Re-Framing the Transnational Turn in American Studies

Product Description
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 "transnational turn" in American studies.

This development has brought about the most significant re-imagining of the field since its inception. The "transnational" 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.
Review
"Fluck, Pease, and Rowe have assembled formidable essays by German and American scholars who grapple with the changing and contested meaning of America in the world. . . . A book for theorists and practitioners in the field of American studies. . . . Recommended."--Choice

"Re-Framing the Transnational Turn in American Studies . . . is in many ways an attempt to redress some of the inequalities of power within the field conditioned by its Cold War origins. The pluralistic approach . . . suggests that a critical formation that in its most strident moments . . . is not immune to serious critique from within. The collection's editors are willing to represent a spectrum of dialogue containing arguments that, pursued in more depth, could undermine much of the rationale behind a transnational turn in the first place. Re-Framing the Transnational Turn could be said to be as self-critical toward anti-exceptionalism as anti-exceptionalist scholarship itself is to the foundations of American Studies."--American Quarterly

Choice"

American Quarterly"

American Literary History"

Fluck, Pease, and Rowe have assembled formidable essays by German and American scholars who grapple with the changing and contested meaning of America in the world. . . . A book for theorists and practitioners in the field of American studies. . . . Recommended. "Choice""

Re-Framing the Transnational Turn in American Studies . . . is in many ways an attempt to redress some of the inequalities of power within the field conditioned by its Cold War origins. The pluralistic approach . . . suggests that a critical formation that in its most strident moments . . . is not immune to serious critique from within. The collection s editors are willing to represent a spectrum of dialogue containing arguments that, pursued in more depth, could undermine much of the rationale behind a transnational turn in the first place. Re-Framing the Transnational Turn could be said to be as self-critical toward anti-exceptionalism as anti-exceptionalist scholarship itself is to the foundations of American Studies. "American Quarterly""

"Re-Framing the Transnational Turn provides arguably the most trenchant and comprehensive critical account of American exceptionalism and transnationalism to date. Pease s introduction is an absolute a tour de force, elucidating the broad sweeps that have marked our field since its formation and punctuated critical innovation over the last decades. "American Literary History""
Review
“The scholarship in this volume is at the leading edge of the field, impeccably done, and comprehensive and detailed. With essays from leading American and European critics, the representative contributions here set up the new paradigm in American studies, so scholarship in the field will henceforth not be handed down from a few elite American universities but will be coming from all d