The Futures of American Studies

by Donald E. Pease (Editor), Robyn Wiegman (Editor)

Originating as a proponent of U.S. exceptionalism during the Cold War, American Studies has now reinvented itself, vigorously critiquing various kinds of critical hegemony and launching innovative interdisciplinary endeavors. The Futures of American Studies considers the field today and provides important deliberations on what it might yet become. Essays by both prominent and emerging scholars provide theoretically engaging analyses of the postnational impulse of current scholarship, the field's historical relationship to social movements, the status of theory, the state of higher education in the United States, and the impact of ethnic and gender studies on area studies. They also investigate the influence of poststructuralism, postcolonial studies, sexuality studies, and cultural studies on U.S. nationalist—and antinationalist—discourses. No single overriding paradigm dominates the anthology. Instead, the articles enter into a lively and challenging dialogue with one another. A major assessment of the state of the field, The Futures of American Studies is necessary reading for American Studies scholars. Contributors. Lindon Barrett, Nancy Bentley, Gillian Brown, Russ Castronovo, Eric Cheyfitz, Michael Denning, Winfried Fluck, Carl Gutierrez-Jones, Dana Heller, Amy Kaplan, Paul Lauter, Günter H. Lenz, George Lipsitz, Lisa Lowe, Walter Benn Michaels, José Estaban Muñoz, Dana D. Nelson, Ricardo L. Ortiz, Janice Radway, John Carlos Rowe, William V. Spanos

632 pages, Paperback

First published September 30, 2002

About the author

Donald E. Pease is the Ted and Helen Geisel Third Century Professor in the Humanities, Chair of the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies Program, and Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Dartmouth College. He is an Americanist, literary and cultural critic, and academic. Pease directs the annual Futures of American Studies Institute at Dartmouth.

Pease is an authority on 19th- and 20th-century American literature and literary theory and the founder and director of the Futures of American Studies Institute. Besides writing numerous books, Pease has written over 100 articles on figures in American and British literature and is the editor of The New Americanist series.