Background information to the project

Crudely speaking, there are two reactions to the power of America globally. One delights in the liberational potential of American culture, the other feels threatened and reacts negatively to what is seen as cultural imperialism.

American Studies as a discipline discusses both these responses and often negotiates between them. So that the famous Blues scholar, Paul Oliver, describes the life-changing experience of listening to black American G.I.'s on work patrols in East Anglia in the 1940's and the way this opened a whole continent to him. Conversly the African American writer Richard Wright talks of the malignant influence of Amerian popular culture on the indigenous culture of West Africa in the 1950's. In American Studies such encounters are the lifeblood of some of the most interesting debates in the discipline.