Rethinking Solidarity is the title of the latest special issue of the journal Amerikastudien / American Studies. The open-access publication presents proceedings from the BAA annual conference 2021 on the same topic and was edited by Nathalie Aghoro, Katharina Gerund, and Sylvia Mayer. It was published in January 2024.

What is necessary to rethink solidarity in its various contours in North America and beyond at a time of ongoing political polarization, in the context of international relations, or in efforts to combat climate change? The special issue Rethinking Solidarity sets out to explore historical, political, and theoretical implications of solidarity and to examine how solidarity figures in literary, cultural, and artistic representations of social and environmental (in)justice. Exploring the topic from a range of disciplinary perspectives, this special issue presents seven articles that contribute to a timely and nuanced understanding of the concept, providing insights that expand the existing research on solidarity by accounting for past and present developments and by re-negotiating class-oriented and feminist conceptions of solidarity.

Among other contributors, Sally J. Scholz (Villanova University) offers a general conceptualization of (political) solidarity. In her contribution, Scholz argues that, in order to understand what solidarity is, we have to understand its reach, suggesting that the bounds of solidarity are inclusive, expansive, and fluid. Julia Faisst (University of Regensburg) analyzes Javier Zamora’s Unaccompanied (2017) as a means of illustrating how the bilingual border poetry collection fleshes out possibilities for more global forms of solidarity across borders as well as natural and infrastructural divisions. Christof Decker (LMU Munich) explores the representation of mutual support in US-American culture, focusing on three literary modes emerging in the nineteenth century: the sentimental, the utopian, and the post-metaphysical.

The special issue of Amerikastudien / American Studies evolved from the Bavarian American Academy’s 2021 international and interdisciplinary conference "Rethinking Solidarity," which took place July 8-9, 2021, at Amerikahaus Munich. The three editors of the special issue are members of the Bavarian American Academy.

Learn More:
Download the Contributions of the Special Issue on the Website of Universitätsverlag Winter

Image: Cover of the Amerikastuiden / American Studies special issue Rethinking Solidarity, © Universitätsverlag Winter.