Political Education and American Studies

With surges of authoritarian movements in both Europe and the United States, political education is a prominent and urgent topic. Given the long-held assumption in the United States that political education is not only, perhaps not even primarily, about theories of governance but rather about practices, habits, and a way of living together – in other words: a phenomenon of culture – the scholarship collected in this volume looks at novels and essays, caricatures and comics, zines and TV series, podcasts and LPs to examine political issues their creators wanted to educate their audience about. These include, for instance, copyright law, trade unions and economic mechanisms, anti-racism, questions of leadership, and climate change.

What stands out is the relative insignificance of the nation state and perhaps democracy as useful frameworks; instead, the focus is on popular media, on contributing to building cultural memories, and frequently on pedagogy itself.