De-Centering-American-Studies
De-Centering American Studies: Understanding the United States in a Global FrameThe Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, Qatar, January 8-10, 2018From its decidedly patriotic founding, American Studies has come to be one of the most radical branches of the American academy and serves as the platform for a wide variety of potent critiques of US domestic policies and role in global affairs. In its pursuit of understanding the “national character,” this enfant terrible has productively exposed many destructive “–isms” at the core of the American experiment. That said, the changing political circumstances of the United States and imbrications of power and epistemology have always constrained American Studies, such that the recent turn to the Right across the world surprised many of even the most cynical thinkers.This conference aims to turn the field of American Studies upside down and consider what we might gain from global analysis, above and beyond the “transnational turn.” Assaying a global ambit of analysis acknowledges the interconnectedness of global developments in political economy but also provides the means to extend and deepen critique of the myth of American exceptionalism. Putting scholars from across the globe in conversation will allow us to better understand the United States by examining it from the outside – from abroad, but not from afar – enabling critical consideration of where and what is America.Presentations and discussions will help internationalize the study of America in order to trace American events as variants of global developments through themes related but not limited to the following:· ?????Migration, race, class, and gender in producing meaning and divisions across national boundaries.· ?????The endurance rather than dissolution of forms of slavery resulting from late capitalism.· ?????The racialization of Islam within a continuum of imperialism and fight for civil rights and liberation.· ?????The heterogeneity of dissenters mobilized by internationalized “threat” and claims to space.· ?????How cultural texts like film, new media, fiction, or comics transform the public sphere and imagined community to enable or inhibit social change.· ?????How Arabs, Americans and other groups construct national and transnational identities in light of local, regional, and global bio- and geo-politics.· ?????New possibilities for digital humanities projects and the changing role of the scholar in relation to these projects.By examining these connections in meaningful ways, these presentations will help consider what it is to do “American Studies” and the degree to which the United States in a global context is “variable” rather than “exceptional.” Presentations will later be revised to be included in an edited volume slated for late 2018. ................
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