Although German studies scholars from various disciplines often use and reference ethnography, German studies rarely emphasizes ethnography as a core methodology and research approach. Through recent dialogue among Germanists, Former Neighbors, Future Allies shows the necessity of assessing the growing momentum in German studies for engaging in methods and theories of ethnography from a variety of perspectives including literature, folklore, history, sociology, and anthropology. By increasing the visibility of the pervasiveness of ethnography, this multi-modal volume illustrates how ethnography represents a transdisciplinary and international bridging of research.

Nineteenth-century writer Karl May wrote novels about a fictionalized American Wild West that count among the most popular books of German literature to this day. His stories left an imprint on German culture, resulting in a variety of Wild West festivals featuring Native Americans and frontier settlers. These Karl May festivals are hosted widely throughout German-speaking countries today. This book, based on years of fieldwork observing and studying the festivals, plays, events, and groups that comprise this subculture, addresses a larger, timely issue: cultural transfer and appropriations. Are Germans dressing up in American Indian costumes paying tribute or offending the cultures they are representing? Avoiding simplistic answers, A. Dana Weber considers the complexity of cultural enactments as they relate both to the distinctly German phenomenon as well as to larger questions of cultural representations in American and European live performance traditions.