The Founding of GAAS

Abstract

The engagement between elements of the US government and the faculty of the Amerika Institut had demonstrated divergent conceptions of the development of American Studies. However, this negotiation was not limited to the development of institutes in Munich and Berlin. The development of a national association, which subsequently became the German Association for American Studies (GAAS), also required an engagement between US-based and local conceptions for the discipline as GAAS built on previous initiatives in Germany. As a result, the choice architecture for the development of a national association was created by previous reeducation policy and US-supported initiatives that included the struggles in Munich and Berlin.