track the ways that the dollar became not only an exclusive, national currency, but also an instrument of an emerging American empire, a process that culminated in the twentieth century with the rise of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. Moser, Gerda E. (University of Klagenfurt) “Pleasure, Ethics, and the Economy – Learning from Paris Hilton” According to Austrian media philosopher and artist Peter Weibel, Paris Hilton is a pop icon and the Andy Warhol of today. Performing in a glamorous and funny but also ‘naughty’ or otherwise provocative way the socialite gets attention for almost everything she does – and she gets paid for it. Allegedly, she earns about $100,000 Dollar and more for coming to a party or promoting a product.

Critics blame Paris Hilton for being a rich parent’s “girl,” superficial, spoiled – and even stupid. Other commentators and her fans praise her as a smart, clever businesswoman.

Paris Hilton and the controversies about her can help us to understand (once again!) that there is a gap between ethical and economic standards. In addition to this, each value system is in conflict with a number of theories and practices of pleasure. Last but not least, there is Paris Hilton’s function of a socialite. She (or he) is not only worshipped (like a film star of the old days), but is also met with envy and hatred (like the girl next door), and there is always a lot of bad talk and malicious gossip about her.

Neal, Valerie (National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution) “Dollars and Sense: What is the U.S. Space Program Worth?”

Sooner or later, all discussions about the U.S. space program come around to the question of cost. It seems that no one knows what it really costs, but some people think it costs too much, or think the human spaceflight programs cost too much while the scientific programs are paupered. Some think more should be spent on space, while others argue the funds could be better spent on social welfare programs. The merits of space exploration get distilled into dollars, but there is no consensus about the relationship between dollar cost and the worth or value of space exploration.

This paper will take a thematic approach to various arguments that use dollars to gauge the worth of the U.S. space program and to explore such slogans as “economical access to space” and “faster, better, cheaper.” Each argument or example will be pegged to an image in which the $ symbol is featured. Sources include economic policy documents, congressional testimony, historians’ analyses, NASA’s promotional media, popular grassroots advocacy, news reports, and editorial cartoons that characterize the U.S. space program as a whole or its specific elements in terms of dollars – dollars spent, dollars generated, dollars spread through the economy, dollars for operations, dollars over-spent, dollars wasted, dollars cut, dollars needed to carry on.

Arguments couched in dollars inevitably lead to matters of sense – the benefits and value derived from space exploration – the intangible values of innovation, imagination, inspiration, and leadership to which it is problematic to attach dollar values. How do tangible costs compare to or link into intangible social and cultural values? This difficulty of gauging what the U.S. space program is or has been worth complicates the status of space exploration in the public arena, keeping it in a perpetually defensive mode in need of effective advocacy.

Ogihara, Eriko (Technische Universität Dormund) “Golden Peril? Monetary Representations of Asians in 1960s American Popular Culture”

My presentation will demonstrate an overlap between two seemingly different images of gold and the anti-Asian racial concept of “yellow peril” through the analysis of the three films of the 1960s: Guy Hamilton’s Goldfinger (1964), Ernest Morris’ The Return of Mr. Moto (1965) and a Disney animation Scrooge McDuck and Money (1967). Gold, a material that is both physically and symbolically highly mutable became a locus of anxiety in 1960s America, which dealt with increasing challenges. One of the most important of these was the malfunctioning of the 1944 Bretton Woods System, which had made the US dollar, fixed to gold, the center of the international financial order. To what extent and in which ways were images of gold implicated into the anti-Asian tradition of the yellow peril which developed from the late 19th century? And what was the outcome of the interaction between these two images? To answer these questions, I will first juxtapose Goldfinger, the third James Bond film filled with Asian figures, with The Return of Mr. Moto, a story about a Japanese secret agent produced to compete against the James Bond series.

While comparing the portrayal of Asian characters, I will ultimately focus on how “gold” and “yellow” work on the bodies of “white” actors in the two films – as represented by a

corpse of a white woman covered with gold in Goldfinger, and Mr. Moto acted by a white actor in yellowface, a method which has been present in the American film industry since its outset. My textual analysis of the interchangeability of gold and yellow peril juxtaposes Goldfinger also with Disney’s Scrooge McDuck and Money with attention to the images of Goldfinger and McDuck, the two wealthy “white” figures who crave gold. The analysis of McDuck will also touch upon its reference to the strong yen or Japanese currency, which eventually became seen as a threat to American society. Özman, Merve (Hacettepe University, Ankara) “Immigrant Dreams and Dollar Fetishisms: The Transformation of the American Dream into a Dream of Dollars”

Having been embraced as a dream that has attracted immigrants from all over the world with the security, freedom, equality, democracy and opportunities for new beginnings; the American Dream, as a term, is now used almost interchangeably with American Dollars. The explanation for this transformation lies in the experience of the immigrants themselves.

These immigrants could not have satisfying living standards in their home countries with the money they earned which was in their own national monetary unit. The American dollar made them fulfill their dreams. As a result, the dollar seems to them as if it had a magical power to make dreams come true. This arises in them a feeling of bewilderment together with an ambition to earn more dollars. Earning dollars, in a way, becomes an escape from the problems they face in America. However, in an attempt to earn more to be “happy,” they unconsciously turn into “objects” of labor, whereas the Dollar stars as the new “subject,” being the determiner of the lives of these people. This change of roles, which is called “objectification” by Marx and “reification” by George Lukacs in part of the individual, leads one into alienation from reality. The immigrants find themselves in a vicious circle trying to earn more dollars and to have all the privileges this would give them, unaware of the fact that this objectification would be the cause of their unhappiness no matter how many dollars they might have. This paper attempts to analyze the effects of objectification of the individual on Dollar fetishism and on the transformation of the American Dream into a dream of dollars. Payman, Rezwan (University of Vienna) “This Ain’t Tennessee: The Cultural Politics of New Country” The dissertation with the working title “This Ain’t Tennessee: The Cultural Politics of New Country” is an analysis of recent country music. It will deal with the ways in which ‘traditional values’, which are values constructed by the predecessors of New Country, and current problems are negotiated in contemporary country music lyrics and performances. After a brief overview of my project, I will specifically look into the continuous conflict between the stars of New Country and the (neo-) traditionalists, and discuss, whether this rivalry is only a marketing strategy or if there is some truth to the feelings of the (neo-) traditionalists. Furthermore, I will bring up the issue of country music being the ‘voice’ of the working-class and analyze the appropriateness of this term in contemporary American society. Finally, my talk will deal with the fact that contemporary country music is breaking taboos and addressing social problems that were mostly ignored in the tradition of country

music up until 15-20 years ago. My conclusions will be based mainly on the lyrics themselves, secondary literature and ethnographic research in the U.S., which I conducted in the summer of 2008. I will support my arguments with extracts from lyrics, short sound bites and video clips. Podleśny, Damian (Jagellonian University, Krakow) “Philip K. Dick's Characters Struggling to Make a Living”

The typical Philip K. Dick novel would usually be interpreted along the lines of the concept of reality, or through the lens of a social theory, or, maybe, as a dualistic cosmological or religious system. All these readings are absolutely justified, as indeed his fiction is a rich source for different levels of interpretation.

Still, only a few critics note the existence of a typical “Dick character,” an artisan, an average member of society, who is cast into dissolving or entropic reality. These characters more often reflect Dick's own life and are deeply connected with the economic situation of an average American in the 1950s and 60s.

My paper would be an attempt at analyzing the dependence of a typical Philip K. Dick character on “the dollar,” which is understood not as an ultimate goal, but rather a necessity, a means through which one is able to fulfill their dreams, or simply survive. It is also worth pointing out that, despite the overall darkness and pessimism of Dick’s fiction, these characters give readers some relief and add a ray of optimism in a predominantly bleak world, dominated by entropy, death and radioactive fall-out.

My paper will concentrate on a number of novels from Philip K. Dick’s early and middle period, in which the “ordinary” Dick character is most easily visible.

Poole, Ralph J. (Fatih University, Istanbul / Salzburg University) “Blonde Bombshell and Homely Housewife: Selling the Woman in 1950s Hollywood Comedies”

Hollywood films have included advertisements from the start – mostly with critical intent. A series of films of the late 1950s continue this tradition, they shift their tone in dealing with advertising from clichéd disdain to self-reflexive comic irony, however. This significant shift on the one hand attests to the increasing awareness of the influence of advertising on consumers, but on the other hand – and somewhat contradictorily – it also marks a last surge of outrageously stereotypical representations of gendered difference from Hollywood before the onset of the 1960s feminist movement and the New Hollywood. It is above all "woman" who is being sold in films like Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957) and The Thrill of It All

(1963), relying on the stereotype of the oversexed dumb blonde bombshell (Jayne Mansfield) in the first example or the undersexed homely housewife (Doris Day) in the second. These films depict women, who will do anything to sell themselves, putting their sellable personas before family and private life, and who above all are treated as stand-ins for the product they are marketing. The star persona of Doris Day is especially revealing here, for her name itself, as John Updike has once joked, “seems to signify less a person than a product, wrapped in an alliterating aura.” Nowhere perhaps is “DD” as sheer symbol of banality more obvious than in Lover Come Back (1961), where she plays an advertising executive trying to sell a sham

product that does not even exist. This film with its exclusive male point of view not only marginalizes the comic female lead, rendering DD into a mere comic – if stylish – special effect; the film also marks a decisive shift in audience targeting. The 1950s era of strong comic leads, administering to a predominantly female audience, has given way to one with young men as Hollywood's main target audience. This shift leaves DD a problematic product to sell: she is getting too old and her reputation marks her as the eternal virgin. Only as hilariously stupid artifact is she saved from becoming an untimely sell-out.

Schmied-Rathkohl, Manuela (University of Klagenfurt) “Negotiating Difference - Teaching in Hutterite Colony Schools”

Today there are about 45 000 Hutterites living in 450 colonies in Northern America. They are a people whose life is strongly rooted in religion and traditions and although they live according to rules which have originated in 16th century Europe and have sustained for centuries they are surrounded by a society that is rapidly changing. Education is one of the areas in which the differences between the values and traditions of Hutterite culture and the demands of today’s multicultural Canadian society become visible the most. In their little schools on colony land children have to be equipped with the skills and knowledge they need for a life within their Hutterite community. At the same time, however, they have to be prepared for a life outside the colony with all its demands and difficulties in order to be able to cope in mainstream Canadian society should they ever choose to leave the Hutterite colony. In my paper, which I want to present as a power point presentation, I want to show how education in Hutterite colonies is conducted, which challenges arise and which advantages children and teachers enjoy in comparison to public schools. Moreover I want to show how Hutterite teachers and Canadian teachers work together when it comes to school routine and disciplinary matters. The most striking point is that both sides constantly have to negotiate the sharp difference between the Hutterite culture and the mainstream Canadian culture in order to secure an education that enables children to develop their Hutterite identity while at the same time being able to relate to Canadian society.

Schwarz, Claudia (University of Innsbruck) “Rich Americans Who Never Lived”

Money matters – not only in the real world but also in the world of fiction. In this respect it is telling that, as of 2002, Forbes has issued an annual special report listing the world’s 15 richest fictional characters. This ranking has included names like Scrooge McDuck, with an estimated net worth of 28.8 billion dollars, Richie Rich ($ 16.1 billion), C. Montgomery Burns ($ 8.4 billion), Willy Wonka ($ 1.9 billion), Lex Luthor ($ 4.7 billion), J.R. Erwing ($ 2.8 billion), Charles Foster Kane ($ 1 billion), Lara Croft ($ 1 billion), Cruella De Vil ($ 1 billion), Jay Gatsby ($ 600 million), Santa Claus (infinite), and many more. The stories of these and other fictitious rich people often run a didactic subtext and communicate moral lessons, e.g. on right and wrong means of making money and on how to spend it wisely.

It is the aim of this paper to discuss interpretations of cultural values and ethics in connection with rich Americans from literature and film. After a survey of well-known and

influential fictional millionaires and billionaires (and the largest fictional companies), the analysis of some chosen examples will show how money is used as a means of characterization in stories and how they reflect general attitudes or even stereotypes associated with American culture. On the bright side, the fictional life stories can outline the path from rags to riches and thus envision the American dream, giving hope and inspiration to the people of a nation committed to success and happiness. On a negative side, however, there is the understanding that happiness is not necessarily connected to money. Rich characters therefore frequently find themselves in search of meaning and purpose; and even more often, they are portrayed as unscrupulous and mean characters, with the idea to illustrate how financial superiority can turn someone into a bad, selfish, and villainous person. After all, money is not everything – especially in fiction. Semmelrock, Nicole (University of Vienna) “The Emmett Till Case and its Impact on American Culture and Society” This paper discusses one of the most outrageous miscarriages of justice in the USA in the twentieth century: the Emmett Till Case. In 1955 Emmett Till, an African American teenager from Chicago, was killed in Mississippi because he had whistled at a white woman. The brutal death of the young boy and the acquittal of his white murderers by an all-white jury enraged the nation and galvanized African Americans all across the United States into fighting for civil rights and against discrimination and segregation. In addition to the historical facts of the murder case, the latest findings of the recent investigation conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the results of the reopening of the Emmett Till Case in 2004 are presented. Furthermore, the impact and legacy of the lynching of Emmett Till is addressed. In this context the paper deals with the murder’s effects on the nascent African American Civil Rights Movement as well as America’s tattered reputation as advocate for democracy and civil rights in the world, particularly in Communist countries. Besides, excerpts from autobiographical texts by contemporary African American writers exemplify the immense and long lasting impact of the Emmett Till Case on American culture and society. Finally, the presentation of the most popular (though controversial) musical response to the racist crime, Bob Dylan’s protest song “The Death of Emmett Till”, rounds off this paper.

Timpe, Veronika (University of Dortmund) “Beyond Face Value: Images of Slaves on 19th-Century American Currency”

Ever since the beginning of the 19th century, numbers have not been the only images printed on paper money in the United States. Vignettes and small illustrations have adorned the faces of financial documents, depicting scenes from American life. Besides impressions showing industrial scenes, regional landscapes, and modes of transportation, many Southern bank notes also featured images of slavery – before as well as after the Civil War.

These depictions of slaves on Confederate as well as reconstruction money will be the focus of my paper. Since money, as an instrument of trade, represents the socio-economic environment in which it is printed, the pictures of slaves on the various forms of currency are

also cultural documents that speak to the “identity of a people, a place, and a time” (http://www.cwc.lsu.edu/cwc/BeyondFaceValue/visit/index.htm).

To that effect, my paper will focus on one iconographic detail in the images of slaves that nevertheless constitutes a major aspect in the construction of a Southern identity. I will analyze the pictures of slaves on Confederate currency in comparison to their representations on post-war bills. While slaves were always pictured in connection with an element of white dominion in the antebellum period, their depictions on reconstruction currency lack this element. Instead, they are abruptly shown as autonomous, and in times equal to whites.

Starting with a detailed comparative analysis of this striking iconography, my paper will further examine how these illustrations reveal a self-image of the 19th century U.S. South. The contrast on post-civil war bills between the idealized image of a pastoral antebellum South, where well-fed slaves enjoyed their work under white supervision in opposition to the pictorial representation of an equal and humane society, free of any white supremacy, offers a new perspective on how the South attempted to present, view, and invent itself through images featuring the relationship between slaves and white Southerners on financial documents.

Urbatsch, Katja (Justus-Liebig-University Giessen) “Gold Standard versus Fiat Money: Money in Frank Norris’s McTeague (1899) and Don DeLillo’s Cosmopolis (2003) from the Perspective of the New Economic Criticism”

During the last hundred years the shape of money in the US and elsewhere has changed significantly. First gold and silver functioned as money, then paper, and finally money has become intangible electronic in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. That these processes of change in the monetized economy have been accompanied by cultural changes, which have deeply affected man’s psyche, has often been overlooked. Also, it has often been overlooked that the consequences of money and its changes for the Life world of man have been central issues in works of literature. In this paper, the functions of the depiction of money in the American novels McTeague (1899) by Frank Norris and Cosmopolis (2003) by Don DeLillo are analyzed as they mark the development of the monetized economy from the gold standard to electronic fiat money. Furthermore, the texts bear remarkable resemblances, since in both novels a transformation process in the money economy causes the protagonists to fetishize money.

The paper focuses on two aspects that show how the novels, written a hundred years apart, are interacting with regard to dialogue about the consequences of money and its changes. Taking into consideration the influence of the respective cultural contexts on the depiction of money in the novels, it will be explored to what extent the depiction relates to the contemporary state of the monetized economy. Secondly, it will be explored in which ways the depiction of the relationship between man and money in both novels correspond and thus indicate timeless cultural conditions. The literary analysis will be based on the „New Economic Criticism“, an innovative approach of interdisciplinary research, which aims at supplementing methods of literary studies by insights of economic science in order to gain new perspectives on the interrelation between culture and literature. The objective of the paper is to show how both novels participate in money discourses of their age, but also point to timeless problematic dimensions of money as a social construct that determines man’s perception of reality.

Notes

Notes

Notes

Notes

Notes

Notes