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In his project, Rafael Alves Azevedo links the resurgence of unabashed joy, colorful costumes, and clear-cut heroism in 1990s superhero comics to the then burgeoning New Sincerity movement. Coinciding with David Foster Wallace’s call for post-irony in American fiction, the mid-90s partly eschewed the postmodern deconstruction in superhero comics that had been so prevalent since 1986 when Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns were published. Instead, titles like Marvels (1994), Kingdom Come (1996), JLA (1997-2000), and Astro City (1995-96) created an osmosis of the artistic and literary innovations of postmodernism and a renewed call for Silver Age sensibilities that aimed to capture the perceived childhood innocence of simpler times in comic book history. How was this movement – in superhero comics and American culture, more generally – related to the end of the Cold War and the election of a young, Saxophone-playing president? Which role did fan conventions and the emerging direct market play on this development? And what was the trajectory of this movement after its initial heyday in the mid- to late-90s?

In meiner Dissertation analysiere ich, wie zeitgenössische Narrative der Wut durch queer-feministische Manifeste im Kontext der Kulturpolitik der Emotion praktiziert und theoretisiert werden. Ein neuer Wendepunkt im kulturellen Narrativ der geschlechtsspezifischen Wut ist im feministischen Diskurs mit und innerhalb des aktuellen Aufschwungs der Manifestform zu erkennen. In den USA, aber auch transnational, ist seit 2016 ein Anstieg der Manifestveröffentlichungen zu beobachten, der konstruktiv für die Transformation in der Diskurslandschaft der aktuellen US-Politik steht. Hegemoniale Narrative der Wut basieren auf einer patriarchalen Normativität, daher haben veränderte Narrative das Potenzial, auch die Politik neu zu gestalten. Meine Methodik basiert auf Judith Roofs Ansatz der Erzählung als System, das Variationen innerhalb und durch Knotenpunkte auf einer Metaebene der Selbstreferenzialität hervorbringt, auf Linda Åhälls Affekt als Methodologie sowie auf Caroline Levines Konzept der literarischen und politischen Formen. Der Korpus umfasst Manifeste, die den Zorn zu zentralisieren scheinen, wie Jessa Crispins Why I am Not A Feminist: A Feminist Manifesto (2017) oder Michelle Bowdler's Is Rape a Crime? A Memoir, an Investigation, a Manifesto (2020), aber auch solche, die die Wut in geringerem Maße thematisieren, um die Rolle der Wut bei der Vorstellung von sozialem Wandel innerhalb einer nicht oder weniger auf das Affektive fokussierten Maxime herauszustellen. Darüber hinaus werden drei neuere populäre Bücher einbezogen, die ein bestimmtes Narrativ feministischer Wut manifestieren, aber nicht die Bezeichnung Manifest beanspruchen: Soraya Chemalys Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger (2018), Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower (2018) von Brittney Cooper und Rebecca Traisters Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger (2018). Mein Projekt versucht, eine neue Genre-Ära des Manifests zu kartieren und gleichzeitig die politische Dynamik der queer-feministischen Wut neu zu orientieren.

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Musical aptitude was regarded a central ornament of feminine decorum for upper-class women throughout the American Civil War, particularly in the South’s culture of gentility. As such, numerous Confederate women recorded expressive accounts of their musical engagements—whether it be their own music making or commenting on that of others—in their wartime diaries and memoirs. This project studies 60 of those texts, tracing patterns of musical references through the lenses of race, class, gender, and nation. In a textual analysis, it thus examines how elite women from different parts of the Confederacy used the predominantly feminine vocabulary of music-making to position themselves in relation to their own performances of feminine conduct, their status as ladies, their identity as subjects of a new nation, and their pronounced whiteness. Considering the transformative nature of war, the focus on wartime life writing is established to explore women’s musically framed responses at a time when previously ingrained notions began to crumble and lines between prescribed behavioral expressions were blurred. Only somewhat recently have historians begun to engage with the aurality of the past. Just as music had to be deliberately performed to allow for its reception—at a time of widespread musical activity, yet just predating recording technologies—so did these women purposefully reflect on their engagement with the aural aspects of their existence during wartime induced social and cultural upheaval. Thus, this project’s analysis aims not only to grasp the experiential musical dimension of the war as experienced by certain white Confederate women but further to gain an understanding of how they participated in the recalibration and perpetuation of idea(l)s that have persisted beyond their writing, and ultimately, through the height of the Lost Cause narratives, have come to shape how the southern past and its female inhabitants are understood to this day.