Westward Ho with Kholiwood

Abstract

This essay focuses on what Richard Ellis sees as three of the main overlapping trends of transnational “New American Studies.” He contemplates an intra-hemispheric approach to American Studies, a contingent hemispheric approach to American Studies, and a more recent approach attending to globalizing changes in the world order, precipitated by the necessary recognition of a new closeness between the postindustrial state and late corporate capitalism. All rethink space and spatialization, but Ellis also wants to stress the powerful omnipresence of the U.S. state, U.S. multinationals, and U.S. export culture. In order to illustrate his approach, Ellis offers a comparative, inter-hemispheric analysis of two international film co-productions, one Hollywood-style, the other Bollywood-style (Sofia Coppola’s 2003 Lost in Translation and Gurinder Chadha’s 2004 Bride and Prejudice). He ultimately argues that a new kind of approach to USAmerican Studies is necessary, stressing processes of contact, hybridity, exchange, flow, and migration.