Description
Book SynopsisA state-of-the-art portrait of the field of American studies -- its interests and methodologies, its interactions with the social and cultural movements it describes and attempts to explain, and a compendium of likely directions the field will take in the future.
Trade Review“
The Futures of American Studies shapes a farsighted and richly provocative argument about the intellectual space, time, and politics of the cultures of American studies. It's a millennial work.”—Laura Wexler, author of
Tender Violence: Domestic Visions in an Age of U.S. Imperialism“Fascinating and provocative, this collection is sure to attract wide attention as the latest collective statement of the major directions in which ‘New Americanist’ scholarship is heading.”—Lawrence Buell, author of
Writing for an Endangered World: Literature, Culture, and Environment in the U.S. and BeyondTable of ContentsAcknowledgments vii
Futures / Donald E. Pease and Robyn Wiegman 1
Posthegemonic
What’s in a Name? / Jan Radway 45
The International within the National: American Studies and Asian American Critique / Lisa Lowe 76
The Future in the Present: Sexual Avant-Gardes and the Performance of Utopia / Jose Esteban Munoz 93
Manifest Domesticity / Amy Kaplan 111
C. L. R. James,
Moby-Dick, and the Emergence of Transnational American Studies / Donald E. Pease 135
Comparativist
Postnationalism, Globalism, and the New American Studies / John Carlos Rowe 167
Salesman in Moscow / Dana Heller 183
The Humanities in the Age of Expressive Individualism and Cultural Radicalism / Winfried Fluck 211
Autobiographies of Ex-White Men: Why Race is Not a Social Construction / Walter Benn Michaels 231
Color Blindness and Acting Out / Carl Gutierrez-Jones 248
Differential
Whiteness Studies and the Paradox of Particularity / Robyn Wiegman 269
Identities and Identity Studies: Reading Toni Cade Bambara’s “The Hammer Man” / Lindon Barrett 305
Hemispheric Vertigo: Cuba, Quebec, and Other Provisional Reconfigurations of “Our” New America(s) / Ricardo L. Ortiz 327
Marriage as Treason: Polygamy, Nation, and the Novel / Nancy Bentley 341
Litigious Therapeutics: Recovering the Rights of Children / Gillian Brown 371
American Studies in the “Age of the World Picture”: Thinking the Question of Language / William V. Spanos 387
Counterhegemonic
Work and Culture in American Studies / Michael Denning 419
“Sent for You Yesterday, Here You Come Today”: American Studies Scholarship and the New Social Movements / George Lipsitz 441
Toward a Dialogics of International American Culture Studies: Transnationality, Border, Discourses, and Public Culture(s) / Gunter H. Lenz 461
American Studies, American Politics, and the Reinvention of Class / Paul Lauter 486
The End of Academia: The Future of American Studies / Eric Cheyfitz 510
Nation dot com: American Studies and the Production of the Corporatist Citizen / Russ Castronovo 536
Afterword
ConsterNation / Dana D. Nelson 559
Bibliography 581
Contributors 609
Index 613
