Globalizing American Studies

by Edwards, Brian T.

• ISBN13: 9780226185071
• ISBN10: 0226185079
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-12-15
• Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr

Summary

The discipline of American studies was established in the early days of World War II and drew on the myth of American exceptionalism. Now that the so-called American Century has come to an end, what would a truly globalized version of American studies look like? Brian T. Edwards and Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar offer a new standard for the field's transnational aspiration withGlobalizing American Studies. The essays here offer a comparative, multilingual, or multisited approach to ideas and representations of America. The contributors explore unexpected perspectives on the international circulation of American culture: the traffic of American movies within the British Empire, the reception of the filmGone with the Windin the Arab world, the parallels between Japanese and American styles of nativism, and new incarnations of American studies itself in the Middle East and South Asia. The essays elicit a forgotten multilateralism long inherent in American history and provide vivid accounts of postRevolutionary science communities, late-nineteenth century Mexican border crossings, African American internationalism, Cold War womanhood in the United States and Soviet Russia, and the neo-Orientalism of the new obsession with Iran, among others. Bringing together established scholars already associated with the global turn in American studies with contributors who specialize in African studies, East Asian studies, Latin American studies, media studies, anthropology, and other areas,Globalizing American Studiesis an original response to an important disciplinary shift in academia.

Author Biography

Brian T. Edwards is associate professor of English, comparative literary studies, and American studies at Northwestern University. Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar is associate professor of rhetoric and public culture and the director of the Center for Global Culture and Communication at Northwestern University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. vii
Introduction: Globalizing American Studies	p. 1
American Studies after American Exceptionalism? Toward a Comparative Analysis of Imperial State Exceptionalisms	p. 47
Bodies of Knowledge: The Exchange of Intellectuals and Intellectual Exchange between Scotland and America in the Post-Revolutionary Period	p. 84
Ralph Ellison and the Grain of Internationalism	p. 115
Cold War, Hot Kitchen: Alice Childress, Natalya Baranskaya, and the Speakin' Place of Cold War Womanhood	p. 135
Circulating Empires: Colonial Authority and the Immoral, Subversive Problem of American Film	p. 155
Scarlett O'Hara in Damascus: Hollywood, Colonial Politics, and Arab Spectatorship during World War II	p. 184
Chronotopes of a Dystopic Nation: Cultures of Dependency and Border Crossings in Late Porfirian Mexico	p. 209
Transpacific Complicity and Comparatist Strategy: Failure in Decolonization and the Rise of Japanese Nationalism	p. 240
War in Several Tongues: Nations, Languages, Genres	p. 269
Neo-Orientalism	p. 283
American Studies in Motion: Tehran, Hyderabad, Cairo	p. 300
List of Contributors	p. 323
Index	p. 327
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