Abstract
In lieu of an abstract, this is the first paragraph of the contribution:
 This third issue of the Journal of the Austrian Association for American Studies (JAAAS) is a special issue in more ways than one. The idea at its core was to highlight contributions by emerging scholars in American studies at Austrian universities, compiled and arranged by a team of guest editors who are members of Austria’s Young Americanists (AYA)—the graduate network affiliated with the Austrian Association for American Studies (AAAS). Beyond that, the journal itself is likewise young—at the time we began our work, it had just been founded and was still in its conceptual stages. As such, the editing process presented a number of unique challenges in the ambitious process of putting together a special issue. While most jobs in academia are tenuous, with 78% of all scientific jobs at universities being limited term,1 coordinating long-term projects presents an exciting but sometimes unpredictable endeavor, especially at the early career level. This is reflected in both the composition of the issue’s editorial team, as well as the remarkable flexibility demonstrated by all contributors throughout the process.
Highlights
While Rokvity lists contemporary examples of performances by Lady Gaga and Ruby Rose which “promote a punk legacy” through their gender-bending aesthetics, she concludes that punk fashion has “come full circle” at the expense of female agency
By focusing on subversive young adult literature that contextualizes the need for movements such as #BlackLivesMatter, by showing how poetry can help to deconstruct the legacies of racial boundaries, by emphasizing the socio-critical potential of film, and by dis-entangling the social semiotics of punk fashion, they all address relevant cultural and political issues
We would like to thank all of our reviewers, for lending us their expertise and helping the contributors improve their manuscripts, and for their patience in working with first-time editors
Summary
In her article “The Dissolution of Racial Boundaries,” Juliann Knaus (University of Graz) provides a close reading of former two-term U.S Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey’s 2012 poetry collection Thrall—Trethewey’s most explicit attempt at examining race as a category through poetry by focusing on discourses about mixed-race identities. Engaging with colonial Mexican and U.S.-American discourses on mixed-race identity, their foundations in Enlightenment thought, and their permutations over time, Knaus shows how Thrall “creates a layered form, where intersections between racial ideologies become visible, while the shortcomings of such ideologies are emphasized.” Trethewey, a mixed-race U.S.-American and Southern poet, uses her work to investigate and deconstruct the entanglements of racial ideologies.
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