The discipline of American studies was established in the early days of World War II and drew on the myth of American exceptionalism. But 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 with Globalizing 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 film Gone with the Wind in the Arab world, the parallels between Japanese and American styles of nativism, and new incarnations of American studies itself in the Middle East, to name a few. 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 Studies is a timely response to an important disciplinary shift in academia.
Acknowledgments |
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vii | |
Introduction: Globalizing American Studies |
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1 | (46) |
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Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar |
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One American Studies after American Exceptionalism? Toward a Comparative Anlaysis of Imperial State Exceptionalisms |
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47 | (37) |
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Two Bodies of Knowledge: The Exchange of Intellectuals and Intellectual Exchange between Scotland and America in the Post-Revolutionary Period |
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84 | (31) |
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Three Ralph Ellison and the Grain of Internationalism |
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115 | (20) |
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Four Cold War, Hot Kitchen: Alice Childress, Natalya Baranskaya, and the Speakin' Place of Cold War Womanhood |
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135 | (20) |
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Five Circulating Empires: Colonial Authority and the Immoral, Subversive Problem of American Film |
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155 | (29) |
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Six Scarlett O'Hara in Damascus: Hollywood, Colonial Politics, and Arab Spectatorship during World War II |
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184 | (25) |
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Seven Chronotopes of a Dystopic Nation: Cultures of Dependency and Broder Crossings in Late Porfirian Mexico |
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209 | (31) |
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Eight Transpacific Complicity and Comparatist Strategy: Failure in Decolonization and the Rise of Japanese Nationalism |
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240 | (29) |
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Nine War in Several Tongues: Nations, Languages, Genres |
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269 | (14) |
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283 | (17) |
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Eleven American Studies in Motion: Tehran, Hyderabad, Cairo |
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300 | (23) |
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List of Contributors |
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323 | (4) |
Index |
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327 | |
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.