The International Turn in American Studies

This collection of essays attempts a critical reassessment of a wide range of often competing forms of internationalizing the discipline of American Studies - including trans- and post-national, international, (trans-)Atlantic, (trans-)Pacific, as well as hemispheric, trans-border, in-ter-American and comparative American Studies.

The volume is a contribution to the ongoing debate on the internationalization of American Studies. The essays by European, American and Latin American scholars provide critical evaluations of a wide range of concepts, including trans-national and post-national, international, trans-atlantic, trans-pacific, as well as hemispheric, inter-American and comparative American studies. Combining theoretical reflections and actual case studies, the collection proposes a reassessment of current developments at a time when American nations experience the paradoxical simultaneity of both weakened and strengthened national borders alongside multiple challenges to national sovereignty.

Autorentext

Marietta Messmer is Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of Groningen (The Netherlands). She works on inter-American cultural and political relations with a special focus on migration studies. Armin Paul Frank is Professor Emeritus of English Philology at Göttingen University (Germany) and founding director of the Göttingen Center of Advanced Studies in Literary Translation.

Inhalt

Contents: Marietta Messmer: Transcending Borders: The International Turn in American Studies Michael Boyden: The Semantics of Self-Denial: The New American Studies Through the Lens of Luhmann s Social Systems Theory Ricardo D. Salvatore: If Bolton Were to Awake Today: Early Efforts Towards a Comprehensive Hemispheric History of the Americas Jane C. Desmond: «And Never the Twain Shall Meet?»: Considering the Legacies of Orientalism and Occidentalism for the Transnational Study of the U.S. Earl E. Fitz: Inter-American Literary Studies in the Early Twenty-First Century: The View from the United States Josef Raab: Difference Matters: Toward an Inter-American Approach to «Race», Ethnicity, and Belonging Amós Nascimento: Inter-(African-Latin-)American: An Experiment in «Inter-Location» Gabriele Pisarz-Ramirez: Transnationality and Temporality in Early African American Texts Armin Paul Frank: A Rationale for a Comprehensive Study of the History of United States Literary Culture Daniel Göske: The Literary World in the «American Renaissance» and the International Context of American Studies Earl E. Fitz: Inter-American Studies as an Emerging Field: The Future of a Discipline Claudia Sadowski-Smith/Claire F. Fox: Theorizing the Hemisphere: Inter-Americas Work at the Intersection of American, Canadian, and Latin American Studies Liam Kennedy: American Studies Without Tears, or What Does America Want?