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Journal: Review of International American Studies

Paradigms of Otherness. The American Savage in British Eighteenth-Century Popular and Scholarly Literature

Federica Perazzini

Language: EN | Published: 16-08-2020 | Abstract | pp. 235-258

In this article, I trace the changes in the literary and material representations of the indigenous peoples of North America within the British sphere of cultural production. As a first example, I will give an account of the episode of the “Four Iroquois Kings” envoy at Queen Ann’s court in 1710, focusing on the resonance of such a historical encounter in popular texts and iconographic material. As a second example, I analyze the popular story of Inkle and Yarico included in Richard Steele’s The Spectator in 1711, showing its impact on the early Enlightenment reflections on colonial trade. In my conclusion, I examine the role of American natives in the scholarly works of the Scottish Enlightenment, in order to show how they were used as comparable types for the observation of the roots of European civilizations thus justifying the construction of the British imperial hegemony both geopolitical terms and discursive practice.

2020-08-16



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Hemispheric and Transoceanic Narratives of American Travels: An Introduction

Adam Pisarek , Barbara Orzeł

Language: EN | Published: 02-06-2024 | Abstract | pp. 43-51

Hemispheric and transoceanic narratives of American travels originated amidst an almost infinite, multidirectional, transoceanic mobility of people, goods, and lifestyles. Such multiplicity, impossible to reduce to a few organizing principles, defies confinement within any single explanatory framework. To meet this challenge, therefore, we open RIAS to this abundance, taking a step toward the decolonization of the narrative(s) of hemispheric and transoceanic American travels and of thereto related research. Embracing the non-homogeneity of the plethora of the scattered, and sometimes incoherent narratives—whose functions (and functionalizations) change, and whose perspectives vary—we emphasize the polyphony of voices. To decolonize such a multifaceted discourse, in this issue of RIAS we gathered articles which decentralize the conceptualization of travel narratives as necessarily bound with the idea of representation, disentangle the intertwined perspectives from which transoceanic narratives emerge and answer again to the question what it means to travel.

2024-06-02



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Collaborative Futures: Arts Funding and Speculative Fictions

J. D. Schnepf

Language: EN | Published: 31-12-2020 | Abstract | pp. 145-157

According to scholars of literary sociology, US arts institutions—from the federal government to the writers’ colony to the creative writing program—have been central to the shaping of US literature for the better part of a century. This paper offers a preliminary investigation of the global crowdfunding platform Kickstarter as an emerging arts institution. Drawing on Kim Stanley Robinson and Marina Abramović’s artistic collaboration as a case study, the paper argues that the appearance of the Marina Abramović Institute (MAI) in Robinson’s novel New York 2140 troubles the author’s stated generic commitments to “realist speculative fiction”—fiction that bases its vision of the future on the state of things in our present. In addition to furnishing uncertain conditions of production for the novel, Kickstarter’s funding model solicits short-form speculative fiction organized around neoliberal selfhood from its artists. With the assistance of Kickstarter’s networked platform, the MAI’s capital campaign reimagined private funding as public performance art, as dutiful civic engagement, and as reward for artists willing to narrate entrepreneurial optimism.


2020-12-31



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Inner City Blues

Blues Legacies and the Roots of 1968

Alessandro Buffa

Language: EN | Published: 23-12-2019 | Abstract | pp. 129-140

In this article, I would like to propose an alternative and long view of “1968” which is grounded in black liberation movements, Afrodiasporic cultures, neighborhood-based organizations and sustained and propagated by music and sound. Venturing into this alternative history, I consider the Bronx, Harlem, and Naples, Italy as networks of resistance and nodal junctures for the transmission of Afrodiasporic cultures of opposition. Connecting the mutual influence of global social movements, music and neighborhood-based organizations, my article is also an invitation to start thinking about history through acoustic/musical resonances.

2019-12-23



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Hospitable Linguistics: Alternative, Indigenous and Critical Approaches to Language Research and Language Encounters edited by Nicholas G. Faraclas, Anna Storch, and Viveka Velupillai (A Book Review)

Monika Grotek

Language: EN | Published: 30-06-2025 | Abstract | pp. 219-224

As the author of this review argues, Hospitable Linguistics represents a radical epistemological and methodological reimagining of language research, foregrounding relational, affective, and decolonial approaches in place of traditional structuralist and extractivist paradigms. The volume reconceptualizes language not as a system to be decoded but as a site of encounter, care, and epistemic risk. Central to its ethos is the notion of “hospitability,” which the editors reframe beyond the Derridean paradox into a lived ethics of recognition, vulnerability, and co-presence—especially in contexts marked by colonial violence and epistemic erasure. Through contributions ranging from Indigenous language revitalization and Afro-Caribbean verbal gesture to sonic border-crossings, knitting as a form of storytelling, and refusal as a mode of speech, the collection expands the field’s boundaries both conceptually and methodologically. The volume prioritizes co-authorship, embodied listening, and non-verbal semiotics as acts of linguistic sovereignty, challenging institutional norms and calling for reparative and relational modes of scholarship. Eschewing synthesis in favor of polyphonic resonance, the book enacts the very hospitality it theorizes. As such, it is not merely a compendium of alternative methods but a manifesto for transforming the ethical foundations of linguistics. This analysis evaluates the volume’s structure, key innovations, and intellectual stakes, proposing that Hospitable Linguistics is indispensable for scholars committed to decolonial, plural, and justice-oriented research in language and culture.

2025-06-30



Journal: Review of International American Studies

(S)cars: Exploring America's Automotive Self

Paweł Jędrzejko

Language: EN | Published: 19-12-2021 | Abstract | pp. 5-13

The article opens with an autoethnographic account of its author's encounter with the American sense of space in the context of the clash of his own and American cultural norms related to car ownership and car use. The initial anecdotes, in which the negative experiences of the authors lack of knowledge of the essentials of the car culture in the US prove to be instrumental in the process of learning and adaptation, lead to a more profound, historiosophic reflection upon the cars as vehicles of ethics across American cultural history. 

2021-12-19