Description: Demonstrates that the quest for immediacy, or experiences of direct connection and presence, has propelled the development of American literature and media culture.
Brief description: Heike Schaefer is Professor of North American Literature and Culture at the University of Education Karlsruhe, Germany. She is a former Fulbright fellow, author of Mary Austin's Regionalism: Reflections on Gender, Genre, and Geography (2004), and has edited several books and special issues, including The Printed Book in Contemporary American Culture: Medium, Object, Metaphor (2019), Literary Knowledge Production and the Life Sciences (2017), and Network Theory and American Studies (2015).
Review Quotes: 'American Literature and Immediacy is at once grand in its aim of tracing the multidimensional concept of immediacy across visual media and a century and a half of American literature, and focused in its nuanced and compelling close readings of well-chosen case studies that represent some of the most intellectually earnest and formally ambitious literary responses to new visual media. I warmly welcome its significant contribution to literary studies and comparative media analyses and its impressive examination of a major concept in American culture - immediacy.' Marcy J. Dinius, DePaul University, Chicago and author of The Camera and the Press