Editorial

We are proud to present to our readers the fifth issue of COPAS: Current Objectives in Postgraduate American Studies.

Again, find in this issue a fine sample from the rich and promising work of postgraduate scholars working on a multitude of research projects related to the study of the U.S. A very small selection of an amazingly wide array of scholarly work, alas! This is partly due to the successful submission of papers by young Americanists as a complete Special Issue to Amerikastudien / American Studies, thanks to the dynamic and engaged organizers of the 2003 PostGraduateForum-Conference at Bremen. Congratulations to Karsten and Ulf! We are happy about this great acknowledgement of the work being done by postgraduate scholars in Germany.

COPAS, we would like to remind you all, was also designed to serve as a permanent and continuing forum for the publication of postgraduate research. We will succeed if YOU are willing to share the wonderful work you are doing. Bring on some of these more than three hundred Ph.D. projects which are listed under "current dissertation projects" in the 2004 Mitteilungsblatt of the German Association for American Studies! In COPAS, we know no limitations of space…

This year’s PostGraduateForum-Conference was held in Frankfurt, Nov. 5-7, 2004. We would like, once again, to encourage participants of the Frankfurt Conference to make use of COPAS as a forum for the publications of their papers. As always, we welcome also those young scholars from the wide compass of American Studies unable to make it to the Frankfurt PGF to submit their contributions. As a forum for young Americanists, COPAS invites research projects dealing with American culture, literature, history, geography, the arts, popular culture, visual culture, economics, and political science. We appreciate projects that are situated in the wide range between "just beyond" the stage of the state exam—or M.A.—thesis to research that has progressed "well beyond" the Ph.D.

We once again thank the Bavarian American Academy (BAA) for supporting the initial stages of this project. If you stumbled upon this page by accident, we hope to have aroused your curiosity and find you reading also the past four issues, of course. In case you’re already an ardent COPASionado, enjoy the new issue!

With your approval, responses to our editorial, published papers, etc. will be published on this site. You may contact the editors of COPAS at the University of Regensburg. Please send your contributions to the editors.

So, spread the news!

Regensburg, December 2004

The Editors