States of emergency : the object of American studies / edited by Russ Castronovo and Susan Gillman.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Castronovo, Russ, 1965-

Gillman, Susan Kay.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

United States--Civilization.

United States.

Civilization.

United States--Study and teaching.

Physical Description:

203 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, [2009]

Summary:

The contributors to this volume argue that for too long, inclusiveness has substituted for methodology in American studies scholarship. The ten original essays collected here call for a robust comparativism that is attuned theoretically to questions of both space and time.

States of Emergency asks readers to engage in a thought experiment: imagine that you have an object you want to study. Which methodologies will contextualize and explain your selection? What political goals are embedded in your inquiry? This thought experiment is taken up by contributors who consider an array of objects — the weather, cigarettes, archival material, AIDS, the enemy, extinct species, and torture. The essayists recalibrate the metrics of time and space usually used to measure these questions. In the process, each contributes to a project that redefines the object of American studies, reading its history as well as its future across, against, even outside the established grain of interdisciplinary practice.

The contributors are Srinivas Aravamudan, Ian Baucom, Chris Castiglia, Russ Castronovo, Wai Chee Dimock, Nan Enstad, Susan Gillman, Rodrigo Lazo, Robert S. Levine, Anne Mc Clintock, and Kenneth Warren.

Contents:

Introduction: The study of the American problems / Russ Castronovo & Susan Gillman

Rogue states and emergent disciplines / Srinivas Aravamudan

Migrant archives : new routes in and out of American studies / Rodrigo Lazo

Toxicity and the consuming subject / Nan Enstad

Past burning : the (post-)traumatic memories of (post-)queer theory / Christopher Castiglia

Paranoid empire : specters from Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib / Anne McClintock

Taking the measure of the black Atlantic / Kenneth W. Warren

Cicero's ghost : the Atlantic, the enemy, and the laws of war / Ian Baucom

World history according to Katrina / Wai Chee Dimock

American studies in an age of extinction / Robert S. Levine.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780807833407

0807833401

9780807859858

0807859850

OCLC:

317929524