The first part of this book presents cultural studies including: Overweight Subjectivities and Resistances; Penis Envy, Aesthetic Autoplasty and Genital Reconstruction; the Pierced and Tattoed Body; Bruce Springsteen's Working-Class Masculinity in the 1980s; and Demonic Images of Food, Bodies and the Desire to Eat. The second part focuses on textual studies such as: the Repulsive and Eroticized Bodies of Djuna Barnes; the "Feminine" Body in Modern American Poetry; the Surrender of the Body in Mary Oliver and Amy Clampitt's Ecopoetry; Violence in American Opera and Tod Browning's "Freaks."
Heinz Tschachler is Professor for American Studies at the University of Klagenfurt, Austria.
Maureen Devine is researcher at the University of Klagenfurt, Austria.
Michael Draxlbauer is researcher at the University of Vienna.

"(Anti-)Americanisms" is a collection of articles presented during the international conference of the Austrian Association for American Studies in 2002. Focusing on the various propagations of American culture in literature, music, film, "the new media," architecture, politics, and ways of life, these essays question the notion of (Anti-)Americanism as an object-oriented construct, a convenient vehicle used to transport ideology. The spectrum of topics includes the historical dimensions of European Anti-Americanism, roots of Anti- Americanism in post-World-War II Austria, and the relationship between Anti-Americanism and American Studies.