American Soundcheck - The JAS Podcast

Rob Kroes, Professor Emeritus and former President of the European Association of American Studies, has been one of the leading scholars for more than 30 years on our negotiations of "America". His recent work in the Journal of American Studies includes a study of the "Falling Man" photograph of 9-11 (November 2011) and "Musical America: Staging the USA to the Sounds of Music" (February 2014). In the 2014 JAS Lecture, Professor Kroes posits the interaction of the "Western" and the "Southern" in Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained, arguing that the portrayal of racism offers a glimpse of "realism" by a filmmaker noted for his presentation of fantasy.