American studies in the scholarly sense are old in Europe. But academic chairs and research institutions were late in developing, as they were in the United States themselves. In most European universities the subject was firmly established only after the Second World War. The University of Oslo in Norway in 1946 founded a full professorship of American literature, the first of its kind in Scandinavia, and in 1948 an American Institute. In the following year the Institute started a series of book publications in cooperation with the University of Pennsylvania. This is the second of two volumes titled Americana Norvegica.

"American Sensations is an erudite and sweeping cultural history of the sensationalist literatures and mass cultures of the American 1848. It is the finest book yet written on the U.S.-Mexican War, and how it was central to the making and unmaking of U.S. mass culture, class, and racial formation."—José David Saldívar, author of Border Matters: Remapping American Cultural Studies "A major work that will challenge current paradigms of nineteenth-century literature and culture. American Sensations brilliantly succeeds in remapping the volatile and shifting terrain of both national identity and literary history in the mid-nineteenth century."—Amy Kaplan, co-editor of Cultures of United States Imperialism

Clive Scott Chisholm wryly describes himself as a ?fugitive from the American Dream.? A displaced Canadian and a legally ?registered alien,? Chisholm set out from his home in upstate New York in 1985 to discover the origins of that dream. In Following the Wrong God Home, he recounts his personal odyssey, describing the people he encountered and the unforgettable stories they told. Chisholm?s solo journey on foot from the Missouri River to Salt Lake City retraced the 1,100-mile trek of nineteenth-century Mormon pioneers. In this account, he juxtaposes that Mormon search for the dream of ?community? against the modern search for the American dream of ?individuality,? muses over how much and how little things have changed in the century-and-a-half since 1847, and creates a narrative informed by the American dreamers he came across from Omaha to Salt Lake City.

Too often, the lives and works of authors who called Upstate New York home are overshadowed by the icons of New York City. Resting among Us uncovers the region’s rich literary heritage through Steven Huff’s journeys to the graves of writers both famous and celebrated as well as those that have been forgotten. While most Upstate residents are aware that Mark Twain’s grave is in Elmira and that James Fenimore Cooper’s is in Cooperstown, many people don’t realize a noted author may be buried in their local cemetery. For instance, Paul Bowles is buried in Lakemont, John Gardner in Batavia, Rod Serling in Interlaken, John Burroughs in Roxbury, and Adelaide Crapsey in Rochester. Interwoven with these remarkable literary lives are the connected stories of the region’s history and Huff’s own encounters and friendships with some of the writers included in the book. With directions to each author’s grave, as well as photographs of the graves and authors themselves, Resting among Us is the perfect companion for your own enlightening literary pilgrimage.