Keys to Controversies

Stereotypes are usually seen as expression of racism and defamation, but they also play a role in cognition and contribute to the processes of perceiving and understanding other social groups and cultures. Based on this ambivalence, this study inquires into the function of stereotypes and employs the term as a key to the analysis of literary and cultural texts. It illuminates how different aesthetic projects relate to each other and interweave with artistic and political controversies of American Modernism. The book received the American Studies Network First Book Award 2000.