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The 'American Girl' this paper considers is Helen Wills, the top-ranked women's tennis player from 1927 to 1934. Wills was the subject of numerous narrative and visual representations as well as many self-representations in both words and images. Reading Wills in the context of Henry James's Daisy Miller and the popular magazine Gibson Girl, the paper considers the mechanisms by which national symbols are constructed. In particular, it examines the ways in which Wills's style of playing, her clothes, and even her facial expression came to signify a particular version of modern, American femininity (in contrast to that of opponents such as Suzanne Lenglen and Helen Jacobs). It also explores her identity as a white Californian, a neo-classical girl next door, who appealed to Nativists like James Phelan and Gertrude Atherton and whom Diego Rivera placed at the centre of 1931 Allegory of California. In short, Helen Wills proved both a very flexible American symbol and a global celebrity.

AbstractThe complicated shifts in power and status that took place between Britain, France and the United States in the years immediately preceding the First World War resulted in anxious self‐examination and a series of identity crises whose social, cultural and political ramifications would be felt for decades to come. This was also a boom time for boxing, and one that was distinguished by a lively debate about the pros and cons of the "English" and "American" styles. This paper argues that these detailed deliberations about sporting technique often exposed a more general disquiet about national strengths and vulnerabilities and about the pre‐war balance of power. A consideration of straight lefts and slogging ruffians tells us something about the issues at stake.

Gegenstand der Filminterpretation ist der sechste Teil der "Rocky"-Serie "Rock Balboa" (Twentieth Century Fox, 2006), die in den USA eine große Popularität erlangte. Im Film wird nicht nur die mediale Präsentation und gesellschaftliche Wahrnehmung des Berufsboxens in der Gegenwart deutlich, sondern auch das nostalgische Verhältnis zur US-Geschichte, insbesondere zu den 1950er Jahren und ihrer Popkultur. Auffallend ist zum einen das Verlangen nach den von Sylvester Stallone geschaffenen und verkörperten fiktiven Heldenfiguren, die zum Bestandteil einer populären Kultur geworden sind, die im widersprüchlichen Umgang mit sich selbst nun ebenfalls ihre Klassiker erzeugt. Zum anderen erfolgt in diesem Sehnsuchtskontext eine Reinstitutionalisierung des (alten) weißen Vaters in seiner Rolle als Ernährer und Erzieher einer zerfallenen Familie. (ICI2)

What do we think of when we think of literary critics? Enlightenment snobs in powdered wigs? Professional experts? Cloistered academics? Through the end of the 20th century, book review columns and literary magazines held onto an evolving but stable critical paradigm, premised on expertise, objectivity, and carefully measured response. And then the Internet happened. From the editors of Review 31 and 3:AM Magazine, The Digital Critic brings together a diverse group of perspectives—early-adopters, Internet skeptics, bloggers, novelists, editors, and others—to address the future of literature and scholarship in a world of Facebook likes, Twitter wars, and Amazon book reviews. It takes stock of the so-called Literary Internet up to the present moment, and considers the future of criticism: its promise, its threats of decline, and its mutation, perhaps, into something else entirely. With contributions from Robert Barry, Russell Bennetts, Michael Bhaskar, Louis Bury, Lauren Elkin, Scott Esposito, Marc Farrant, Orit Gat, Thea Hawlin, Ellen Jones, Anna Kiernan, Luke Neima, Will Self, Jonathon Sturgeon, Sara Veale, Laura Waddell, and Joanna Walsh.