Cultures of United States Imperialism represents a major paradigm shift that will remap the field of American Studies. Pointing to a glaring blind spot in the basic premises of the study of American culture, leading critics and theorists in cultural studies, history, anthropology, and literature reveal the "denial of empire" at the heart of American Studies. Challenging traditional definitions and periodizations of imperialism, this volume shows how international relations reciprocally shape a dominant imperial culture at home and how imperial relations are enacted and contested within the United States.
Drawing on a broad range of interpretive practices, these essays range across American history, from European representations of the New World to the mass media spectacle of the Persian Gulf War. The volume breaks down the boundary between the study of foreign relations and American culture to examine imperialism as an internal process of cultural appropriation and as an external struggle over international power. The contributors explore how the politics of continental and international expansion, conquest, and resistance have shaped the history of American culture just as much as the cultures of those it has dominated. By uncovering the dialectical relationship between American cultures and international relations, this collection demonstrates the necessity of analyzing imperialism as a political or economic process inseparable from the social relations and cultural representations of gender, race, ethnicity, and class at home.

Contributors. Lynda Boose, Mary Yoko Brannen, Bill Brown, William Cain, Eric Cheyfitz, Vicente Diaz, Frederick Errington, Kevin Gaines, Deborah Gewertz, Donna Haraway, Susan Jeffords, Myra Jehlen, Amy Kaplan, Eric Lott, Walter Benn Michaels, Donald E. Pease, Vicente Rafael, Michael Rogin, Jose David Saldivar, Richard Slotkin, Doris Sommer, Gauri Viswanathan, Priscilla Wald, Kenneth Warren, Christopher P. Wilson

About the Author

Amy Kaplan is Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania.

Donald E. Pease is Avalon Foundation Chair of the Humanities and Professor of English, Dartmouth College.

Reviews
"A superb collection of essays that presents a unique model for a Post-American cultural studies. As a whole, the volume argues persuasively for the centrality of culture in the study of imperialist politics and the defining significance of imperialism in U.S. cultural formations."-Steven Mailloux, University of California, Irvine
"This collection is well positioned to intervene in the most important scholarly debates of our time."-George Lipsitz, University of California, San Diego



Book Information
ISBN 9780822314134
Author Amy Kaplan
Format Paperback
Page Count 680
Imprint Duke University Press
Publisher Duke University Press
Weight(grams) 939g