The Genres of Genre: Form, Formats, and Cultural Formations

The 38th volume of SPELL is dedicated to the discussion and analysis of the concept of genre. Terms such as "the political unconscious" (Jameson), "cultural work" (Tompkins), "narrative mode" (Williams) and "performative" (Austin, Turner) have been centrally determining, over the years, to help us understand how genres work and what they do. This collection seeks to further explore what roles genre plays in past and contemporary American national narratives and counter-narratives. While the first three essays of the volume attempt to tackle the difficult task of defining genre and its affordances, the following three essays discuss specific genres, namely, the office novel, the political TV show, and science-fiction. Finally, the last three essays explore how genre can be a valuable concept for the analysis of larger issues, such as the representation of race in American cultural productions. This collection of essays therefore offers a variety of approaches to the literary device of genre, reflecting ongoing research in the Swiss community of American studies, in order to underline the productive potential of genre analysis.