American Health

is the first and currently only peer-reviewed print journal for MA-level American studies scholars in Europe. It is a platform for the best work done by American studies graduate students below the PhD level. It aims to foster academic exchange among young Americanists across Europe, and to thereby advance the field as well as its genuine European perspective on ‘America’ and its presences and effects around the world.

features a general section in addition to a topical one that brings academic works into a dialogue on one common theme. For the upcoming issue, this topical section will be organized around different notions of "American Health." Please feel free to send in work to have it considered for publication in if

  • you are an American studies student at a European university and are looking to publish a paper without a topical restriction.
  • or you are an American studies student at a European university and are looking to publish a paper on "American Health."

Please see the following Calls for Papers for details. Please also note our style guide at www.aspeers.com/style that will give you many helpful instructions on how to prepare your submission for maximum success.

general academic contributions   due 12 October 2014  html | pdf
topical academic contributions due 12 October 2014 html | pdf

Please see our submission guidelines and FAQ section. Submissions should be directed to submit@aspeers.com.

1) General Call for Papers

For the general section of its seventh issue, seeks outstanding academic writing demonstrating the excellence of graduate scholarship, the range of concerns scrutinized in the field, and the diversity of perspectives employed. We thus explicitly invite revised versions of term papers or chapters from theses written by students of European Master (and equivalent) programs. For this section, there are no topical limitations. Contributions should be up to 10,000 words (including abstract and list of works cited). The submission deadline is 12 October 2014.

2) Topical Call for Papers on "American Health"

From the health checks on Ellis Island to long-standing and recently increasing debates about the (un-)Americanness of different models of health care to Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move!”  campaign aimed at improving the health of Americans, public discourse in the US has continually connected notions of health to notions of Americanness and has negotiated one via the other. Moreover, a culturally relevant, broad, metaphorical usage of health is evidenced in the omnipresence of such phrases as “the health of the nation,” “crime epidemic,” and even “Bieber fever.” Not surprisingly, the topic of “American Health,” broadly conceived, has garnered significant attention among scholars in a variety of disciplines.

will, therefore, dedicate the topical section of its eighth annual issue to “American Health." The journal seeks to further explore the topic and the manifold scholarly opportunities and interpretative potentials it offers for MA-level American studies in Europe. With a host of disciplines—ranging from political science and history to medicine, legal studies, cultural studies, and beyond—devoting scholarship to this topic, we welcome papers from the various fields, methodologies, and approaches American studies draws upon as well as inter- and transdisciplinary submissions. The following thematic clusters, then, might spark but do not delimit ideas for possible submissions:

  • health, medicine, and capitalism: body optimization, the health risks of poverty, the commodification of reproduction, etc.

  • the normative power of “healthy”: fat shaming, the impact of the APA’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the legalization of medical marijuana, etc.

  • negotiations of injury, disease, and health in literature, movies, TV, music, art, etc.

  • the politics and legalities of health: the Hobby Lobby case, social security, biological warfare, etc.

  • health intersecting with other categories of difference like race, gender, class, sexuality, ability, age, etc.

  • the history of health in the US: female hysteria in the nineteenth century, food safety, the evolution of health institutions, etc.

  • the language of health: metaphors and rhetorics of health and disease in political debates, religious texts, ecological discourses, etc.

, the first and currently only graduate-level peer-reviewed journal of European American studies, encourages fellow MA students from all fields to reflect on the diverse aspects and implications of health in American culture. We welcome term papers, excerpts from theses, or papers specifically written for the eighth issue of by 12 October 2014. If you are seeking to publish work beyond this topic, please refer to our general call for papers. At www.aspeers.com/2015 you can find additional information as well as our submission guidelines.

PDF icon cfp_2015_topical.pdfPDF icon cfp_2015_general.pdf