Transatlantic Elective Affinities

This volume is the result of an international workshop in which scholars from several disciplines explored less familiar instances of the exchange of ideas across the Atlantic. In the 19th century many American graduates both in the humanities, social and natural sciences as well as medicine, appreciating the progress in these fields of learning in continental Europe, and noting an elective affinity with their peers there, spent time at universities and medical institutions in German-speaking countries and then tried to reform their educational and academic institutions on the basis of transatlantic models. American institutions also recruited scientists from Central Europe for their work. The book also describes new alliances in the field of politics in the 20th century, and analyses the formation of a joint transatlantic peace movement intent on preventing a nuclear apocalypse in the Cold War. It also traces the influence of continental European philosophy and of individual philosophers such as Ludwig Wittgenstein in the USA and Canada, and investigates the inspiration of new branches of philosophy, like film philosophy, in Central Europe.