American Apocalypses

aspeers is the first and currently only peer-reviewed print journal for MA-level American studies scholars in Europe. It is a platform for the best work done by American studies graduate students below the PhD level. It aims to foster academic exchange among young Americanists across Europe, and to thereby advance the field as well as its genuine European perspective on ‘America’ and its presences and effects around the world.

aspeers features a general section in addition to a topical one that brings academic works into a dialogue on one common theme. For the upcoming issue, this topical section will be organized around different notions of "American Apocalypses." Please feel free to send in work to have it considered for publication in aspeers if

  • you are a student of American studies (or related fields) at a European university and are looking to publish a paper without a topical restriction.
  • or you are a student of American studies (or related fields) at a European university and are looking to publish a paper on "American Apocalypses."

Please see the following Calls for Papers for details. Please also note our style guide at www.aspeers.com/style that will give you many helpful instructions on how to prepare your submission for maximum success.

general academic contributions | due October 16, 2022 | pdf

topical academic contributions | due October 16, 2022 | pdf

topical art contributions | due January 15, 2023 | pdf

Please see our submission guidelines and FAQ section. Submissions should be directed to submit@aspeers.com.

1) General Call for Papers

For the general section of its sixteenth issue, aspeers seeks outstanding academic writing demonstrating the excellence of graduate scholarship, the range of concerns scrutinized in the field, and the diversity of perspectives employed. We thus explicitly invite revised versions of term papers or chapters from theses written by students of European Master (and equivalent) programs. For this section, there are no topical limitations. Contributions should be up to 7,500 words (including abstract and list of works cited). The submission deadline is October 16, 2022.

2) Topical Call for Papers on "American Apocalypses"

In his 2017 inauguration speech, Donald Trump painted a picture of “American carnage” sweeping the nation. Echoing the rhetoric used throughout his campaign, he described his vision of the present state of America in apocalyptic terms: from “rusted out factories, scattered like tombstones across the landscape” to “the crime, and the gangs, and the drugs that have stolen too many lives.” For Trump and his supporters, this apocalypse was the America he was inheriting—yet for many other Americans, such tropes were instead used to characterize the nation that Trump led from 2017 to 2021. Accordingly, in his 2020 presidential campaign, Joe Biden evoked similar language when he framed the presidential election as a “battle for the soul of this nation.”

With the increasingly urgent crises of climate change, democratic backsliding, the pandemic, and rising international tensions, 2022 is perhaps looking more apocalyptic than recent years past. Yet from nineteenth-century Protestant revivalists to the prepper movement, Zombie movies, and environmental activism, apocalyptic language has been employed throughout US history by a variety of political and wider cultural actors to deplore the status quo or warn about a dire future. Curiously, such evocations have also often been characterized by a binary of imagining the apocalypse at the same time as pointing to its polar opposite, the hopeful promise of an alternate vision of America. Images of current crises, an impending catastrophe, or an overall American decline thus also seem to invite their dialectical opposites—utopian outlooks next to dystopian ones, dreams next to nightmares.

For its sixteenth issue, aspeers dedicates its topical section to “American Apocalypses” and invites European graduate students to critically and analytically explore US literature, (popular) culture, history, politics, society, and media through the lens of the ‘apocalypse(s).’ We welcome papers from all disciplines, methodologies, and approaches comprising American studies and related fields. Potential papers could cover (but are not limited to):

  • Representations, narratives, or images of the (post-)apocalypse in US literature, film, TV, etc.

  • Imaginations of American utopias or dystopias

  • Historical conceptualizations of the ‘end times’ in the US and in a transnational context, in particular as tied to questions of power, identity, or (gendered, classed, racialized, etc.) difference

  • Invocations of ‘the Apocalypse’ or similar notions of catastrophe, crisis, decline, etc. in political, social, economic, or religious rhetoric

  • Representations and imaginations of the ongoing climate crisis

  • Political or historical arguments favoring the decline of the US as a superpower in postcolonial contexts

aspeers, the first and currently only graduate-level peer-reviewed print journal of European American studies, encourages fellow MA students from all fields to reflect on the diverse meanings of “American Apocalypses.” We welcome term papers, excerpts from theses, or papers specifically written for the sixteenth issue of aspeers by October 16, 2022. If you seek to publish work beyond this topic, please refer to our general Call for Papers. Please consult our submission guidelines and find some additional tips at www.aspeers.com/2023.

3) Call for Art Contributions

With its sixteenth issue, is aiming to cast a thematic spotlight on the myriad imaginations and representations of ‘apocalypses’ in relation to US American culture(s).

This topic lends itself particularly well to creative exploration and artistic expression, unearthing and communicating meanings to which academic writing does not have access. Therefore, 16 welcomes submissions of creative work examining the manifold constructions, ideas, and performances related to “American Apocalypses.”

A list of possible contributions includes, but is certainly not limited to:

  • illustrations
  • paintings
  • photography
  • poetry
  • creative writing

We will consider all submissions regardless of the author’s institutional affiliation, geographic location, or level of study. Non-printable material selected for publication will be included on the journal homepage. Plastic art will be on display in Leipzig at the issue’s launch ceremony and will be presented as still image in the paper and online edition.

Please consult our submission guidelines, an editorial timetable, as well as additional information at www.aspeers.com/2023. To be considered, contributions must be in by 15 January 2023.

PDF icon aspeers_cfp_2023_general.pdfPDF icon aspeers_cfp_2023_topical.pdfPDF icon aspeers_cfp_2023_art.pdf