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.-...

This book focuses on the various propagations of American culture in literature, music, film, "the new media," architecture, politics, and ways of life. The 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.