Submission Guidelines

The Amer­i­can Stud­ies Blog is look­ing for pas­sion­ate, moti­vat­ed guest blog­gers from all walks of life. Top­ics deal­ing with the Unit­ed States, Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture and cul­ture as well as the teach­ing of Amer­i­can Stud­ies are wel­come for sub­mis­sion. Please read the fol­low­ing guide­lines to ensure that your sub­mis­sion will be con­sid­ered for publication.

Length and format

  • Less is more. Ide­al­ly, blog entries should be between 300 and 1,000 words. In some cas­es, longer pieces may be con­sid­ered (i.e. short stories).
  • Please include a 2–3 sen­tence bio with your submission.
  • Please sub­mit your blog elec­tron­i­cal­ly in Word for­mat. All entries should include a catchy title as well as a sug­ges­tion in which of the cat­e­gories you’d like it posted.

Audi­ence, Writ­ing Style, Ref­er­enc­ing, and Language

  • The Amer­i­can Stud­ies Blog seeks a wide tar­get audi­ence, includ­ing upper-sec­ondary school and uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents, Ger­man teach­ers of Eng­lish, aca­d­e­mics in all phas­es of their career as well as any­one inter­est­ed in the Unit­ed States and Amer­i­can Stud­ies. Top­ics should, there­fore, have gen­er­al appeal.
  • Due to our wide read­er­ship, avoid the use of jar­gon and lim­it schol­ar­ly references.
  • Please add links to oth­er web­sites (include URLs in paren­the­ses where they should appear), pho­tos, screen­shots, orig­i­nal video clips, and open access mate­ri­als to your submissions.
  • As a form of life writ­ing, all blogs should have an authen­tic, unique point of view. Indi­vid­ual expres­sion, tone, and voice are encour­aged, e.g. dos­es of humor as well as thought-pro­vok­ing and zeit­geisty top­ics are espe­cial­ly welcome.
  • Please use Amer­i­can spelling, cap­i­tal­iza­tion rules, and punctuation.

Ethics, Edit­ing & Pub­lish­ing Process

  • By sub­mit­ting your blog to the Amer­i­can Stud­ies Blog, you cer­ti­fy that it is an orig­i­nal con­tri­bu­tion with fac­tu­al­ly accu­rate infor­ma­tion that has not been post­ed or sub­mit­ted else­where. Fur­ther­more, you cer­ti­fy that all parts of the sub­mis­sion are copy­right free or that con­trib­u­tors pos­sess the copy­right for any pho­tos, films, or mate­ri­als which shall be pub­lished in con­junc­tion with your pro­posed blog. Respon­si­bil­i­ty for pla­gia­rism rests with the author(s).
  • If sub­mit­ting your own pho­tos or film clips, please pro­pose captions.
  • We reserve the right to edit posts. Please do not feel offend­ed if we make minor styl­is­tic changes to improve the read­abil­i­ty of your blog. Approved guest posts will be pub­lished with­out notice. Should major changes be war­rant­ed, we would give you an oppor­tu­ni­ty to review our changes.
  • We reserve the right to reject any sub­mis­sion and to remove any post after it has been published.
  • We do not accept unso­licit­ed and/or pro­mo­tion­al blogs.