A Peculiar Mixture: German-Language Cultures and Identities in Eighteenth-Century North America (Max Kade Research Institute: Germans Beyond Europe) - Softcover

9780271059501: A Peculiar Mixture: German-Language Cultures and Identities in Eighteenth-Century North America (Max Kade Research Institute: Germans Beyond Europe)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0271059508 ISBN 13: 9780271059501

Publisher: Penn State University Press, 2013

Through innovative interdisciplinary methodologies and fresh avenues of inquiry, the nine essays collected in A Peculiar Mixture endeavor to transform how we understand the bewildering multiplicity and complexity that characterized the experience of German-speaking people in the middle colonies. They explore how the various cultural expressions of German speakers helped them bridge regional, religious, and denominational divides and eventually find a way to partake in America&;s emerging national identity. Instead of thinking about early American culture and literature as evolving continuously as a singular entity, the contributions to this volume conceive of it as an ever-shifting and tangled &;web of contact zones.&; They present a society with a plurality of different native and colonial cultures interacting not only with one another but also with cultures and traditions from outside the colonies, in a &;peculiar mixture&; of Old World practices and New World influences.

Aside from the editors, the contributors are Rosalind J. Beiler, Patrick M. Erben, Cynthia G. Falk, Marie Basile McDaniel, Philip Otterness, Liam Riordan, Matthias Schönhofer, and Marianne S. Wokeck.

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About the Authors

Jan Stievermann is Professor of the History of Christianity in North America at the University of Heidelberg.

Oliver Scheiding is Professor of American Literature at Johannes-Gutenberg University in Mainz.

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