he 2008 release of the film Frost/Nixon brought the infamous interviews of former US President Richard Nixon, conducted by British journalist Sir David Frost in 1977, back into public awareness. One of the most notorious sentences in the interview, and arguably in Nixon's career, was his answer to Frost's question whether the President, acting in the nation's interest, may do something illegal. 1 Nixon's reply: "When the President does it that means that it is not illegal" ("Nixon's Views"). THis answer is stunning in that it suggests that the office of the President includes the power to decide what is legal and what is not, a bold assertion violating both the separation of powers and the rule of law. Apart from these constitutional ramifications, however, the role this one sentence has played for the interviews as well as for their cinematic reenactment is remarkable. It signifies a cultural fascination with Nixon's deeds that has inextricably tied this sentence to the public memory of his presidency. More importantly, the recent interest 2 in the thirty-seventh President and his downfall suggests that his actions might have come to symbolize the possibility of an overreaching of the executive branch more generally. This fascination with crime, its symbolic value, and its discursive functions are indicative of the cultural dimension real-life crime can have. They are also indicative of questions on Crime and America central to this issue of aspeers. On the upcoming pages, we will thus outline one possible framework to investigate 'crime' from a sociocultural perspective and demonstrate its productivity for scholarship and American studies in particular, followed by an introduction to this year's academic and artistic contributions that all engage the cultural roles of 'crime' from a multitude of angles.3 For instance, in discussing the significance of 'crime' in crime fiction, Jerry Palmer points out the importance of "considering the nature of crime as a discursive construct" (133). viii as peers 3 (2010) viii
hen you write a book, you spend day after day scanning and identifying the trees. When you're done, you have to step back and look at the forest" (King 201). Stephen King's metaphor for the writing process might as well illustrate the experience of editing. In our first semester in the American Studies MA program at Leipzig University, we were assigned the challenging and immensely enriching task of preparing the eighth issue of aspeers for publication. The doubleblind review process involved a substantial amount of (re-)reading, analyzing arguments, discussing strengths and overall academic value of each submission, weighing its potential contribution to the final issue, selecting, writing back to authors, and editing their resubmissions. All this work cultivated a set of valuable skills for the editors' academic lives; for the authors, it provided an opportunity to have their articles critically examined, receive constructive peer feedback, and finally see their work published in a journal of increasing reputation and international reach. Following an intense period of almost "day after day scanning and identifying" the roots and core ideas of this year's contributions as well as pruning sentences for more fruitful results, we now "step back" to look at the diversity of perspectives offered in the present edition and to explore some of those areas where our papers intersect and where they speak to each other.
his fourth issue of aspeers, the second-largest since the project's founding, is a welcome opportunity to look back at a success story that began in 2007 with the work on aspeers 1 (2008). Back then we had asked if there really was a market-demand and supply-for a graduate-level peer-reviewed journal of European American studies. The journal's first issue, 180 pages of academic articles and creative contributions, gave a first impression of what the answer to that question might be. An even more convincing, even more powerful response has been given by the issues that followed: The regularity with which, since 2007, small teams of MA students at American Studies Leipzig have published their peers' work has helped establish a publication channel that is, by now, well on its way to becoming an important element of European American studies education. This most recent issue, 159 pages in print, may well be seen to underscore this.
ith this eleventh issue, aspeers continues its remarkable journey into a new decade, and that sentence alone gives testament to the success of its mission. From its first year on, aspeers worked on the assumption that American studies, a small but innovative and energetic field, would produce enough excellent, publishable scholarship written by graduate students in Europe alone to justify an annual journal. But the assumption was always a gamble, and one that almost every foreword kept belaboring, signaling that the journal's ongoing success was a matter not just of confidence but also of concern-at least for the longest time.
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