How can one define a word as laden with meaning and raw connotative power as resistance? It is ambiguous and fleeting, energy in motion. What, then, makes a resistance movement? Is resistance always collective, or can we resist individually? Is resistance always progressive? What do we make of those moments of resistance that fight to go back in time? What seems to tie the term so closely to the United States?
Considering the hegemonic position the US occupies in the world today, it is easy to forget that the country was founded in resistance to British colonial rule. From the Boston Tea Party to the Civil Rights Movement to more recent examples like the Black Lives Matter movement, resistance—whether personal or communal—has been a driving force in American history. Upon closer inspection, it reveals itself as something inherent to US culture.
Resistance was an essential motivation for the first colonists seeking religious and political freedom, just as it was for the Indigenous tribes trying to preserve their territory and way of life. Resistance was an empty seat on a bus in 1955, and a brick thrown through a Stonewall Inn window in 1969. Sometimes it even takes the form of an inflatable frog. At the same time, it has also become a label claimed by movements on very different parts of the political spectrum, as in the case of the men climbing the staircase walls at the Capitol and a shaman banging a drum at the rotunda in 2021. These politically contradicting examples show how the language and imagery of resistance can be appropriated, contested, and redefined by opposing causes.
American studies scholarship has a tradition of investigating how resistance manifests in US civil and popular culture as well. As the first graduate-level peer-reviewed journal for European American studies, this nineteenth issue of aspeers showcases such inquiry by publishing emerging voices in our field. Ranging from sociological, political, and ecological considerations to theories of affect and feminist literary theory, the issue’s contributions provoke thought and invite readers to contemplate the complexities and nuances of what it means to resist.
Resistance in Academia
A key site of resistance in the United States has been the college campus. Over the years, student movements have used collective action to resist injustice. Historical protests include the 1964 Free Speech demonstration at UC Berkeley and those in 1968-70 at Columbia University and Kent State University opposing the Vietnam War. In the present day, campus protests take place in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, the Palestinian people, and in opposition to the excessive violence enacted by ICE agents. Looking back through history, it becomes evident that students are unwilling to accept the assumption that racial, social, or ecological concerns can be detached from the responsibilities of educational institutions (Ferguson 4).
When American studies emerged as a discipline, it aimed to mainly reaffirm the founding myths of the nation. But over the years, as the field turned toward “‘critical US studies’” (Paul 24), intersectionality has come to be one of the central approaches of American studies. Scholars now acknowledge that the intersecting aspects, such as gender, race, class, and sexuality, provide insight into American society in a way that challenges hegemonic norms and conventions. Despite the origins of American studies, we believe that the field, as it is now, is able to read against the grain, to critically reflect on culturally embedded narratives, even in instances where such reflection necessitates that we re-evaluate our opinions and have difficult conversations. As “[a]cademic knowledge develops through paradigm shifts” and “old certainties [are] productively questioned” (Tolz 391), academia and resistance go hand in hand, complementing each other.
Critical theories that challenge or protest the status quo are essential to the humanities and part and parcel of present-day American studies and its intersectional approach to research. Today, many influential works in American studies stem from perspectives that strive to uncover power dynamics: Critical Race Theory seeks to critically engage with racism in the US, feminist theories aim to achieve equality and bring women and gender-nonconforming people into the spotlight, while postcolonial and decolonial theories challenge the imperial lens that is still predominantly applied in Western academia. Analyzing cultural texts through these theoretical points of view enables us to identify power structures and the ways they manifest, both in cultural texts and in everyday life. These frameworks also illuminate the many forms and shapes of resistance, for which the US is a fertile field.
Knowledge is power. Accessing, producing, and distributing it implies even greater power. As scholars, we have the responsibility to be aware of our own biases, prejudices, and blind spots, while continually expanding our perspectives beyond these limited points of view. However, we must acknowledge the existing power structures within academia, mirroring those of the world beyond scholarship. Historically, the “institution” (Ahmed 15) of academia has been predominantly white and male. One way of challenging these power structures was introduced by Sara Ahmed, who refuses to rely on the default; instead of citing white men, she chooses to feature marginalized scholars’ work (15). Practices such as conscious citation are necessary in order to include marginalized perspectives in academic discourse. Although every new theory and framework start as individual projects, their adaption and repetition enable collective resistance.
We would like to further our understanding and support of marginalized perspectives—especially within a field like American studies, where there are so many different stories to tell, so many different viewpoints to include, and so many voices to honor. In curating this issue of aspeers, we curated articles that shine a new light on topics, intentionally engage with ongoing discourses to include more perspectives, and address resistance in a multitude of ways.
The contributions in this issue exemplify how the next generation of scholars in American studies tackle critical reflection and resistance-oriented inquiry. Drawing from an impressive number of submissions by MA students across Europe, this year’s selection showcases the analytical depth, intellectual creativity, and methodological diversity characterizing contemporary scholarly work in the field. Selected through a rigorous double-blind peer-review process, each article engages a distinct aspect of resistance. Together, they illuminate how resistance can be interpreted across contexts and media, from institutional critique to affective and cultural practices.
Academic Contributions
Adam Anzel’s “The Contours of Conservative Populism in J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis (2016)” analyzes conservative populist rhetoric by demonstrating Hillbilly Elegy’s use of bidirectional antagonisms—‘punching up’ and ‘punching down’—and its reliance on established conservative tropes. This approach is particularly relevant in light of the current political climate in the United States and the country’s conservative project post-World War II. While J.D. Vance has become a central figure within the present conservative populist government, he has not always been a fierce supporter of Donald Trump but started out as an outspoken critic. It was only during his 2022 Senate race in his home state of Ohio that he aligned himself with Trump and his ideas, which renders an analysis of the 2016 publication of Hillbilly Elegy through a conservative populist lens all the more compelling. By drawing on Michael Kazin’s rhetorical study of American populism and Ernesto Laclau’s theorization of the concept of populism, Anzel demonstrates how Vance constructs bidirectional antagonistic frontiers between the ‘poor’ and the ‘elite.’ Simultaneously, he establishes an antagonism between the ‘worthy’ and the ‘unworthy’ poor. Therefore, the article identifies Hillbilly Elegy as a conservative populist text that laid the groundwork for Vance’s later political positioning.
Robert Hayes II’s article “All the Feels: Affective Language and Counter-Resistance in American HR Discourse on Quiet Quitting” shows how American Human Resource Management discourse constructs ‘quiet quitting’ as an affective concept rather than a material or structural one. Drawing on a qualitative discourse analysis of ten articles published by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) between 2022 and 2025, it shows how affectively marked language frames quiet quitting as a violation of workplace ‘feeling rules’ that ask for motivation, commitment, and emotional availability. Applying Arlie Russell Hochschild’s concept of feeling rules, Self-Determination Theory, and Sara Ahmed’s ideas on affective economies, this article demonstrates how SHRM circulates affects such as willingness, concern, and stress to stabilize neoliberal affective governance. While most position quiet quitting as a lack of affective commitment requiring institutional correction, a small subgroup reframes it as an answer to exhaustion and exploitation, thus exposing the affective ‘costs’ of normative workplace expectations. Read as an everyday practice, quiet quitting emerges as a contested space of resistance within US labor culture; one in which employee subjectivity, discretionary effort, and emotional governance are actively being negotiated. By positioning professional human resources discourse as a cultural site where resistance is managed, redirected, or contained, this article adds to debates on labor, power, and the affective constructions of contemporary capitalism.
In their article “‘A Good Meal Always Makes You Feel a Little More Human’: Gendering the Cannibal and Embodying Resistance in Margaret Atwood’s The Edible Woman,” Jana Luckhardt argues that Atwood’s novel spotlights gendered power dynamics in heterosexual relationships, while troubling reductive conceptualizations of a consumer/consumed dichotomy. Expertly sketching “the figure of the metaphorical cannibal” (55), Luckhardt traces the patterns of consumption within The Edible Woman: the devouring of protagonist Marian’s autonomy and agency by her fiancé Peter, and her body’s developing refusal of food. They historicize the construction of the cannibal, illustrating the figure’s evolution from its origins as an instrument used to instill fear of a racialized Other to a metaphor demonstrating the evils of slavery. The article departs from bell hooks’s theory of metaphorical cannibalization as an entry point to its reading of Atwood’s work, while maintaining the necessary distinction between the cannibalized Other and the edible woman, a discussion informed by Probyn. Embedding their argument in a theoretical framework based in feminist food studies, Luckhardt illuminates “women’s identification and near cultural synonymity with food” (62) and portrays how the character of Marian begins to lose control of her body as it stages its protest against her metaphorical cannibalization. Luckhardt affirms the need to “trouble a simple gendered distinction between eating as power and non-eating as powerlessness” (74), emphasizing that both the refusal and the act of consumption may be interpreted as resisting metaphorical cannibalization and reclaiming one’s selfhood.
In “Her Image and Her Flesh: Phenomenology, the Haptic, and the Image of Woman—A Comparative Study of Charles Vidor’s Gilda and Jane Campion’s The Piano,” Michèle Maria Fast focuses on the tactile and the relationships established between the bodies of viewers and the films’ protagonists. This article argues for an intersubjective reading of women’s representation in film. Fast utilizes the categories of hardness and softness to trace how the viewer’s relative sensual alignment to Woman in film may either restrict or aid in one’s identification with the body on screen. Drawing particularly on Vivian Sobchack’s writing on film phenomenology and Jennifer Barker’s work on the haptic in film, Fast’s article juxtaposes the statuesque, inaccessible Gilda against the protagonist of The Piano, Ada, who elicits muscular empathy in the viewer through the film’s focus on her interiority as well as its evocation of tactility. Demonstrating through her analysis of two overtly differing representations of women in film the significance of letting viewers ‘intrude,’ empathize with, and gain a deeper understanding of Woman’s body beyond her captivating appearance, Fast reveals how expressions of the lived body on screen are part of an advance to rehabilitate the image of Woman from objectification. Fast’s article encourages viewers to approach films with a heightened sensitivity for the tactile, positing that “we may yet achieve more than experiencing the pleasure of presence due to the activation of our senses in the movie theater. We may come to an understanding of our sense of being in the world” (94).
The final contribution to this year’s issue, “Chthulucene Complications in Richard Powers’s The Overstory” by Alexander Hackel-Johnson, argues that Powers’s novel, although often read as a Chthulucene-oriented work of environmental storytelling, ultimately presents a conflicted understanding of ecological present and future. Drawing on Donna Haraway’s concept of the Chthulucene, Hackel-Johnson shows that the novel combines a strong emphasis on multispecies entanglement and the decentering of the human with a narrative tendency that weakens the significance of action in the present. The central claim of the article is that The Overstory places ecological hope mainly in distant futures, through visions of long-lasting multispecies life and technologically assisted coordination, while depicting the present as a moment in which meaningful collective action appears unfeasible. The article outlines Haraway’s critique of Anthropocene and Capitalocene thinking and her call to remain engaged with the difficulties of the present. It then demonstrates how The Overstory resonates with Chthulucene thinking through its attention to trees and other forms of plant life, its emphasis on interconnected forms of existence, and its use of time frames that exceed human lives. At the same time, Hackel-Johnson points out that these elements coexist in the novel with a pessimistic portrayal of contemporary environmental activism, repeated suggestions that ecological disaster cannot be avoided in the short run, and an emphasis on future renewal that offers reassurance rather than urgency. By bringing these tensions into focus, the article shows that The Overstory retains elements of Anthropocene thinking, especially in its tendency to treat human responsibility as undifferentiated and to place confidence in technological solutions.
Professorial Voices
For this year’s issue of aspeers, we are honored to include both an academic as well as a creative professorial contribution.
PD Dr. Martin Lüthe finds his academic home at the John F. Kennedy Institute at Freie Universität Berlin. Recent research interests include Critical Whiteness studies and African American studies, (digital) sports cultures, popular culture and popular music, and visual culture. In his essay “Resisting Resistance? Hip Hop Studies, Nostalgia, and the Underground,” Lüthe shows how the underground has grown to be a vital space of resistance for African American life and culture throughout the US American project and continues to be a place where artists seek to maintain authenticity. Lüthe outlines hip hop scholarship’s beginning using Tricia Rose’s view of the genre as a blueprint for activism. From there, the academic study of hip hop culture shifted toward a critique of mainstream commercialization. Furthermore, the essay displays how the nostalgia in hip hop music searches “for a moment, when the underground [...] seemed like a potential space of resistance from within or from semi-outside the pop music business” (125), mirroring a general, societal longing for a pre-digital era of (subcultural) purity.
We are also delighted to feature a dialogue with Hannah Michell as our creative professorial contribution. Michell is a British-born author, raised in Seoul, South Korea, who now lives in the United States and teaches Korean Pop Culture at the University of California, Berkeley. Her debut novel, The Defections, was first published in 2014. In the winter term 2025/26, the Institute of American Studies at Leipzig University was honored to welcome her as the term’s Picador Guest Professor for Literature. In November 2025, she gave a reading titled Speak.Risk.Move. at the Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig, where she introduced and read from her latest novel Excavations (2023), a fitting work for this year’s topic of “Spaces of Resistance.” Rather than taking the shape of a critical essay, Michell’s contribution mirrors a dialogue, a form of active exchange between student and professor. Presented in a question-and-answer-based format, this collaborative contribution entitled “Narratives of Resistance: A Dialogue with Hannah Michell” openly invites reflection on how both literary practices and academic discourse shine light on contemporary spaces of resistance. In the dialogue, Michell touches upon topics regarding resistance, writing, memory, and transnational perspectives, alongside questions related to her latest novel.
The nineteenth issue of aspeers, despite our best efforts, still only scratches the surface of a topic as nuanced and rich as resistance. Similarly, by collecting contributions and curating the issue, we have highlighted only some of the emerging voices in European graduate studies. In the aftermath, we leave it to the reader to sit with the texts and reflect on how and where to engage. It remains our hope, however, that the articles provide a range of impulses for thought or even capture something fleeting in this specific moment in the world and our academic attunement toward it. With this in mind, we extend our gratitude to the reader.
Acknowledgements
First and foremost, we would like to thank every contributor who took the time and effort to submit their article, and especially those who revised their texts for resubmission within a very short period of time. As the peer review selection is a challenging and intense procedure for all, we would like to thank the authors for having allowed us to develop as editors. To those who were not selected for
this edition, we would like to again emphasize that this should not discourage you from moving forward with your academic research, and we hope to receive your submissions again in the future. Furthermore, we would once again like to thank PD Dr. Martin Lüthe and Hannah Michell for their time and their fantastic contributions to this issue. Finally, special thanks go to our instructors Annika M. Schadewaldt, Dr. Katja Schmieder, Corwin K. M. Sandiford, and Dr. Stefan Schubert for supporting us throughout the process, motivating us, and helping this issue see the light of day. Let us hope it is a bright one.
Works Cited
Ahmed, Sara. Living a Feminist Life. Duke UP, 2017.
Ferguson, Roderick A. We Demand: The University and Student Protests. U of California P, 2017. JSTOR,www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/j.ctv1xxt2q.
Paul, Heike. The Myths That Made America: An Introduction to American Studies. transcript, 2014. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv1wxsdq.
Tolz, Vera. “Shifting Academic Paradigms in Response to Global Crises: Opportunities and Pitfalls.” Forum for Modern Language Studies, vol. 60, no. 3, 2024, pp. 391-97. Oxford Academic, https://doi.org/10.1093/fmls/cqae039.