Post-Nationalist American Studies Research Articles

Maintaining Ideology through Racial Distinction during the 1930s America in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man

Racial issues in 1930s America illustrate the high racial tension between Whites and African-Americans due to the series of mass racial violence. Despite the rapid industrialization, African-Americans, in this period, struggled to find their equal place in society. Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man depicts the social conditions of African-American workers’ socio-economic backwardness in the 1930s. This novel is set during the post-reconstruction era of America, where Jim Crow laws were instituted. Therefore, the analysis of racial distinction in this novel is conducted using Post-Nationalist American Studies and Marxism approach. Therefore, this qualitative research utilizes Althusser’s theories: of Ideology and Ideological State Apparatus (ISA). The findings show how White ideology is depicted and maintained: (1) the depiction of Ideology can be seen through the class distinction and racial dependency in which African-Americans are created to be inferior and submissive to White people. Then, (2) the maintenance of ideology relies on Althusser’s concept of Ideological State Apparatuses, such as religious, family, education, legal, politic, trade union, communication, and cultural institutions, function as an adjunct of the state that perpetuates and preserves White-centered values. Thus, the racially segregated society essentially only supports the needs of White capitalists as the ruling class.

The influence of systemic racism on quarter-life crisis in The Autobiography of Malcolm X (as told to Alex Haley)

This paper aims to analyze the influence of systemic racism on quarter-life crisis, experienced by Malcolm X, as seen in The Autobiography of Malcolm X (As Told to Alex Haley). Its emphasis is to find the relation between racial segregation in American society and its influence on quarter-life crisis, which is a psychological crisis of uncertainty, self-insecurity and identity confusion, occurs during emerging adulthood. Therefore, by applying a qualitative method, this research is under Post-Nationalist American Studies and psychosocial approach as an integrated paradigm which accommodates the inter-disciplinary aspects of �self and society�. The analysis showed that racial segregation, in the field of education and job occupation, is a form of systemic racism which influences Malcolm X�s mental wellness as an emerging adult African-American. He experiences Robinson�s phases of quarter-life crisis which are locked in, separation/time-out, exploration and rebuilding. In fact, racial segregation in this narrative works as �a function of blocked opportunities� which disallows young African-Americans to develop their own competencies and to achieve their �American Dream�. However, in the development of his quarter-life crisis, Malcolm X managed to rebuild his new long-term commitment contributing to the reconstruction of his adult identity as an African-American Muslim activist.

DIFFERENT TYPES OF STEREOTYPE TOWARD LGBT AS MINORITY ON AMERICAN ONLINE NEWS

This research discusses the stereotypes of LGBT in the United States, which appear on American online news. This research works under Post-Nationalist American Studies by applying the gender socialization approach and stereotype theory. Qualitative research aims to seek the differences of stereotypes experienced by LGBT in the United States. The online news portals selected include The New York Times, Washington Post, and USA Today. These news portals are chosen due to their neutrality and trustworthiness as online news portals for American society. By examining the data, the researcher found that the stereotypes experienced by Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender in the United States are different from one another. The findings and discussion show that Transgender stereotypes in the United States are more negative rather than others. In short, LGBT is mostly considered as a unity; however, it faces different challenges due to their minority status in the middle of American society.

ARTICULATING THE MARGINALIZED VOICES: SYMBOLISM IN AFRICAN AMERICAN, HISPANIC, AND ASIAN AMERICAN LITERATURE

The present study contextualizes how symbolism is employed by writers of ethnically minority in the United States as an avenue of their agency and criticism against the dominant white perspective. The history of American minorities is marred with legacy of racial discrimination and segregation which highlights the inequality of race. Literature as a cultural production captures the experiences of the marginalized and the use of symbolism is intended to transform themes into the field of aesthetics. This study is a qualitative research which is conducted through the post-nationalist American Studies framework in order to focus on the minorities’ experience instead of the Anglo-Saxon outlook. The object of the study is three playscripts written from authors from Mexican-American, African-American and Asian-American to emphasize how discrimination is faced by multi-ethnic. The finding suggests how symbolism in these literary works intends to counter the stereotypical representation of Mexican-American, aligns with the passive resistance of the Civil Right Movement and subvert binary opposition of East and West which exoticizing the East. Keywords : minority literature in the U.S , symbolism, post-national

The Influence of Systemic Racism on Quarter-Life Crisis in The Autobiography of Malcolm X (As Told to Alex Haley)

This paper aims to analyze the influence of systemic racism on quarter-life crisis, experienced by Malcolm X, as seen in The Autobiography of Malcolm X (As Told to Alex Haley). Its emphasis is to find the relation between racial segregation in American society and its influence on quarter-life crisis, which is a psychological crisis of uncertainty, self-insecurity and identity confusion, occurs during emerging adulthood. Therefore, by applying a qualitative method, this research is under Post-Nationalist American Studies and psychosocial approach as an integrated paradigm which accommodates the inter-disciplinary aspects of “self and society”. The analysis showed that racial segregation, in the field of education and job occupation, is a form of systemic racism which influences Malcolm X’s mental wellness as an emerging adult African-American. He experiences Robinson’s phases of quarter-life crisis which are locked in, separation/time-out, exploration and rebuilding. In fact, racial segregation in this narrative works as “a function of blocked opportunities” which disallows young African-Americans to develop their own competencies and to achieve their “American Dream’. However, in the development of his quarter-life crisis, Malcolm X managed to rebuild his new long-term commitment contributing to the reconstruction of his adult identity as an African-American Muslim activist.

NEGOTIATION OF IDENTITY IN DIASPORIC LITERATURE: A CASE STUDY ON AMY TAN’S THE HUNDRED SECRET SENSES AND LESLIE MARMON SILKO’S CEREMONY

Negotiation of identity has become an important issue because its never-ending process always relates to conflicts, differences and similarities. Chinese Americans and Native Americans are two distinct diasporic communities amongst other ethnic group in the U.S. As minorities, they experience prejudice, discrimination and exclusion from mainstream American culture and society. This research aims to reveal the negotiation of identity of Chinese Americans and Native Americans which is reflected on their literature. Literature is seen as the record of diasporic experience of both ethnic groups. This research is qualitative conducted under Post-Nationalist American Studies. Post-colonial, hegemony and representation theories are used to help the process of data analysis. The primary data is taken from The Hundred Secret Senses written by Amy Tan and Ceremony written by Leslie Marmon Silko. The secondary data are taken from books, journals, and internet sources. The finding of the research shows that Chinese Americans and Native Americans negotiate their identity by choosing or combining competing values. The construction of identity is done through the reenactment of ethnic root and the adaptation to mainstream American cultural values. Sense of belongingness, history and socio-cultural background become the determining factors of identity negotiation. In brief, they construct hybrid identity to survive and to counter American hegemony. Compared to Native Americans, Chinese Americans are more blending to mainstream American culture. However, both novels depict their hybrid identity. Keywords: identity negotiation, diasporic literature, diaspora communities, hegemony, hybrid identity

FIGHTING FOR WOMEN EXISTENCE IN POPULAR ESPIONAGE MOVIES SALT (2010) AND ZERO DARK THIRTY (2012)

American spy movies have been considered one of the most profitable genre in Hollywood. These spy movies frequently create an assumption that this genre is exclusively masculine, as women have been made oblivious and restricted to either supporting roles or non-spy roles. In 2010 and 2012, portrayal of women in spy movies was finally changed after the release of Salt and Zero Dark Thirty, in which women became the leading spy protagonists. Through the post-nationalist American Studies perspective, this study discusses the importance of both movies in reinventing women’s identity representation in a masculine genre in response to the evolving American society. Keywords: American women, hegemony, representation, Hollywood, movies, popular culture

Nation and Empire in the Early US

The recent decline of American exceptionalism has coincided with a critical reassessment of the fundamental ideas and forces that shaped the culture and politics of the US in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Whereas the idea of the nation, with its investment in the creation of a distinctly American identity and culture, organized the exceptionalist project, the role of empire, particularly in the guise of colonialism, has become the new focal point of a postor even anti-exceptionalist reinterpretation of the history and culture of the early US. In the case of scholarship grounded in the eighteenth century, the old story of a gradual but inexorable movement of the colonies away from Great Britain that culminates in the Revolution has been replaced with a narrative of Anglicization that essentially inverts the exceptionalist story. According to the Anglicization thesis, as the colonies developed economically and culturally over the course of the eighteenth century and became more entangled in Britain’s commercial empire, they also grew increasingly similar to the imperial metropolis. In the nineteenth century, on the other hand, the exceptionalist insistence that the US was fundamentally anti-imperial has given way to a new “postnationalist” understanding of the racial politics and territorial goals of the US that situates its imperial ambitions at the center of the story. It would seem logical therefore that we ought to be able to construct a longer term narrative that flows smoothly from the Anglicization thesis’s account of the colonies’ relationship to the British Empire in the eighteenth century to the postnationalist American studies’ vision of the US as an incipient imperial power in the nineteenth century. Yet we cannot, because both Anglicization and postnationalist American studies cast the Revolution as a national moment. In essence, then, Anglicization describes a movement from empire to nation that mirrors the

Picture Revolution: Transnationalism, American Studies, and the Politics of Contemporary Native Culture

Since the 1980s, political shifts within Native America, including the transnational indigenous peoples movement, have increasingly emphasized connections among indigenous communities, illuminated the place of Native America in global imperialism, and reshaped indigenous cultural production. Indigenous transnationalism, this essay argues, carries particular weight for feminism and other contemporary anti-colonial strategies as it also draws Native studies into a closer but frequently vexed relationship with postnationalist American studies. Parallel transnational tendencies in American studies and Native American studies have heretofore worked at cross-purposes: as pan-tribal alliances draw attention to U.S. internal colonialism and its connections to global imperialism, postnationalist American studies has largely neglected the ongoing colonization of Native America. Through an analysis of Leslie Marmon Silko’s novel Almanac of the Dead and Shelley Niro’s multimedia installation “The Border,” this essay addresses this neglect by considering what happens to postnationalist American studies when you put Native studies at the center.

U.S. Women Writers and the Discourses of Colonialism, 1825-1861 (review)

Reviewed by: U.S. Women Writers and the Discourses of Colonialism, 1825-1861 Carla Mulford (bio) U.S. Women Writers and the Discourses of Colonialism, 1825-1861. By Etsuko Taketani. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2003. Pp. x, 236. Illustrations. Cloth, $30.00.) In a project directed toward students of American literary history, Etsuko Taketani has engaged the interstices among several different areas of inquiry in her study of women writers—predominantly of New England—and their writings both on and of colonialism during the early republic. As literary history, Taketani's study follows in a line of scholarship on women writers fostered primarily by Nina Baym (in Woman's Fiction: A Guide to Novels by and about Women in America, 1820–1870 [1978, 1993]; Feminism and American Literary History [1992]; and American Women Writers and the Work of History, 1790–1860 [1995]) but also by Mary Suzanne Schriber (in Writing Home: American Women Abroad, 1830–1920 [1997]) and Malini Johar Schueller (U.S. Orientalisms: Race, Nation, and Gender in Literature, 1790–1890 [1998]). As historical theoretical inquiry and postcolonial critique, the study works out a space to explore ambivalences and uncertainties regarding imperialist gestures left somewhat unexamined by scholars such as John Carlos Rowe (in Literary Culture and U.S. Imperialism: From the Revolution to World War II [2000] and Post-Nationalist American Studies [2000]), Donald E. Pease (in National Identities and Post-Americanist Narratives [1994]), and Amy Kaplan in her award-winning essay, "Manifest Domesticity," published in the journal American Literature in 1998. Taketani is attempting to articulate an extension (and evaluative critique) of Kaplan's work and work like Kaplan's, which, Taketani claims, "subsume[s] women's works in the hegemonic and patriarchal history of Manifest Destiny and expansionism" (86). Taketani's goal is to position the writers "in an 'alternative' history of U.S. imperialism," that is, "a history that attends to what happened on foreign soil as a consequence" (87) of U.S. imperialist attitudes both on and off U.S. shorelines. But Taketani wishes to remain attentive to a position about U.S. imperialism that enables her to treat it (employing the term "colonialism") as an intracontinental (in North America) and extracontinental (in Liberia, China, India, and Burma) interrogation of relations between those who considered themselves superior (North Americans of European descent) and those held in subjugated positions as a result of U.S. cultural and trade imperialism. Her primary question for the examination seems to be this: "To what extent were women writers crucial to the formation and [End Page 516] subversion of colonialism, particularly in the United States, which was without formal colonies?" (3). A related question is "How are we to understand women's complicity with colonialism, and their resistance to it, as seen in their texts?" (3). Taketani's answers—with regard to the limited number of eastern, New England-oriented women whom she can cover—are related in a complex rendering of how these writers, almost with a kind of fascination, both supported colonialism and critiqued its faulty, racialized, sexualized, and oppressive practices. Phrased differently, the writers Taketani explores at once take advantage of U.S. obsessions with children, slavery, oppression, sexuality, and drugs (alcohol and opium) by explicitly and allegorically writing about them and then, sometimes, critique the cultural, political, and marketing system that allows for exploitation of children, women, and persons whose descent lines lie outside U.S. borders. U.S. Women Writers and the Discourses of Colonialism is broken into two sections, correlated around Taketani's theme of women's establishment and critique of hierarchies "crucial to the formation of colonialism in women's literary culture." In Part 1, Taketani analyzes what she calls a "symbiotic" relationship emergent when women write for children or engage in teaching young people. Because children's education was "one of the few public institutions of power accessible to women of the day" (7), Taketani argues, women could use education both to inculcate their "belief in racial distinctions and white supremacy" (7) and to represent and, in effect, regulate heterosocial and heteronormal expectation. In Taketani's discussion, children are colonized and controlled, as the groups designed to assist them (including...

Legacy Bookshelf

Below is a selected sampling of current books, articles, and dissertations relevant to the study of American women writers from the seventeenth through the early twentieth centuries. Prices unless otherwise indicated are for hardcover editions. Individual Authors Alcott, Louisa May Laffrado, Laura. "'How Could You Leave Me Alone When the Room Was Full of Men?': Gender and Self-Representation in Louisa May Alcott's Hospital Sketches. ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance 48 (2002): 71-95. Barnes, Djuna Veltman, Laura J. "'The Bible Lies the One Way, but the Night-Gown the Other': Dr. Matthew OConnor, Confession, and Gender in Djuna Barnes's Nightwood." Modern Fiction Studies 49 (2003): 204-27. Bethune, Mary McLeod Hanson, Joyce A. Mary McLeod Bethune and Black Women's Political Activism. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 2003. 256 pp. $32.50. Bristow, Gwen Lewis, Nghana. "She'll Take Her Stand: Gwen Bristow's Neo-Agrarianism and Visions of Modernity." Mississippi Quarterly 56 (2002-3): 77-104. Cather, Willa Chaput, Catherine. "Democracy, Capitalism, and the Ambivalence of Willa Cather's Frontier Rhetorics: Uncertain Foundations of the U.S. Public University System." College English 66 (2004): 310-34. Child, Lydia Maria Nerad, Julie Cary. "Slippery Language and False Dilemmas: The Passing Novels of Child, Howells, and Harper." American Literature 75 (2003): 813-41. Chopin, Kate Stein, Allen. "The Kaleidoscope of Truth: A New Look at Chopin's 'The Storm.'" American Literary Realism 36 (2003): 51-64. Dargan, Olive Tilford Ackerman, Kathy Cantley. The Heart of Revolution: The Radical Life and Novels of Olive Dargan. Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 2004. 232 pp. $29.95. Davis, Rebecca Harding Miller, Jeffrey W. "'A Desolate, Shabby Home': [End Page 259] Rebecca Harding Davis, Margret Howth, and Domestic Ideology." ATQ 17 (2003): 259-78. Dickinson, Emily Heginbotham, Eleanor Elson. Reading the Fascicles of Emily Dickinson: Dwelling in Possibilities. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2003. 300 pp. $47.95 /$9.95 CD. McCromack, Jerusha Hull. "Domesticating Delphi: Emily Dickinson and the Electro-Magnetic Telegraph." American Quarterly 55 (2003): 569-601. Pollak, Viviam R., ed. A Historical Guide to Emily Dickinson. New York: Oxford UP, 2004. 240 pp. $50.00 /$19.95 paper. Doolittle, Hilda Friedman, Susan Stanford, ed. Analyzing Freud: Letters of H. D., Bryher, and Their Circle. New York: New Directions, 2002. 615 pp. $39.95. Dye, Eva Emery Browne, Sheri Bartlett. Eva Emery Dye: Romance with the West. Corvallis: Oregon State UP, 2004. 192 pp. $24.95 paper. Frankenstein, Irma Rosenthal Steinberg, Ellen FitzSimmons. Irma: A Chicago Woman's Story, 1871-1966. Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 2004. 252 pp. $49.95 /$19.95 paper. Gilman, Charlotte Perkins Knight, Denise D. "'Only a Husband's Opinion': Walter Stetson's View of Gilman's 'The Yellow Wall-Paper'—An Inscription." American Literary Realism 36 (2003): 86-87. Van Wienen, Mark W. "A Rose by Any Other Name: Charlotte Perkins Stetson (Gilman) and the Case for American Reform Socialism." American Quarterly 55 (2003): 603-34. Harper, Frances See Nerad on Child. Hopkins, Pauline Knadler, Stephen. "Traumatized Racial Performativity: Passing in Nineteenth-Century African-American Testimonies." Cultural Critique 55 (2003): 63-100. Hurston, Zora Neale Croft, Robert W. A Zora Neale Hurston Companion. Westport: Greenwood P, 2002. 256 pp. $74.95. Rieger, Christopher. "The Working-Class Pastoral of Zora Neale Hurston's Seraph on the Suwanee." Mississippi Quarterly 56 (2002-3): 105-24. Jackson, Helen Hunt Irwin, Robert McKee. "Ramona and Postnationalist American Studies: On 'Our America' and the Mexican Borderlands." American Quarterly 55 (2003): 539-67. Jacobs, Harriet King, Lovalerie. "Counter-Discourses on the Racialization of Theft and Ethics in Douglass's Narrative and Jacobs's Incidents." MELUS 28.4 (2003): 55-82. Taylor, Douglas. "From Slavery to Prison: Benjamin Rush, Harriet Jacobs, and the Ideology of Reformative Incarceration." Genre 35 (2002): 429-47. Larsen, Nella Harrison-Kahan, Lori. "Her 'Nig': Returning the Gaze of Nella Larsen's Passing." Modern Language Studies 32.2 (2002): 109-38. Lee, Mary Greenhow Phipps, Sheila R. Genteel Rebel: The Life of Mary Greenhow Lee. Baton Rouge...

Ramona and Postnationalist American Studies: On 'Our America' and the Mexican Borderlands

The recent rediscovery of Helen Hunt Jackson's Ramona (1884) by scholars of US-Mexico border studies has provided interesting insights into intercultural relations in the late nineteenth-century U.S. Southwest. However, Jackson's idealization of race relations in mixed-race Mexico, echoed by none other than Jos� Marti in his 1887 Spanish translation of the novel, reflects what has lately become a commonplace in contemporary border studies: a blindness to Mexico's northern borderlands. In the late nineteenth century, the northern Mexican borderlands were, in fact, the scene of racial conflicts involving local indigenous groups, which were as violent as those on the US side of the border. In the spirit of the "new American studies," this paper argues for an expansion of border studies beyond the context of the Chicano Southwest into the "other borderlands" of northern Mexico, and for a move toward truly bilingual and postnationalist American studies scholarship that positions the United States more meaningfully within the context of the Americas.

Dis(re)membered Bodies: Cormac McCarthy's Border Fiction

Cormac McCarthy's novels are usually seen as belonging to one of two longstanding regionalist literary traditions, Southern Gothic or the Western. This essay considers McCarthy's border fiction instead as part of an emergent borderlands discourse that is at once bilingual, multicultural, and revisionist. Blood Meridian and All the Pretty Horses represent key moments in the history of the Southwest region in which they are set; both novels in effect remember the dis(re)membered bodies lost in the violent struggle over territory. McCarthy's border fiction challenges provincial models of US literary history and ought to be reconsidered within postnationalist American studies.

The Worlding of American Studies

Literary Culture and U.S. Imperialism: From the Revolution to World War II. By John Carlos Rowe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. 368 pages. $19.95 (cloth). Post-Nationalist American Studies. Edited by John Carlos Rowe. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2000. 280 pages. $17.95 (cloth). Postcolonial Theory and the United States: Race, Ethnicity, and Literature. Edited by Amerjit Singh and Peter Schmidt. Jackson, Miss.: University of Mississippi Press, 2000. 400 pages. $26.00 (cloth). Surveying the legacy of U.S. foreign policy at the height of the Cold War, Henry Nash Smith found a contradictory mixture of isolationism and imperial ambitions. As the nation extended its borders westward, its economic and political programs were buttressed by a symbolic constellation that he called "the myth of the garden." The requisite utopianism surrounding the garden of America gave rise to a dangerous xenophobia, a belief that "other men [sic] and other continents, having no share in the conditions of American virtue and happiness were by implication unfortunate or wicked" (187). Instead of looking east to see themselves as "members of a world community," Americans had been excessively oriented towards continental expansion as the means to fulfilling the promise of Manifest Destiny. 1 Fifty years later, the muted critique of isolationism advanced by Virgin Land has become one of the central concerns for scholars [End Page 720] working in American studies, which has turned increasingly towards comparative, multicultural, and transnational perspectives as a way of combating the field's more traditional focus on a homogenous national culture. 2 However, in place of the transatlantic community Smith saw as the antidote to national insularity, contemporary critics are faced with a dizzying network of geopolitical relations that make oppositions between us and them, inside and outside, far more complicated than they appeared in the middle of the twentieth century. Although the shifting contours of this scholarship may be attributed partly to historical changes that make the world of 2001 a very different place than it was for critics of the 1950s, they are also in large part due to the influence of postcolonial theory and work in U.S. ethnic studies that assumes a transnational rather than a nation-based frame of analysis. As a result of these developments, some of the most interesting recent work in the field engages the critical juncture between American studies and postcolonial theory, comparative literature, and the study of globalization. This engagement has already begun to transform established methods and curricula. Three books published in 2000--Literary Culture and U.S. Imperialism: From the Revolution to World War II by John Carlos Rowe, Post-Nationalist American Studies edited by John Carlos Rowe, and Postcolonial Theory and the United States: Race, Ethnicity, and Literature edited by Amerjit Singh and Peter Schmidt--model a variety of approaches to an American studies that is more attentive to its position in the complex global environment of the new millennium. Together they show the potential of transnational perspectives to invigorate the field; however, they also reveal that American studies still has something to learn from its relatively new partnerships. John Carlos Rowe's Literary Culture and U.S. Imperialism joins a growing body of research on the subject of the North American empire. In its concern with the impact of foreign policy on domestic affairs, this scholarship expands on previous studies devoted to the problem of internal colonization by critics such as Robert Berkhofer, Richard Drinnon, Annette Kolodny, Arnold Krupat, Patricia Nelson Limerick, Michael Rogin, Richard Slotkin, and Ronald Takaki. 3 The interrelationship between the national and the international is one of the fundamental premises of Rowe's study, which proposes that the literary culture of the United States has been profoundly shaped by an imperialist ideology that has fueled the nation's foreign policy virtually [End Page 721] from its inception. Economic, political, and military expansionism went hand in hand with the rise of the nation state, making empire a constitutive feature of global modernity. Discounting the notion of...

Post-Nationalist American Studies (review)

250 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies sion. Summerhill and Williams argue in Chapter 7, theit "Conclusion," that the events and nonevents of 1992 mark a paradigmatic shift, "our postmodern shift from personality to process" (193) and, further, drat " [p] rocessual hisrory is a history without heroes—orvillains." (194) Thus: Columbus praising or bashing is [...] vestigial. It is left ovet from the days of seeing history as a record of human purposes, as a kind of socieral balance sheet for toting up credir and blame. (194) No tehs, no credit, no blame. Very well, but this is history in the porno funhouse—no consequences . And in history, as the authors readily acknowledge, there are always life and death consequences . The idea of the century as a period, a discrete unit of historical existence and knowledge, is a fairly recent one. Its general acceptance as an aid to writing "civil history," that is, the sort of history that was written not in the service of throne or altar but from the perspective of civil society, dates from the Enlightenment. Consequently, mere was no bearing of drums or clashing of cymbals on the first or second centennial of Columbus's initial voyage. In Spain, the centenary was noted in 1792, and, as the authors poinr out, it was given some real attention in the fledgling United States because Columbus furnished us with a "national origin myth that stressed America's separateness from Europe and the expansive future that seemed open to the 'new and rising empire' of the United States"(9), but the first major celebrations came one hundred years later, with the Exposition of 1892 in Madrid and the Chicago Worlds Fair of 1992-93. Chicago was a muscular trumpeting of Ametica's manifest destiny. Madrid celebrared Spain's "civilizing mission," which was prodaimed with the triumphalistic language that simultaneously belied and inflated Spain's role as a bit playet in the drama of imperialism that characterized the roughly forty years prior to the Great War. In 1992, the language was considerably softened . Spain's politicians (and they were nor alone) bloviated about cultural encounters rather than discovery and its impetial sequel, the serious work of civilizing the savages, converring the heathen and generating capital. All in all, there was probably less mendacity and bad faith in Cánovas's and Sagasta's day than in Felipe Gonzalez's, and the book should have made a sustained comparison of the two commemorations, as it did quite revealingly for the U.S. But that is a quibble. Sinking Columbus invites us to rethink these events and their historical meanings, and it does so knowledgeably and on occasion charmingly—the pages (28seq) on special events schlockmeisters are worth the ptice of admission—making fot both an interesting piece of scholarship and a genuinely engaging read. Edward Baker edbaker@euroseek.com Post-Nationalist American Studies University of California Press, 2000 Editado por John Carlos Rowe Este libro consta de vatios ensayos que se escribieron entre 1996 y 1997. En realidad esta colección es un producto de un "grupo de investigaci ón residente" (residential research group) que comenzó en 1996 en la Universidad de California en Irvine. La meta de este grupo era desarrollar un programa de análisis nuevo en el campo de los estudios americanos. Los miembros de este conjunto usaban el tétmino "post-nacionalista" pata describir su punto de vista y su plan de estudios. Para facilitar este proyecto, cada capÃ-tulo se dedica a un tema único e incluye un Ã-ndice de clase. Estos esquemas se proporcionan para que las ideas presenradas puedan ser aplicadas a la pedagogÃ-a. No obstante el término post-nacionalista no puede ser definido fácilmente. Lo que estos escritores tienen en mente es una imagen nueva del mundo que no tenga ya su centro en los Estados Unidos. Su punto clave es que el resto del mundo no deberÃ-a vivir a la sombra de este paÃ-s. Este concepto es semejante al que adelantaban los defensores de Afrocentrismo. Lo más importante es la decentralización del poder económico y polÃ-tico, y Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies 251...