A Concise Companion to American Studies: (Blackwell Companions in Cultural Studies)

A Companion to American Studies is an essential volume that brings together voices and scholarship from across the spectrum of American experience. A collection of 22 original essays which provides an unprecedented introduction to the "new" American Studies: a comparative, transnational, postcolonial and polylingual discipline Addresses a variety of subjects, from foundations and backgrounds to the field, to different theories of the “new” American Studies, and issues from globalization and technology to transnationalism and post-colonialism Explores the relationship between American Studies and allied fields such as Ethnic Studies, Feminist, Queer and Latin American Studies Designed to provoke discussion and help students and scholars at all levels develop their own approaches to contemporary American Studies

Table of Contents:
List of Contributors x Acknowledgments xvi Introduction 1 John Carlos Rowe Part I Foundations and Backgrounds 17 1. Puritan Origins 19 Philip F. Gura 2. Cultural Anthropology and the Routes of American Studies, 1851–1942 36 Michael A. Elliott 3. The Laboring of American Culture 59 Michael Denning 4. Is Class an American Study? 74 Paul Lauter 5. Religious Studies 92 Jay Mechling 6. American Languages 124 Joshua L. Miller Part II Ethnic Studies and American Studies 151 7. Blood Lines and Blood Shed: Intersectionality and Differential Consciousness in Ethnic Studies and American Studies 153 George Lipsitz 8. Native American Studies 172 John Gamber 9. The Locations of Chicano/a and Latino/a Studies 190 Richard T. Rodríguez 10. African American Studies 210 Jared Sexton 11. Reckoning Nation and Empire: Asian American Critique 229 Lisa Lowe Part III The New American Studies 245 12. Western Hemispheric Drama and Performance 247 Harilaos Stecopoulos 13. Postnational and Postcolonial Reconfigurations of American Studies in the Postmodern Condition 263 Donald Pease 14. Culture, US Imperialism, and Globalization 284 John Carlos Rowe 15. Sugar, Sex, and Empire: Sarah Orne Jewett’s “The Foreigner” and the Spanish-American War 303 Rebecca Walsh 16. The Rapprochement of Technology Studies and American Studies 320 David E. Nye 17. The World Wide Web and Digital Culture: New Borders, New Media, New American Studies 334 Matthias Oppermann Part IV Problems and Issues 351 18. Regionalism 353 Kevin R. McNamara 19. The West and Manifest Destiny 369 Deborah L. Madsen 20. Canadian Studies and American Studies 387 Alyssa MacLean 21. The US University under Siege: Confronting Academic Unfreedom 407 Henry A. Giroux 22. Popular, Mass, and High Culture 432 Shelley Streeby Index 453

About the Author :
John Carlos Rowe is USC Associates’ Professor of the Humanities and Chair of the Department of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. He has written and edited many books, including The Vietnam War and American Culture (1991), Post-Nationalist American Studies (2000), Literary Culture and U.S. Imperialism: From the Revolution to World War II (2000), and The New American Studies (2002).