Sturm, Twang and the Imaginary Wild West in Europe
Monday, January 19, 2009
This Land Is Your Land at the Concert for Obama
I just had to post this, one of the most meaningful moments of the big concert for Barack Obama held at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC on Sunday.
Bruce Springsteen backing the folk music legend Pete Seeger, leading hundreds of thousands of people in Woody Guthrie's anthem, This Land Is Your Land.
Seeger is 89 years old. He looks spry and delighted -- and, as a friend of mine put it, as if he had been waiting all his life for this moment.
For several years I've been exploring the imaginary wild west in contemporary Europe -- observing and experiencing the many ways that Europeans embrace the mythology of the American Frontier to enhance, imbue or create their own identities. (Or, indeed, just have fun.) On this blog I will post pictures, stories and links relating to this multi-faceted subculture, from European country music to rodeos, theme parks, round-ups and saloons....
I'm an American writer and photographer who has researched and written widely on Jewish culture and heritage issues for more than three decades. I've written several books on the topic and manage the website www.jewish-heritage-europe.eu, a project of the Rothschild Foundation (Hanadiv) Europe.
I also am working longterm on "Sturm, Twang and Sauerkraut Cowboys: Imaginary Wild Wests in Contemporary Europe," an exploration of the American West in the European imagination for which I won a 2006 Guggenheim Fellowship and an NEH summer stipend grant. In 2015 I was the Arnold Distinguished Visiting Chair in Jewish Studies at the College of Charleston, SC. My other honors and awards include Poland's “Knight's Cross of the Order of Merit" and the Michael Hammer Tribute Research Award from the Hadassah Brandeis Institute (HBI).
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