Industrialization - industrial heritage - de-industrialization

Pittsburgh, the American world capital of steel was, to all intents and purposes, „born out of fire“: Iron and steel created this city. Chemnitz, the former „Manchester of Saxony,“ was dominated by the textile industry and engine construction. Both cities experienced a severe structural change and had to re-develop by the beginning of the 21st century. One of the central tasks confronting those seeking to invent 'narratives' for a new belonging in former industrialized centres such as Chemnitz and Pittsburgh is in the presence of the industrial heritage at all levels in the respective cityscapes. Paintings, movies, narrative texts and poems tend to foreclose alternative ways of thinking and seeing. This collection of essays, largely the fruit of a symposium organized under the auspices of English Literatures and American Studies at Chemnitz University of Technology and the Industrial Museum of Saxony in Chemnitz, explores how industrialization and de-industrialization have taken such a firm hold on artists and writers in Pittsburgh and Chemnitz and provides a predominantly cultural perspective on those phenomena. The book is ordered chronologically. The essays collected examine various manifestations and literary as well as cultural representations of industrialization and de-industrialization primarily in Pittsburgh and Chemnitz. The contributors, for the most part young scholars in the areas of history, literature and sociology, offer a panoply of viewpoints of Pittsburgh's and Chemnitz' interaction with industrialization, industrial heritage and de-industrialization. The Editors: Evelyne Keitel is Professor of American Studies at Chemnitz University of Technology. Her research interests include popular culture, TV series and detective fiction. She wrote, edited or co-edited eleven books and wrote numerous scholarly articles. Cecile Sandten is Professor of English Literatures at Chemnitz University of Technology. Her publications include essays on postcolonial theory and literature, children's literature and literature for young adults, as well as numerous essays on Black and Asian British literature, 16th and 17th century literature, Shakespeare and comparative perspectives as well as cultural issues. She is co-editor of two interdisciplinary studies. Gunter Süß is Assistant Professor of American Studies at Chemnitz University of Technology. He received his PhD in 2005 for a dissertation on the aural in contemporary popular culture. His research interests include cultural theory, film studies and popular culture.