Introduction : a personal memoir : towards the study of imagology -- National stereotypes in literature in the English language : a review of research -- The theory of climate and the tableau of nationalities -- Foreign faces : physiognomy and the theory of climate -- The theory of climate in North American texts since 1776 -- Johannes Kepler, James Howell, and Thomas Lansius : the competition between European nations as a literary theme in the 17th century -- Transatlantic differences : (mis)perceptions in diachronic perspective -- Sketches of a traveler : observations on a dominant theme in Washington Irving's work -- Remarks on the tradition and function of heterostereotypes in North American fiction between 1900 and 1940 -- A separate identity asserted : agrarian affinities with European culture -- Atlantic double-cross : reciprocity of influence : Germany as an alternative model in the search for an American national identity, 1830 to 1930 -- Southern alumni of German universities : fashioning a tradition of excellence -- German ethnicity in the American south and the permeability of ethnic borders -- The rise and the demise of German and hybrid German-English in American (popular) culture -- Stereotypes in Walker Percy's fiction -- Elective affinities and biased encounters in the Alpine provinces of Austria -- Masks, minstrels and melancholy : from waltzing in the German Paris to descending into dreams of Decadence -- La joie-de-vivre et l'ombre des tombeaux : Vienna and Austira in Canadian literature -- Charme à l'Anglaise : on the image of the restless worldly-wise from England in the tableau of nationalities -- The rise of cultural nationalism in the new world : the Scottish element and example -- Stereotypes and sense of identity of Jewish southerners -- Self perception and presentation of Jewish immigrants in North American discourse, 1900-1940 -- Perfect revenge : observations on the image of Italy in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries -- Perspectives on the Mediterranean : Americans as transatlantic sojourners.