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Journal: Review of International American Studies

Prefacio del Presidente de IASA

Manuel Broncano Rodríguez

Language: EN | Published: 15-11-2015 | Abstract

Resulta para mí un verdadero honor inaugurar mi mandato como presidente de IASA con la publicación del primer volumen de nuestra revista escrito íntegramente en lengua española. Con ello, IASA y RIAS cumplen uno de sus objetivos fundamentales, que es el de difundir los estudios americanos en los idiomas mayoritarios de las Américas. Este volumen, además, ve la luz en un momento muy auspicioso para IASA. Después de los siete congresos mundiales que ya hemos celebrado en Holanda, Canadá, Portugal, Brasil, China, Polonia y Corea del Sur, nuestra Asociación ha decidido reunirse por primera vez en suelo estadounidense con motivo de su octavo congreso. Es esta una decisión que fue postergada por los diferentes Consejos Ejecutivos de IASA de forma muy consciente, pues uno de los propósitos fundamentales de IASA desde sus inicios fue el afirmar el carácter verdaderamente internacional de la Asociación. IASA nació con la vocación de descentralizar el concepto de ‘América’ y devolverle su espacio significativo hemisférico. Era y es una vocación inclusiva, no exclusiva, y en su campo de estudio siempre han cabido todas las actividades académicas que de forma directa o indirecta se interesan por ese espacio geográfico que se extiende desde el estrecho de Bering hasta la Patagonia. Y para su primer congreso en territorio norteamericano, IASA ha acordado en su última asamblea general, celebrada en Seoul este pasado mes de agosto, aceptar la invitación extendida por la universidad Texas A&M International para acoger nuestro octavo congreso en su campus de Laredo, una ciudad fronteriza por antonomasia a orillas del río Grande/Bravo, que representa muy bien esa ‘herida abierta’ de la que nos habla Gloria Anzaldúa en su clásico estudio sobre la Frontera. Y de fronteras, y de océanos, y de las Américas podremos conversar durante nuestro encuentro en agosto de 2017 en ese punto realmente simbólico de la experiencia americana. Es el deseo de todos los miembros de IASA que esta primera publicación de un número de IASA en español sea el inicio de una larga serie de volúmenes en los otros idiomas mayoritarios del hemisferio, como son el francés y el portugués, además del inglés que IASA utiliza como lengua franca, pero no única. En la gran casa de IASA y de RIAS todos tenemos cabida. Invito pues al lector a adentrarse en la lectura de este volumen, verdadero hito en la historia de nuestra Asociación tanto como de nuestra revista.
Mi más cordial saludo,
Manuel Broncano Rodríguez
Presidente de IASA

2015-11-15



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Presidential Address for IASA 8th World Congress, Laredo TX, 12-21 July 2017

Manuel Broncano Rodríguez

Language: EN | Published: 30-12-2018 | Abstract

manuel broncano rodríguez
Texas A&M International University
USA
Presidential Address for IASA 8th World Congress
Laredo TX, 12-21 July 2017
Laredo is located in the vicinity of the Rio Grande/Bravo, in many senses the epitome of the border, of the frontier, of the “limen” in its etymological sense of “threshold,” “doorway,” or “limit.” The general theme of our reunion was “Marginalia: The Borders of the Border,” and the contributions the IASA members made addressed this theme from multiple perspectives, thus leading to most enriching discussions about one of the most written about topics in the scholarship of the last few decades. Such a topic has rekindled new interest, especially in the light of the recent political transformations in many regions of the globe, which are leading to revived feelings of essentialist nationalism and its atavistic fears of the other, call it the immigrant, the dissenter or, if you want, the barbarian. It is happening in Turkey, it is happening in Poland, it is happening in Britain, it is happening in the US. In this context, borders and walls, both physical and ideological, are being erected once again. Marginalia, in turn, is a Latin term that in its origins referred to the inscriptions that monks and other amanuensis made on the empty space surrounding the body of text inscribed on a parchment. Romance languages are largely the product of marginal inscriptions on Latin manuscripts. Thus, the first manifestations of the Spanish language are found in the glosses that monks scribbled on the margins of those manuscripts to clarify and comment on words whose meaning was already obscure for the medieval reader, and those annotations were made in the new romance language, which was nothing but macaronic Latin. By extension, marginalia refers to those writings that do not belong in the canonical body of works of a culture or civilization, and is close in meaning to apocryphal. Furthermore, it can be understood as referring to the interstices that exist between two or more cultures, nations, or religions. In our usage of the term, marginalia refers to those areas of the world that are populated by displaced or uprooted individuals, limbic spaces in which mere survival may become an illegal activity. The present address seeks to explicate the essence of the basic concepts underlying—and driving—the theme of the Congress.

2018-12-30



Journal: Review of International American Studies

(Un)Imagined Shores

Cyraina Johnson-Roullier

Language: EN | Published: 01-05-2015 | Abstract

The theme of the IASA 6th World Congress, ‘Oceans Apart: In Search of New Wor(l)ds’ was a fitting context in which to ask the question how did the Americas become America? And, inversely, how can America be turned inside out to reveal the Americas to which it is ineradicably, albeit perhaps surreptitiously—yet certainly historically—linked, and what might that meanfor our understanding of American Studies as a field? How does the ocean itself, and its boundaryless significance, figure in whatever understanding of America and/or the Americas comes to the fore.The essays included in this issue of the Review of International American Studies each consider this question in very different ways, from the exploration of the role of the ocean in American literature, to that of the power of the ocean’s imaginary reality itself to shape our understanding of that literature. Ever present within these questions is that of the long history of empire embedded in the idea of America and all things American, what exactly that history is to mean, and how it is to be understood, especially when contextualized by the cultural significance of the ocean. With the ocean in mind, in keeping with the Congress theme, the meaning of America seems to radically shift, as the reality of the Americas becomes more evident. As this stable meaning is troubled, as traditional boundaries begin to reform in new configurations, the possibility for new discoveries about the meaning of America comes into greater prominence. But this view from the ocean, with its new perspective on old understandings, doesn’t necessarily have to mean ‘out to sea’.

As Giorgio Mariani asserts, there is often a certain anxiety, even among those, like the members of the International American Studies Association, who adventurously leave their academic and intellectual points of origin to carve out new epistemological roadmaps, leading not infrequently beyond known disciplinary parameters, as these have been structured within the university. What is it about the unboundedness of uncontained knowledge, for which the sea is a striking metaphor, that can hide a subtle yet nonetheless yawning fear? There is the ever-present possibility of drowning, requiring the superhuman control necessary to calmly tread water until a familiar shore appears, rather than using every reserve of energy to flail uselessly about in panic, destroying all possibility of potentially adaptive measures. There is the desire to return to the power of what is known even in the midst of a willful voyage to the unknown, a siren’s song of familiarity slamming shut the door to the new visions that the amorphous reality of limitlessness can invite. But once the idea of treading water is accepted to the point of dictating action, once calm acceptance is allowed to set in, so too does the ocean begin to seem less of an enemy, the mind clears, solutions appear, and direction based on sharpness of thought and intrepid decision takes flight. Previously unthought avenues to understanding open up, and then, new shores. This, then, is the spirit in which the President’s Address and the three plenaries to follow are offered, couple with Paweł Jędrzejko’s fitting examination of Polish literature filtered through an oceanic American literary enounter. Taking America to sea, they are all a compass leading not to what is already known, but to what can be, if we but continue to calmly tread on.

Cyraina Johnson-Roullier
Editor-in-Chief, RIAS

2015-05-01



Journal: Review of International American Studies

América. AméRICA. AméRICA

Paweł Jędrzejko

Language: EN | Published: 15-11-2015 | Abstract

Las palabras que escribí hace un tiempo, cuando la comunidad IASA se preparaba para el Congreso Mundial en Polonia, no han perdido su validez. De hecho, los mismos supuestos que dieron lugar a nuestra reflexión común sobre la variedad de historias concurrentes de las Américas han proporcionado la premisa para este volumen de la Edición de los Estudios Americanos Internacionales: el primer volumen RIAS en español. De acuerdo con los principios fundamentales de la Asociación de Estudios Americanos, deseamos ahora alentar a los Americanistas de todo el mundo a esforzarse y acoger las Américas a través de la ‘gramática’ de la segunda lengua más extendida del doble continente; una gramática muy distinta a la del inglés. ¿Trivial? Tal vez. Sin embargo, si consideramos que la gramática de la palabra es la gramática del mundo, entenderemos que la decisión de imaginar las Américas utilizando una ‘herramienta de percepción’ diferente puede muy bien dar vida a lo que la lengua inglesa es incapaz de mostrar.
IASA ha sido siempre consciente de las limitaciones del monolingüismo. Uno de los rasgos más fascinantes y gratificantes—de nuestra Asociación es la apertura de sus miembros a una óptica alternativa. Aunque está claro que aprender todas las lenguas de las Américas es una idea tan bella como utópica, por lo menos podemos propiciar este ideal. Procurando espacio para una variedad de ‘gramáticas’ y haciendo el esfuerzo para comprender las metarranativas cuya lógica reflejan estas gramáticas, damos pequeños aunque importantes pasos en dirección hacia la comprensión multidimensional del gran palimpsesto que representan las Américas.
Así es nuestra política de amistad.

2015-11-15



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Introduction

Agnieszka Woźniakowska , Anna Łakowicz-Dopiera

Language: EN | Published: 15-05-2014 | Abstract

For three summer days in August 2013 the International American Studies Association managed to attract scholars of all continents to travel to a Polish harbor town—Szczecin to contribute to the discussions on America(s) separated from other continents by two oceans. The title 'Oceans Apart' turned out to be an intellectual provocation which proved that the oceanic separateness was illusory as the discussions oscillated around the topics which were recognized and resonant in distant parts of the world. As the organizers intended, the speakers searched for new words to give meanings to old texts. The works of authors such as Herman Melville, Pearl Buck, Jack London, or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle inspired scholars to ask questions pertaining to the complexity of human nature and served as referential points in debates on other more modern texts. The old problems of exclusion, prejudice or stereotyping found new exemplification both in literature and in geopolitical observations. The oceanic metaphors and associations triggered a wide range of topics and multiple ways of interpreting them, thus proving that the oceans connect rather than divide people.

The present issue addresses topics related to the notion of the ocean in two ways: those which concern issues outside of the world of literature and those which refer to specific literary texts.

The first paper selected for this issue has been written by Regina Schober and is entitled ‘The World Wide Sea—Oceanic Metaphors, Concepts of Knowledge, and Transnational America in the Information Age’. Professor Schober received for this article the 2013 Emory Elliot Award, the award given to an outstanding paper submitted for an IASA conference. The second text, ‘History as an ocean’ written by Alicja Bemben, investigates the question of what history is and it discusses the relation between history and literature. It is followed by Jolanta Szymkowska’s text ‘From the American Wild West to Bojszowy: Józef Kłyk’s Westerns as Social Rituals’ in which the author examines the extent to which the American film genre influenced the western production of Silesian amateur director, and discusses the ritual purposes of Józef Kłyk’s productions.

The three articles are followed by papers in which the ocean metaphor is directly related to literary texts. Thus Justyna Fruzińska discusses the process of maturation of young men in relation to three fictional characters: Jack London’s Humphrey Van Weyden in The Sea Wolf, Herman Melville’s Captain Amasa Delano from ‘Benito Cereno’ and eponymous Billy Budd, and their experiences on the sea. Pilar Martínez Benedí, in ‘Revolving the Vortex; or, Working through Trauma at Sea’ also addresses Hermann Melville’s work, Moby Dick, by attempting to examine relationship between a sea-vortex and the experience of working through trauma. Claudia Ioana Doroholschi’s text is a comparative study of Stephen Crane’s The Open Boat and S.T. Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Jacek Mydla’s ‘United by the Ocean? The Romantic Conan Doyle and the Transatlantic Sherlock Holmes’ focuses on how the metaphor of the ocean/water functions in Doyle’s story “The Five Orange Pips.” Valeria Gennero’s text ‘Pearl S. Buck and the Forgotten Holocaust of the Two-Ocean War’ discusses the notions of ‘national identity’ and ‘gendered violence’ in the context of Buck’s novel Dragon Seed. In the last article Hitomi Nabae examines the representation of Creole culture in Lafcadio Hearn’s writings.

Anna Łakowicz-Dopiera and Agnieszka Woźniakowska

2014-05-15



Journal: Review of International American Studies

The Long History of “Doublethink”: A Response to Djelal Kadir’s “Agnotology and the Know-Nothing Party: Then and Now”

Manuel Broncano Rodríguez

Language: EN | Published: 30-06-2017 | Abstract

Manuel Broncano Rodríguez
Texas A&M International University 

The Long History of “Doublethink”: A Response to Djelal Kadir’s “Agnotology and the Know-Nothing Party: Then and Now”

A Response to Djelal Kadir’s “Agnotology and the Know-Nothing Party: Then and Now.” (In the present issue of RIAS).

Keywords: humanities, state control, ignorance, American Literature, World Literature, world culture, American Studies, Comparative Studies

2017-06-30



Journal: Review of International American Studies

IASA Stands with Ukraine

RIAS Editors

Language: EN | Published: 15-06-2022 | Abstract | pp. 175-179

As a world-wide community of compassionate humans, the International American Studies Association unequivocally condemns the Russian Federation’s barbaric invasion of sovereign Ukraine. Calling upon the Governments of all peace-loving nations to work together towards the immediate cessation of hostilities, we simultaneously encourage all IASA members to donate a fraction of their incomes to the organizations saving lives in the fighting Ukraine or helping the Ukrainian refugees throughout Eastern Europe and world wide. Preferring action to empty verbiage, we therefore ask all of the compassionate human beings to consult the list below. Based on the U.S. news guideline on “How to Help Ukraine,” the list collects organizations and institutions that will appreciate every penny we can spare. IASA stands for peace, and therefore IASA stands with Ukraine. Join IASA.

2022-06-15



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Campo di Fiori, or Walls

Paweł Jędrzejko

Language: EN | Published: 30-06-2018 | Abstract

Paweł Jędrzejko
Department of American and Canadian Studies
Institute of English Cultures and Literatures
University of Silesia in Katowice
Poland

Campo di Fiori, or Walls

Abstract: The present editorial addresses the issue of separation walls as from an ethical standpoint. Walls, metaphorical and physical, offering those (temporarily) privileged protection from the realization of the uncomfortable fact that they stand by while others suffer and die, are supposedly to “keep us free,” although in fact they become a prison of an illusion of safety and a weapon that may sooner or later be used against those who pretend not to hear the noise of the ongoing battle “on the other side.”


Keywords: American Studies, walls, Campo di Fiori, Czesław Miłosz, ethics, separation, isolation, editorial

2018-06-30



Journal: Review of International American Studies

IASA Emerging Scholars: The Position of the IASA Executive Council on the Inclusion of Emerging Scholars in the Leadership of the Organization

IASA Executive Council

Language: EN | Published: 31-12-2022 | Abstract | pp. 259-261

The Statement of the IASA Executive Council on the Inclusion of Emerging Scholars in the Leadership of the Organization and the support of the Early Career Scholars. 

2022-12-31



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Directionality/Flow

Paweł Jędrzejko

Language: EN | Published: 30-11-2017 | Abstract

Paweł Jędrzejko
Department of American and Canadian Studies
Institute of English Cultures and Literatures
University of Silesia in Katowice
Poland

Directionality/Flow

Abstract: The present volume, generously guest-edited by Claudio Salmeri of the University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland, offers a multifaceted insight into how American values have been “translated into Italian” and accommodated within the cultural space of twenty-first century Italy. The volume’s title, Trans/Lazio, is thus both a gesture in recognition of the complexity of the Italian cultural space and an attempt to accommodate theoretical premises of polysystem theory in a study of the mutual relations between Italy and America as simultaneously donor and acceptor cultures, simultaneously distinctive and accommodating. Emphasizing these values, the present, aptly titled, issue ushers in the second decade of RIAS, a journal univocally dedicated to the hemispheric and transoceanic study of the Americas.

2017-11-30



Journal: Review of International American Studies

A Timeline of the Decade

Paweł Jędrzejko

Language: EN | Published: 30-06-2017 | Abstract

The article presents a brief history of the Review of International American Studies since its inception until today,

2017-06-30



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Journeying (the) Americas: The Paradoxes of Travel (and) Narratives. IASA 11th World Congress 2023 - Call for Contributions (First Circular)

RIAS Editors

Language: EN | Published: 31-12-2022 | Abstract | pp. 263-268

International American Studies Association announcement of the Call for Contributions for the 11th World Congress of IASA titled Journeying (the) Americas The Paradoxes of Travel (and) Narratives. This time, the organization of the IASA World Congress has been entrusted to our excellent Colleagues from the Institute of Cultural Studies, University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland. The Congress, organized and hosted both on the University premises and on line, will be held between September 7th and 10th 2023.

2022-12-31



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Presidential Address

Giorgio Mariani

Language: EN | Published: 15-11-2016 | Abstract

Presidential Address delivered to the IASA General Assembly on August 17, 2015, Seoul, South Korea.

2016-11-15



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Traces in the Ocean. On Melville, Wolanowski, and Willing Suspension of Disbelief

Paweł Jędrzejko

Language: EN | Published: 01-05-2015 | Abstract

The present article locates Lucjan Wolanowski’s prose in the space of reflection upon the magical dimension of writing traditionally classified as 'non-fiction' or 'literature of fact'. The magic of 'prose factography' is addressed here both in the perspective of the conditioning of its readerly reception and in the context of the writerly potential of the 'suspension of disbelief'. The argument presented in the article aims at bringing into light the mechanisms responsible for the fusion of the material reality and rhetoric into a faith-based 'magic reality'. The acknowledgment of the role of poetic imagination in the process of shaping the reader’s awareness of the world allows one to observe that the traditional concept of 'the factual' is largely based on a volitional pursuance of the mirage of objectivity and is a product of the craving for certainty. Illustrating the central phenomena of this text with examples of the everyday experience of a Polish reader of 1980s (whose 'factual' knowledge of the world largely depended on the extent of his or her reading in reportage and travel literature), as well as with reference to Herman Melville’s Typee (a novel, which gained wide recognition only after it has been sanctioned as 'non-fiction'), the author of the article seeks to demonstrate how Lucjan Wolanowski’s prose calls into existence a 'factual reality', i.e. a reality, in which one is prone to believe, which one is inclined to take for granted, and which becomes one’s frame of reference in the context of everyday choices. If truth is a function of faith, then fact and magic merge into one and thus inescapably rendering factual reality a 'magical reality'.

2015-05-01



Journal: Review of International American Studies

The Quintessence of the Quintessential

Cyraina Johnson-Roullier

Language: EN | Published: 15-11-2016 | Abstract

The Quintessence of the Quintessential

Let us imagine, for a moment, that we have become characters in our own Robinsonade (in a time long before Daniel Defoe chronicled Robinson Crusoe’s epic journey).  Engaged in a half-magical, early Renaissance exploratory endeavor, like so many others before us, we set out full of hope into uncharted waters in a well-provisioned ship, certain that our quest will end in the success we seek, the discovery of heretofore unknown lands, full of untold riches that will be ours for the taking.  Fuelled by an uncommon mixture of hope, desire and determination, we rush headlong into the indiscernible future, filled with visions of the life of gods we will lead upon our successful return, heavily laden with the wealth of our exploits.  But it is, unfortunately, not to be: not long into our journey, we are beset by a raging storm, whose almost demoniac power shatters our ship—and our hopes—to bits, a situation from which we only just barely escape with our lives.  The intangible imagined life of gods that was ours just a few hours before is brutally and abruptly transformed, now finding objective reality in the shards of our ship washing up on the hated shore that we were in fact blessed to find, though tortured by the painful realization that it is nothing like the shore we had hoped, imagined or sought to find. The storm having dealt with our clothing in much the same way as it did our ship, thus presenting us with an unaccustomed physical reality of near nakedness, this new shore, previously unknown to our imaginations, greets us with an immediate inhospitability that finishes the job by also stripping us figuratively bare, leaving us completely naked to our own understanding as well.  We are shipwrecked—castaways—most definitely not gods, lacking now not only the force that imagined a potential god-like existence, but the hope it generated.  Of determination, however, we must put that to good use, and quickly.  Life now takes on a very different quality, one of a more stark contact with the laws of nature than ever we have felt before.  We are hot, we are hungry, we are cold, wet, exposed, and excoriated by the wind, whose fingers, gentle or sharp like claws, are a constant presence.  Life is now raw existence, and in that existence, we grasp only the enormity of the sea and its deep mystery, the enormity of the heavens, its broiling sun by day and its shimmering stars at night, and the thankful—or thankless—certainty of land underfoot.      

It is at this  juncture that we may most fruitfully encounter the essays contained in this issue of the Review of International American Studies, which highlights several works from the 7^th World Congress of the International American Studies Association, held in conjunction with the American Studies Association of Korea’s 50^th International Conference in Seoul, South Korea, August 17–19, 2015.  The conference theme, “Constellating Americas,” seeks a more complex international engagement in the field of American Studies, one that would foster a greater de-centering of the US within the field than even the inherently international approach of transnationalism has up to the present accomplished.  By borrowing Walter Benjamin’s notion of the constellation as a theoretical construct allowing for a different way of thinking about the interrelationships between the US and other instances of America within American Studies, the emphases of the conference bring about a radical shift in the field imaginary, pointing to both a horizontal and a vertical path toward greater interrelational understanding, the one reaching outward in space, the other in time.
[read more in the Ed/Note inside] 

2016-11-15



Journal: Review of International American Studies

IASA Statement of Support for the Struggle Against Racialized Violence in the United States

RIAS Editors

Language: EN | Published: 16-08-2020 | Abstract | pp. 291-293

The International American Studies Association is dismayed to see the explosion of anger, bitterness and desperation that has been triggered by yet another senseless, cruel and wanton act of racialized violence in the United States. We stand in solidarity with and support the ongoing struggle by African Americans, indigenous peoples, ethnic minorities, migrants and the marginalized against the racialized violence perpetrated against them.

As scholars of the United States, we see the killing of George Floyd and many before them as acts on the continuum of the history of the powerful committing racialized violence against the powerless in the United States from before the birth of that country to the here and now of the present day. This continuum stretches from the transatlantic slave trade, the genocide of the indigenous population, the denial of rights and liberties to women, through the exploitation of American workers, slavery and Jim Crow, to the exclusion and inhumane treatment of the same migrants who make a profit for American corporations and keep prices low for the U.S. consumer. As scholars of the United States, we are acutely aware of how racialized violence is systemic, of how it has been woven into the fabric of U.S. society and cultures by the powerful, and of how the struggle against it has produced some of the greatest contributions of U.S. society to world culture and heritage.

The desperate rebellion of the powerless against racialized violence by the powerful is in turn propagandized as unreasonable or malicious. It is neither. It is an uprising to defend their own lives, their last resort after waiting for generations for justice and equal treatment from law enforcement, law makers, and the courts. In too many instances, those in power have answered such uprisings with deadly force—and in every instance, they have had alternatives to this response.

We are calling on those in power and the people with the guns in the United States now to exercise their choices and choose an alternative to deadly force as a response to the struggle against racialized violence. You have the power and the weapons—you have a choice to do the right thing and make peace.

We are calling on U.S. law makers to listen and address the issues of injustice and racialized violence through systemic reform that remakes the very fabric of the United States justice system, including independent accountability oversight for law enforcement.

We are calling on our IASA members and Americanists around the world to redouble their efforts at teaching their students and educating the public of the truth about the struggle against racialized violence in the United States.

We are calling on our IASA members and Americanists around the world to become allies in the struggle against racialized violence in the United States and in their home societies by publicizing scholarship on the truth, by listening to and amplifying the voices of black people, ethnic minorities and the marginalized, and supporting them in this struggle on their own terms.

We are calling on all fellow scholarly associations to explore all the ways in which they can put pressure with those in power at all levels in the United States to do the right thing and end racialized violence.

There will be no peace in our hearts and souls until justice is done and racialized violence is ended—until all of us are able “to breathe free.”

• Dr Manpreet Kaur Kang, President of the International American Studies Association, Professor of English and Dean, School of Humanities & Social Sciences, Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, India;
  Dr Jennifer Frost, President of the Australian and New Zealand American Studies Association, Associate Professor of History, University of Auckland, New Zealand;
  Dr S. Bilge Mutluay Çetintaş, Associate Professor, Department of American Culture and Literature, Hacettepe University, Turkey;
  Dr Gabriela Vargas-Cetina, Professor of Anthropology, Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán, Mexico;
  Dr Paweł Jędrzejko, Associate Professor of American Literature, University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland;
  Dr Marietta Messmer, Associate Professor of American Studies, University of Groningen, The Netherlands;
  Dr Kryštof Kozák, Department of North American Studies, Charles University, Prague;
  Dr Giorgio Mariani, Professor of English and American Languages and Literatures, Department of European, American and Intercultural Studies, Università “Sapienza” of Rome;
  Dr György Tóth, Lecturer, History, Heritage and Politics, University of Stirling, Scotland, United Kingdom;
  Dr Manuel Broncano, Professor of American Literature and Director of English, Spanish, and Translation, Texas A&M International University, Laredo, USA;
  Dr Jiaying Cai, Lecturer at the School of English Studies, Shanghai International Studies University, China;
  Dr Alessandro Buffa, Secretary, Center for Postcolonial and Gender Studies, University of Naples L’Orientale, Italy;

2020-08-16



Journal: Review of International American Studies

New Wor(l)ds

Paweł Jędrzejko

Language: EN | Published: 15-05-2014 | Abstract

Perhaps the most striking feature of the International American Studies Association is that since its inception our Organization has been invariably true to its creed. Indeed, the word international in our name is a dual attribute. On the one hand, the Association’s members are a community of scholars representing all inhabited continents of the world. On the other, the Studies carried out by IASA’s academic community address questions transgressing geographical thresholds and political borders. Multinational, multiethnic and multilcultural, our International Association, dedicated to the development of International Studies of the Americas, has developed a unique sensitivity to polyphony: the melody of multilingual narratives, the blending of diverse voices, the harmony of minds and hearts celebrating the richness of their individual cultural legacies reverberating in an open, friendly conversation.
   Over the years, IASA has managed to steer its course (or, more specifically, its three courses: transatlantic, transpacific and hemispheric), thereby effectively decentralizing American Studies, a discipline whose name has long been considered to be an alternative label to US Studies—or would predominantly be associated with research whose central point of reference would be the United States of America. Respecting and appreciating the unquestionable importance of the US as the donor of cultural values and a major political player in the international arena, we pay equally careful attention to the cultures of Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, the Carribean, Polynesia and other regions of the dual Continent. We re-visit its cultures paying attention to the entire compass of musical tones, which, sometimes, become audible only when listened to from a distance. Methodologically, we have done away with the concept of the center, replacing it with the concept of a constantly shifting perspective: therefore we seem to find it easier to watch out for the inertia of the margin. Having deconstructed the binary opposition, in our studies we systematically empower both the the ‘former margin’ and the ‘former center’—and we have been doing so without preference, without prejudice. And since ‘words’ have always-already been responsible for our conceptualization(s) of ‘worlds’, we have resolved to systematically energize a variety of concurrent quests for ‘new words’ which would then enter into dynamic relations with the ‘old ones’. Listening and learning, we constantly re-visit the once (seemingly) ‘familiar’ Americas, appreciating their inexhaustible potential of meaning: pulsing with life, the Americas refuse to be frozen in the frame of one language, one methodology or one perspective. And so do our International American Studies. The present issue, guest edited by our generous friends and colleagues—Agnieszka Woźniakowska from the University of Silesia in Katowice and Anna Łakowicz-Dopiera representing the University of Szczecin—testifies to the efficiency of IASA’s intellectual practice.

Paweł Jędrzejko
RIAS Associate Editor

2014-05-15



Journal: Review of International American Studies

The Day After: The Post-Crisis IASA and Daemons That Can Help

(A Farewell Address)

Paweł Jędrzejko

Language: EN | Published: 29-12-2023 | Abstract | pp. 5-15

Amid the chaos of pandemics or wars, the conflict extends beyond mere human struggles with (their) commonsensically understood “demons”—fears, ambitions, traumas, desires, angsts, and all of other conditions and structures always-already in place even before we become aware of them. Although, beyond doubt, such “side effects” of being-in-the-world or being-with-others generate facts that are effect-producing, whether these facts prove to be morally actionable depends on if and how we engage them. Summing up the mission of the post-Crisis IASA, I build my argument around Friedrich Nietzsche's concept of personal responsibility in the face of the Daemon of Eternal Recurrence, Paul Ricoeur’s phenomenological hermeneutics, and leading Western existentialists to demonstrate that, at least in the Western perspective, the conflict also entails, perhaps more crucially, a fierce battle between the daimōn and the daemonium. Recognizing the eternal recurrence of such catastrophes such as pandemics or wars, the “Greek mindset,” embracing the daimōn, fosters an existential philosophy that emphasizes participation in the realm of immanence, shaping our ethical considerations and propelling actions. In contrast, the “Latin approach,” in constant fear of the daemonium, seems to foster self-perception as constantly plunged in “fear and trembling,”  despairingly “sick unto death,” and prone to attributing malevolent forces to the “evil spirits,” thereby generating configurations that shift the narrative towards self-absolution, and ultimately legitimize refigurations that, diluting personal responsibility, delegate it to transcendence. Embracing Greek thought, we engage in an ongoing quest with facta-ficta, revising language critically (Gr. κρίνω), without expecting finality in our categories, acknowledging that our imperfect language is essential for defining our existence within immanence. Conversely, “Latin thinking,” in which demons are seen as elements of a transcendent realm—unreachable without relinquishing the self, or as part of a faith-based narrative, and in which human is potentially lacking tangible impact—involves the risk of rendering us indifferent to historical lessons, legitimizing a fatalistic nihil novi as a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

2023-12-29



Journal: Review of International American Studies

A New Opening: Presidential Address for the 11th World Congress of the IASA, Katowice, Poland, 7-10 September 2023

Paweł Jędrzejko

Language: EN | Published: 28-08-2023 | Abstract | pp. 5-14

The article opening the present issue is based on Paweł Jędrzejko's "Presidential Address" prepared for the audiences of the 11th World Congress of the International American Studies Association. Offering an insight into the most recent transformations of the IASA and of its journal, the Review of International American Studies, the author of the text pays homage to scholars, whose committment has proven instrumental for the development of the Organization itself, but also for the standing of the RIAS, which enjoys the status of a ranking periodical. The article, essentially historical in its assumptions, indicates the need of the adjustment of the Organization's bylaws to account for the changing academic reality in which it now functions.  

2023-08-28



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Presidential Address: 9th IASA World Congress. Alcalá de Henares, July 8-10 2019

Manuel Broncano Rodriguez

Language: EN | Published: 31-12-2020 | Abstract | pp. 15-27

To be added...

2020-12-31



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Resistance in the Deceleration Lane. Velocentrism, Slow Culture and Everyday Practice by Marzena Kubisz

Paweł Jędrzejko

Language: EN | Published: 01-05-2015 | Abstract

Paweł Jędrzejko's review article on Marzena Kubisz's Resistance in the Deceleration Lane. Velocentrism, Slow Culture and Everyday Practice, Frankfurt: Peter Lang Verlag 2014)

2015-05-01



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Fence Walls: From the Iron Curtain to the US and Hungarian Border Barriers and the Emergence of Global Walls

Éva Eszter Szabó

Language: EN | Published: 30-06-2018 | Abstract

Éva Eszter Szabó
School of English and American Studies
Department of American Studies
Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest

Fence Walls: From the Iron Curtain
to the US and Hungarian Border Barriers
and the Emergence of Global Walls

Abstract: This paper considers the resurgence of the Iron Curtain metaphor and its appropriateness in relation to the current border barriers in the US and the EU. It addresses the impact of the Iron Curtain both on Eastern Europe and on Western Europe, and it explores the legacy of this nearly hermetically sealed off borderland in the different border security and migration control approaches within the EU in the current era of emerging global walls. In my view, while the Iron Curtain metaphor is mistakenly applied to the current border barriers in the US and the EU alike, its legacy does contribute to the marked difference between Eastern and Western European attitudes and policies to the massive influx of migrants. From the Iron Curtain to the Hungarian border fence, the fence walls of the spatially identical border sections reflect not only the changing concepts of walls, but also the distinct historical experiences with migration. The current border barriers in Hungary and the EU, however, draw on the US–Mexican border barrier that aims to stop unauthorized entry while keeping the gates open in both directions for legal cross-border movement in contrast with the prison walls of the Iron Curtain. 

Keywords: US-Mexican border barrier, Hungarian border fence, unauthorized migration, Eastern Europe, Cold War, Iron Curtain, border walls

2018-06-30



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Walls that Bridge; or, What We Can Learn from the Roman Walls

Giorgio Mariani

Language: EN | Published: 30-06-2018 | Abstract

Giorgio Mariani
University of Rome “La Sapienza”
Italy

Walls that Bridge;
or, What We Can Learn from the Roman Walls

Abstract: When, during the latest US electoral campaign, Pope Francis criticized Trump’s idea of building a wall between Mexico and the US, reiterating his favorite  point that “we do not need to build walls, but bridges,” the Trump camp retorted that the Pope lives in a city state surrounded by walls, in a city itself surrounded by other walls dating back to ancient Roman times. Why wasn't he concerned with those walls? As one can see, even though Roman walls have completely lost their original function and survive mainly as tourist sites, they also remain powerful political and cultural symbols. The scope of this essay is to offer, from the perspective of an Americanist who was born and raised in Rome, some comparative reflections on  what we can learn today from the history of Roman walls, as well as from their symbolic afterlives.

Keywords: Roman walls, walls as rhetoric, US literature, walls as bridges, walls as dividers

2018-06-30



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Emerson’s Superhero

Giorgio Mariani

Language: EN | Published: 16-08-2020 | Abstract | pp. 27-51

After offering some preliminary remarks on the notion of what makes a “captive mind,” the article shifts its attention to one of the most significant and yet relatively neglected early essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson, the essay “War.” This text, I argue, deserves not only to be considered the (largely forgotten) founding document of the American anti-war movement, but it remains important even today, as it sheds light on the inevitable contradictions and double-binds any serious movement against war and for social justice must face. It is a text, in other words, which helps us highlight some of the problems we run into—both conceptually and practically—when we try to free our minds from a given mindset, but we must still rely on a world that is pretty much the outcome of the ideologies, customs, and traditions we wish to transcend. To imagine a world free of violence and war is the age-old problem of how to change the world and make it “new” when the practical and intellectual instruments we have are all steeped in the old world we want to abolish. Emerson’s thinking provides a basis to unpack the aporias of what, historically speaking, the antiwar movement has been, both inside and outside the US.  The article concludes by examining some recent collections of US pacifist and anti-war writings, as providing useful examples of the challenges antiwar, and more generally protest movements, must face. 

2020-08-16



Journal: Review of International American Studies

In Memoriam Marietta Messmer

György Tóth

Language: EN | Published: 19-12-2021 | Abstract | pp. 175-176

A farewell to Marietta Messmer (1966–2021),  the Vice President of International American Studies Association, who shaped both InterAmerican Studies and American Studies in Europe and the world. In 2009 Marietta Messmer co-founded the International Association for InterAmerican Studies, where she served as Executive Board Member and Treasurer until 2012. She was president of the Netherlands American Studies Association between 2011–2014. She was Board Member of the of the European Association of American Studies between 2009-2016, where she also served as Chair of the Organizing Committee of the conference America: Justice, Conflict, War in the Hague, April 2014. An outstanding Scholar, belowed Colleague, and fierce Friend, Marietta Messmer will be missed by all the IASA Members, whom she so mastefully led.



2021-12-19



Journal: Review of International American Studies

IASA ANNOUNCEMENTS

RIAS Editors

Language: EN | Published: 01-03-2012 | Abstract

2012-03-01



Journal: Review of International American Studies

a Literary History of Mental Captivity in the United States. Blood Meridian, Wise Blood, and Contemporary Political Discourse

Manuel Broncano Rodriguez

Language: EN | Published: 16-08-2020 | Abstract | pp. 75-97

On July 15, 2018, US President Donald Trump and Russia President Vladimir Putin held a summit in Helsinki that immediately set off a chain reaction throughout the world. By now, barely two months later, that summit is all but forgotten for the most part, superseded by the frantic train of events and the subsequent bombardment from the media that have become the “new normal.” While the iron secrecy surrounding the conversation between the two dignitaries allowed for all kinds of speculation, the image of president Trump bowing to his Russian counterpart (indeed a treasure trove for semioticians) became for many observers in the US and across the world the living proof of Mr. Trump´s subservient allegiance to Mr. Putin and his obscure designs. Even some of the most recalcitrant GOPs vented quite publicly their disgust at the sight of a president paying evident homage to the archenemy of the United States, as Vercingetorix kneeled down before Julius Cesar in recognition of the Gaul´s surrender to the might of the Roman Empire. For some arcane
reason, the whole episode of the Helsinki summit brought to my mind, as in a vivid déjà vu, Cormac McCarthy´s novel Blood Meridian and more specifically, the characters of Judge Holden and the idiotic freak who becomes Holden´s ludicrous disciple in the wastelands of Arizona. In my presentation, I will provide some possible explanations as to why I came to blend these two unrelated episodes into a single continuum. In the process, I will briefly revisit some key texts in the American canon that fully belong in the history of “mental captivity” in the United States, yet to be written. Obviously, I am not in hopes of deciphering the ultimate reasons for current US foreign policy, and the more modest aim of my presentation today is to offer some insights into the general theme of our conference through a novel and a textual tradition overpopulated with “captive minds.”

2020-08-16



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

CONVERGENCES: IASA IN 2007—PRESIDENT’S REPORT LISBON, SEPTEMBER 21, 2007

Paul Giles

Language: EN | Published: 01-03-2008 | Abstract

TO BE ADDED

2008-03-01



Journal: Review of International American Studies

“Men First, Subjects Afterward”

Thoreau, “Civil Disobedience,” and the Thoreauvian Echoes of 1968 and After

Albena Kouzmanova Bakratcheva

Language: EN | Published: 23-12-2019 | Abstract | pp. 119-128

Thoreau's political reputation in the United States dates from the 1960s when the Americans began to see themselves in a political context. The single most famous fact of Thoreau's life had once been perceived as his going off to Walden Pond in order to drive life into a corner; in the sixties that was superseded by Thoreau's night spent in jail in order to drive the government into a corner. This paper will deal with Thoreau’s impact in both the US and Europe in 1968, as well as two decades later when ‘Civil Disobedience’ became the slogan of the velvet revolutions in Eastern Europe.

2019-12-23



Journal: Review of International American Studies

IS IASA ENTERING ITS SECOND PHASE?

Michael Boyden

Language: EN | Published: 01-09-2007 | Abstract

TO BE ADDED

2007-09-01



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Decolonizing Justice: Indigenous Feminist Activism in Mary Kathryn Nagle’s Sovereignty

Sara Riccetti

Language: EN | Published: 30-05-2024 | Abstract | pp. 195-217

This article offers an analysis of the 2018 play Sovereignty by Cherokee playwright, lawyer, and activist Mary Kathryn Nagle. First performed at the Arena Stage Theatre in Washington DC, Sovereignty unfolds over two parallel timelines: present-day Oklahoma and the early 1800s in the southern Appalachians. In the present day, young Cherokee lawyer Sarah Ridge Polson and Cherokee Attorney General Jim Ross defend the inherent jurisdiction of the Cherokee Nation under the Violence Against Women Act in a pivotal case before the US Supreme Court. This modern struggle is juxtaposed with scenes from the 1800s, where their ancestors grapple with a proposed treaty with Andrew Jackson’s administration, leading to the signing of the Treaty of New Echota and the Trail of Tears. By juxtaposing historical and contemporary events, Nagle illuminates the enduring effects of government policies and laws that continue to render Indigenous people, particularly Indigenous women, vulnerable. This article explores how Sovereignty exemplifies Indigenous feminist literary activism through performative counter-storytelling, a method that enacts decolonization and reframes the stage as a critical space for asserting Indigenous performative sovereignty and self-determination. Using an Indigenous feminist literary critical approach, this article shows how Nagle constructs a counter-narrative that advances decolonization by addressing gendered outcomes of colonial law, challenging patriarchal cultural practices of misrepresentation, and embodying “radical relationality”—a concept of collective political organization based on principles of interdependency and responsibility. Through the character of Sarah Ridge Polson and her activism to restore sovereignty over her body and her nation, Sovereignty exemplifies Indigenous feminist activism through theater, reasserting Indigenous women as agents of cultural transmission and tribal values, illustrating that tribal sovereignty and gender empowerment are inherently interconnected and mutually reinforcing.

2024-05-30



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Bharatanatyam as a Transnational and Translocal Connection: A Study of Selected Indian and American Texts

Manpreet Kaur Kang

Language: EN | Published: 31-12-2020 | Abstract | pp. 61-86

Bharatanatyam is a classical dance form derived from ancient dance styles, which is now seen as representative of Indian culture. In India, it is the most popular classical dance form exerting a great impact not only on the field of dance itself, but also on other art forms, like sculpture or painting. The Indian-American diaspora practices it both in an attempt to preserve its culture and as an assertion of its cultural identity. Dance is an art form that relates to sequences of body movements that are simultaneously aesthetic and symbolic, and rooted in specific cultures. It often tells a story. Different cultures observe different norms and standards by which dances should be performed (as well as by whom they should be performed and on what occasions). At the same time, dance and dancers influence (and are influenced by) different cultures as a result of transcultural interactions. Priya Srinivasan’s Sweating Saris: Indian Dance as Transnational Labor is a particularly valuable source wherein its author critically examines a variety of Indian dance forms, especially Bharatanatyam, tracing the history of dance as well as the lived experience of dancers across time, class, gender, and culture. With the help of this text, selected journal articles, and interviews with Bharatanatyam dancers in India and the US, I explore larger issues of gender, identity, culture, race, region, nation, and power dynamics inherent in the practice of Bharatanatyam, focusing on how these practices influence and, in turn, are influenced by transnational and translocal connections.

 

2020-12-31



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Visualizing the Other: Media Representations of Nina Khrushcheva During the Khrushchevs' State Visit to the United States in 1959

Mariya Doğan

Language: EN | Published: 01-05-2024 | Abstract | pp. 143-159

The gender discourse had an important role in the ideological confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union and proved to be an effective weapon of the Cold War. In American imagination, the image of a Soviet woman became an epitome of ‘the other’ which both personified the threat of communism and eased domestic anxieties about rigid gender roles in the post-war US. However, the Cold War was not a homogeneous process. The period from the mid-1950s to the early 1960s referred to as the Khrushchev Thaw, was characterized by attempts of peaceful coexistence between the two superpowers culminating in Khrushchev’s visit to the United States in September 1959. Nina P. Khrushcheva, the wife of the first secretary of the Communist Party, became the first high-rank communist woman to tour the United States with an official visit. The American press took this opportunity to humanize the image of a woman from the other side of the iron curtain and, consequently, defuse tensions on the international stage. Khrushcheva’s visit became a turning point in constructing the image of Soviet femininity, introducing a stereotype of different but not intimidating womanhood. Despite the fact that the fragile hopes for peace between the Western and Eastern Blocs were shattered soon after Khrushchev’s visit, the popular rhetoric of the Soviet femininity was transformed. The present article analyzes the shift in the Soviet gender codes presented in the American newspapers, and puts them into historical context to show how international policies can gain human face in the press.

2024-05-01



Journal: Review of International American Studies

‘Higher Laws’ and ‘Divine Madness’: Transnational and Translocal Configurations of Quixotic In/Sanity in the American Renaissance

Albena Bakratcheva

Language: EN | Published: 31-12-2020 | Abstract | pp. 87-101

The New England Transcendentalists deliberately chose a position which by definition did not belong to what was to them the common “prosaic mood” (Thoreau) of their time. Their choice was the result of representatively romantic discontent with their contemporary reality and, at the same time, through the vigorous drive of the Puritan spiritual leadership, it was essentially anachronistic. The sophisticated delight of identifying with such a doubly anomalous nonconformist ideal only intensified the need for counterbalancing the prosaic sanity of the real world with a wished-for poetic insanity, or “madness from the gods” (Emerson). Such “madness by romantic identification” whose “features have been fixed once and for all by Cervantes” (Foucault), naturally caused “Quixotic confusion” between reality and imagination and the substitution of the true with the fabulous. Though peculiarly intensified in the former Puritan context and in the context of ‘Americanness’ in which the nineteenth century New England intellectuals placed it, the problem was far from being merely a local, New England-centered, phenomenon. This paper argues that in their ‘in/sane’ Quixotic quest for perfection, which caused a series of personal failures, the New England Transcendentalists were remarkably faithful saunterers in a blessed place that, to them, was both America and, at the same time, the all-encompassing perennial—translocal and transnational—world, inviting them to establish what Emerson called “an original relation to the universe.”

 

2020-12-31



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Matters of Life: Human Scapes and Scopes - IASA 10th World Congress 2022

Call for Papers

RIAS Editors

Language: EN | Published: 15-06-2022 | Abstract | pp. 161-173

Matters of Life: Human Scapes and Scopes - Call for Contributions to the 10th World Congress 2022 of the International American Studies Association organized in the Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, India, 22nd to 24th November, 2022, and post-conference workshop Matters of Life: Human Shades and Scapes to be held between 25th and 27th November, 2022 in Udaipur, Rajasthan.

2022-06-15



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Life Matters: The Human Condition in the Age of Pandemics (An Introduction)

Gabriela Vargas-Cetina , Manpreet Kaur Kang

Language: EN | Published: 29-12-2023 | Abstract | pp. 17-28

The world has recently experienced the ravages of the COVID-19 epidemic and new, terrible wars. The pandemic and the wars now being waged show us how fragile human life is on our planet. The facts that the COVID-19 virus came originally from one or more animals that are part of the human food chain, and that the viruses themselves are forms of life very different from plants and animals, have altered our perception of our place in the world. Wars fought in this changed biological context have also shown how precarious the balance of power is in what we have come to see as a global humanity. Scholars in the fields of Humanities and Cultural Studies have risen to the occasion by focusing on the cultural effects of biological and war-time violence-related catastrophes. In this issue of RIAS focusing on the Americas and their influence on the world, we look at the implications of pandemics and wars, and human reactions to similar threats in the past, such as the pandemic of the Spanish flu which decimated soldiers during World War I. And once again, literature comes to our rescue in the time of heightened angst, showing us paths of the mind already present in American literature that may nudge us in a better direction. Existential homelessness, Buddhism, and meditation, also appear here as “life matters,” and that in the double sense: they are both matters of life and signals that life, and especially human life, must matter.

2023-12-29



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Peace, War, and Critique

Giorgio Mariani

Language: EN | Published: 29-12-2023 | Abstract | pp. 53-66

This article offers a brief exploration of the contradictory meanings of "war" and "peace", beginning with the ways in which, paradoxically, one term is supposed to engender its opposite. Inspired by sources as diverse as James Madison, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William James, and Judith Butler, the author tries to imagine what it would take to break the war-and-peace continuum.

2023-12-29



Journal: Review of International American Studies

IASA ANNOUNCEMENTS

RIAS Editors

Language: EN | Published: 01-03-2013 | Abstract

2013-03-01