Extraordinary Ordinariness: Everyday Heroism in the United States, Germany, and Britain, 1800-2015

ISBN-13: 9783593506173 / Angielski / Miękka / 2017 / 294 str.

Simon Wendt

Opis

Everyday heroes and heroines--ordinary men, women, and children who are honored for actual or imagined feats--have received only scant attention in heroism scholarship. While scholars have devoted thousands of pages to war heroes, heroic leaders, and superheroes, as well as to the blurring distinctions between heroes and celebrities, they have said little about the meaning and impact of ordinary citizens' heroism. This collection of essays seeks to fill that void. Comparing the United States, Germany, and Britain from a multidisciplinary perspective, Extraordinary Ordinariness asks both when this particular hero type first emerged and how it was discussed and depicted in political discourse, mass media, literature, film, and other forms of popular culture. Looking across fields of study, countries, and centuries, this book sheds new light on the many social, cultural, and political functions that our everyday heroes have served.

Spis treści

Table of Contents

Introduction: Studying Everyday Heroism in Western Societies

Simon Wendt 7

"Our Heroes of To-day": The Royal Humane Society and the Creation of Heroes in Victorian Britain

Craig Barclay 25

Everyday Heroism for the Victorian Industrial Classes: The British Workman and The British Workwoman, 1855-1880

Christiane Hadamitzky and Barbara Korte 53

Everyday Heroism in Britain, 1850-1939

John Price 79

Volunteers and Professionals: Everyday Heroism and the Fire Service in Nineteenth-Century America

Wolfgang Hochbruck 109

Narratives of Feminine Heroism: Gender Values and Memory in the American Press in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

Janice Hume 139

Heroic Ordinariness after Cavell and Capra: Hollywood Cinema and Everyday Heroism in the Interwar Period and World War II

Matthias Grotkopp 167

Everyday Socialist Heroes and Hegemonic Masculinity in the German Democratic Republic, 1949-1989

Sylka Scholz 185

Everyday Heroes in Germany: Perspectives from Cultural Anthropology

Silke Meyer 217

After Watergate and Vietnam: Politics, Community, and the Ordinary American Hero, 1975-2015

William Graebner 235

"It Must Have Been Cold There In My Shadow": Everyday Heroism in Superhero Narratives

Michael Goodrum 249

After the Working-Class Hero: Popular Music and Everyday Heroism in the United States in the Twenty-First Century

Martin Lüthe 271

Notes on Contributors 291

O autorze

Simon Wendt ist Juniorprofessor für Amerikanistik an der Universität Frankfurt am Main.