Re-framing the transnational turn in American studies

Abstract

This volume is the outcome of a transatlantic conversation on the topic Transnational America, in which more than sixty scholars from universities in the United States and Germany gathered to assess the historical significance of and examine the academic prospects for the turn in American studies. This development has brought about the most significant re-imagining of the field since its inception. Thetransnational has subsumed competing spatial and temporal orientations to the subject and has dismantled the foundational tenets and premises informing the methodology, periodization, pedagogy, and geographical locations of U.S. American studies, but transnational American studies scholars have not yet provided a coherent portrait of their field. This volume constitutes an effort to produce this needed portrait. The editors have gathered work from a host of senior and up-and-coming Americanists to compile a field-defining project that will influence both scholars and students of American studies for many years to come.