Search Results

Journal: Review of International American Studies

World Literature and International American Studies: Convergence, Divergence, and Contest

Paul Giles

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

Paul Giles
Department of English
US Studies Centre's International Academic Advisory Committee
University of Sidney

World Literature and International American Studies: Convergence, Divergence, and Contest

Abstract: This paper considers the relation between the institutional formations of World Literature and International American Studies. It compares and contrasts the association between World Literature and Comparative Literature to that between International American Studies and the American Studies movement emerging out of the United States. It goes on to argue that World Literature is anchored to a universalist teleology, one linked historically to an idealist intellectual genealogy. By contrast, International American Studies involves a more materialist, multidirectional emphasis that differentiates it from the U.S. appropriation of globalization to further its own strategic interests.

Keywords: World Literature, Comparative Literature, International American Studies, Globalization

2017-06-30



Journal: Review of International American Studies

The Difference that Language Makes: A Response to Paul Giles’ “World Literature and International American Studies: Convergence, Divergence, and Contest”

Cristina Giorcelli

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

Cristina Giorcelli
Facolta' di Lettere e Filosofia
Università degli Studi Roma Tre

The Difference that Language Makes: A Response to Paul Giles’ “World Literature and International American Studies: Convergence, Divergence, and Contest”

A Response to Paul Giles’ “World Literature and International American Studies: Convergence, Divergence, and Contest.” (in the present issue).

Keywords: formation of International American Studies, World Literatures, academic politics

2017-06-30



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Theories of the Global, Global Literature, and American Literature in a Globalizing Age

Ulfried Reichardt

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

Ulfried Reichardt
Amerikanistik,
Universität Mannheim

Theories of the Global, Global Literature, and American Literature in a Globalizing Age

Abstract: The paper discusses theories of the global and approaches to the concept of the world, presents definitions of literature in a globalizing age, and examines proposals how to approach world literature in literary scholarship, including ones that regard world literature as a system and ones that focus on individual texts. Finally, the essay argues that in our digitally restructured knowledge world, contemporary novels reflecting on the transformations of media and of knowledge formation have to be considered as versions of world literature as well.

Keywords: World Literature, globalization and literature, theories of the global, concepts of the “world,” digitalization

2017-06-30



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

International American Studies and the question of World literature. An Introduction

Giorgio Mariani

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

Since its inception, International American Studies (IAS) had to define itself against the larger backdrop of global or world studies. However, as Paul Giles notes in his contribution to this special issue of RIAS marking the 10th anniversary of the journal and devoted to “International American Studies and the Question of World literature,” “World Literature in its current institutional manifestation is a much more recent phenomenon” than IAS, and may have “accumulated academic prestige more rapidly and securely than International American Studies has so far managed.”  Whatever their different temporal and institutional trajectories, however, both IAS and World literature may be seen as efforts to come to terms with the momentous historical, political, social, and technological changes of the past few decades. Put simply, both can be considered attempts to fashion new epistemological tools better suited to making sense of a globalized world, so that, no matter how (relatively?) different their objects of study might be, a set of theoretical concerns would appear to be shared by both fields. Both students of IAS and World Literature, for example, need to venture beyond the traditional categories of the nation and of national cultures, by coming to terms with the social, historical, and linguistic complexities that such a move entails. Both have to do so in a way that “opens” one’s field and yet preserves its raison d’être, especially at a time when the humanities are under attack and the defense of academic positions and credentials—all calls for “interdisciplinarity” notwithstanding—is of paramount importance. Both need to rethink the parameters of their disciplinary specializations, that is, without pulling the institutional rugs from under their feet—a precarious balancing act which, in the age of the corporate university, with its rage for classifying, evaluating, and ranking, is far from easy to perform.

2017-06-30



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

American Studies as Italian Theory

Mena Mitrano

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

Mena Mitrano
Loyola University Chicago
JFRC

American Studies as Italian Theory

Considering Roberto Esposito's narrative of Italian Theory, according to which Italian Theory first started as a US-based phenomenon and only later irradiated in other parts of the world, this paper explores the consequences of that narrative and the questions that it might raise for American Studies: Might Italian Theory rightfully belong to the Americanist's domain of inquiry? If so, what impact might it have on the identity of the Americanist? What is an Americanist?  The paper argues that this new wave of theory illuminates the confluence of American Studies and critical thought, both involved in a simultaneous movement of deterritorialization that pushes them outside their established boundaries.

Keywords: American Studies, literary and cultural theory, Italian American Studies, Italian Theory

2017-06-30



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Subsuming “America” to the “Global.” A Response to Markha Valenta’s “Abandoning America the Better to Save America”

Giorgio Mariani

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

Giorgio Mariani
Dipartimento di Studi Europei, Americani e Interculturali
Università "Sapienza" di Roma

Subsuming “America” to the “Global.” A Response to Markha Valenta’s “Abandoning America the Better to Save America”

A Response to Markha Valenta’s “Abandoning America the Better to Save America.” (In the present issue of RIAS).

Keywords: transnational turn, American Studies, democracy, internationalization of American Studies, refocusing American studies, globalization

 

2017-06-30



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Distâncias...

Paweł Jędrzejko

Language: EN | Published: 15-05-2016 | Abstract

DISTÂNCIAS…
[for English, scroll to the bottom of the page]

não possa tanta distância
deixar entre nós
este sol
que se põe entre uma onda
e outra onda
no oceano dos lençóis
Paulo Leminski

Eu não escolhi abrir a presente nota editorial com um poema de Paulo Leminski porque sou polonês; e, para ser sincero, tampouco o fiz devido ao fato de ele ser brasileiro. Fiz isso porque a sensibilidade profundamente empática de Leminski, pulsando na linguagem, parece ressoar com perfeição o teor desse inovador número da Review of International American Studies. Feito por eminentes colegas, intelectuais excelentes e cuidadosos como Alice Áurea Penteado Martha, Elizabete Sanches Rocha, Ricardo Portella de Aguiar, Virna Ligia Fernandes Braga e Márcio Roberto do Prado, essa edição da RIAS aborda aquele que talvez seja o valor mais importante nesse mundo sempre dilacerado pelos desumanos vendavais da História: nosso potencial para entender. A inefável palpabilidade da experiência corriqueira daquilo que Martin Heidegger descreveu como Sorge transcende os oceanos. O distante, o longínquo, torna-se estranhamente familiar quando visto através da delicada tessitura dos textos entrelaçados. A metáfora ondulante de Leminski, tão ‘têxtil’, captura-nos em sua teia cuidadosamente tecida: os lençóis, no fim das contas, remetem tanto ao contexto hídrico quanto à roupa de cama. Em ambos repousamos nossos amores, medos e desejos; enredadas entre os lençóis todas as aporias naufragam e se rendem. Os lençóis brancos tornam-se confidentes de nossas sensações inefáveis. Remorso e pánta reî. A raiva da conquista sem fim e o nascimento de mitologias que resistem à imposição de paradigmas (neo)coloniais. Nossos traumas de passados violentos, presentes esperançosos, futuros incertos. Nossa perplexidade frente à experiência quântica do real fundindo-se sem pudor no virtual para, no fim das contas, desafiar o continuum espaço-temporal. Nosso egoísmo e nossa solidariedade, nossa ganância e nossa responsabilidade cívica, nosso medo e nossa coragem. Nossos diálogos sobre intraduzibilidade. Tudo isso, visto através da lente do discurso do Brasil, costura a riquíssima textura do tecido cultural do nosso mundo, que, através desse discurso, torna-se tangível. O tom quente e aveludado do português brasileiro oferece um (pre)texto mais que bem-vindo para que todos nós possamos submergir em uma mútua, thoreauniana, experiência de escuta. Ouvindo atentamente, para não perder nenhuma palavra dita por um amigo do outro lado da lagoa. Uma lagoa muito maior, embora, talvez, muito menor do que a lagoa de Walden jamais poderia ser.

A RIAS, mais uma vez, oferece-nos uma chance de nos surpreendermos ouvindo. Existência encarnada: estética e essência casadas em um ato de poesia silenciosa que não se limita a comentar sobre os (e)ventos contra os quais a bondade humana pode ser o único escudo, farol e porto seguro. Abraçando o Brasil de Alice Áurea Penteado Martha, Elizabete Sanches Rocha, Ricardo Portella de Aguiar, Virna Ligia Fernandes Braga e Márcio Roberto do Prado, nós nos sintonizamos com um comprimento de onda para além da dialética de semelhança e diferença. Vemos nossos próprios rostos refletidos no espelho do mar, entre os lampejos de sol, virando as páginas, o leito do papel em branco. A poesia de Leminski tem muito a ver com ouvir o que sussurra do outro lado da lagoa: torna toda distância minúscula, ainda que reconheça sua importância. Tudo que ecoa na distância é um convite.

Vamos ouvir.

Distâncias Mínimas
um texto morcego
se guia por ecos
um texto texto cego
um eco anti anti anti antigo
um grito na parede rede rede
volta verde verde verde
com mim com com consigo
ouvir é ver se se se se se
ou se se me lhe te sigo?

Paweł Jędrzejko
Editor Asociado RIAS


DISTANCES

não possa tanta distância
deixar entre nós
este sol
que se põe entre uma onda
e outra onda
no oceano dos lençóis
Paulo Leminski

I did not choose to open this Ed/Note with Paulo Leminski’s poem because I am Polish; quite honestly, I did not do it because he was Brazilian either. I did this, because Leminski’s profoundly empathic sensitivity, pulsing in language, seems to ideally resonate with the tenor of this groundbreaking issue of the Review of International American Studies. Created by eminent Colleagues, excellent, caring intellectuals—Alice Áurea Penteado Martha, Elizabete Sanches Rocha, Ricardo Portella de Aguiar, Virna Ligia Fernandes Braga and Márcio Roberto do Prado, this issue of RIAS addresses perhaps the most important value in the world forever torn by inhuman gales of history: our potential to understand.

The unspeakable palpability of the commonplace experience of what Martin Heidegger described as Sorge transcends the oceans. The distant, the far off, becomes strangely familiar when seen through the gauze of the interweaving texts. Leminski’s undulating, ‘textile’, metaphor holds: lençóis, after all, may be translated as linens as well as sheets. We entrust both with our loves, fears and desires; between sheets aporias surrender. The white sheets become privy to our ineffable sensations. Remorse and panta rhei. The anger at the neverending conquest and the birth of mythologies that resist the imposition of (neo)colonial paradigms. Our traumas of violent pasts, hopeful presents, uncertain futures. Our bafflement at the quantum experience of the actual seemlessly fusing into the virtual to ultimately defy timespace. Our selfishness and our solidarity; our greed and our civic responsibility; our fear and our courage. Our dialogs over untranslatability. All this, seen through the lense of the discourse of Brazil, makes up the immensely rich texture of the cultural fabric of our world, which, through that discourse, is made tangible. The warm velvet of Brazilian Portuguese offers a most welcome pre-text for all of us to indulge in a mutual, Thoreauvian, experience of listening. Listening intently, not to miss out on any words spoken by a friend across the pond. A pond much larger, though perhaps much smaller, than Walden pond could ever be.

RIAS, again, gives us a chance to catch ourselves listening. Existence incarnated: aesthetics and essence married in an act of silent poetry that does not simply comment upon the (e)ventos, against which human kindness may be the only shield. Embracing the Brazil of Alice Áurea Penteado Martha, Elizabete Sanches Rocha, Ricardo Portella de Aguiar, Virna Ligia Fernandes Braga and Márcio Roberto do Prado, we attune ourselves to a wavelenght beyond the dialectics of similarity and difference. We see our own faces reflected in the mirror of the sea, among the flickers of the sun, turning pages, the once blank sheets of paper. Leminski’s poetry, is very much about listening across the pond: it renders all distance miniscule, yet acknowledges its importance. Reverberating in the distance is an invitation.
Let’s listen.

Distâncias Mínimas
um texto morcego
se guia por ecos
um texto texto cego
um eco anti anti anti antigo
um grito na parede rede rede
volta verde verde verde
com mim com com consigo
ouvir é ver se se se se se
ou se se me lhe te sigo?

Paweł Jędrzejko
RIAS Associate Editor

2016-05-15



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Figuring Atlantic Legacies: Impossible Archives, Missing Histories, Literary Counter-Memories

Cristina Iuli

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

Cristina Iuli
Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale,
Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici

Figuring Atlantic Legacies: Impossible Archives, Missing Histories, Literary Counter-Memories

Abstract: This paper considers how neo- or trans- Atlantic studies conceives of the Atlantic and its legacies in relation to the idea of the archive, that is, of a body of works related to traces of a trans-Atlantic American past, to its principle of organization and analysis for literary studies, and to the critical descriptions of American Cultures in the context of a long trans-Atlantic network. It addresses how recent works on critical race studies and decoloniality, on performativity and memory and on comparative circum-Atlantic spectrality frame an original way to address how the literary imagination challenges the historical voids produced by modern Western amnesia.

Keywords: trans-Atlantic; archive; critical memory; American literature

2017-06-30



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

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

US Literature and Italian Culture: A Long Romance (1763-1980)

Cristina Giorcelli

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

Cristina Giorcelli
University of Rome III
Italy

US Literature and Italian Culture: A Long Romance (1763-1980)

This paper attempts to point out the powerful insights and the spirit of adventure of the US literature in the Italian culture, that were sometimes manifested by Italian critics and publishers alike, from (roughly) the end of the eighteenth century to the end of the twentieth century. Today, the great US literary masterpieces are, by and large, part of the Italian heritage, as indicated by the many translations, scholarly books and intelligent, innovative essays that keep being produced and published.

2017-11-30



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Navigare...

Paweł Jędrzejko

Language: EN | Published: 15-11-2014 | Abstract

Paweł Jędrzejko
Institute of English Cultures and Literatures
Faculty of Philology
University of Silesia in Katowic
Poland

Navigare

Navigare necesse est, vivere non est necesse. This sentence, attributed to Pompeius Magnus, has inspired humankind for generations. Whether it is interpreted literally or metaphorically, the imperative expresses the absolute necessity of movement—irrespective of its motivation—as a condition of the existence of a future. Yet, navigation cannot be simply reduced to movement alone: after all, those who navigate differ from those who are adrift in their ability to actively control their course. As an intentional form of movement, navigation is, in a sense, synonymous to negotiation: to negotiate one’s way through rocks and shoals, one needs to simultaneously demonstrate stamina, sensitivity, and vast knowledge. The mastery of the vessel, its structure, handling, maintenance and maneuverability must go hand in hand with the knowledge of meteorology, trigonometry, cartography, and many other areas of applied science.
      Still, such knowledge alone may not suffice to make port safely. Ships need crews, and thus the navigator must negotiate the ship’s course in yet another dimension: pushing the limits of his or her fellow sailors to warrant the vessel’s survival, the navigator must know when and how to let go to avoid a catastrophe. On board, everyone needs everybody else because everybody depends on everyone else. Importantly, no seafarer should ever forget that a ship is not a discursive structure: it cannot be deconstructed, it cannot be relativized. Its continued existence depends on how well it is maintained and how efficiently it is managed.
      Navigation is thus is both a complex craft and a subtle art, it requires training, experience and an acute awareness of one’s own limitations and the limitations of those with whom one interacts. A navigator is first and foremost a reader and an interpreter: as the reader of the sea, the skies, the landmarks, the reader of the movement of the craft, he or she is also an interpreter of a multitude of languages and other forms of expression in his or her negotiations with people. Navigation, therefore, is a multifaceted challenge.
     Driven by our future projects, we are all in motion. Individually or in small crews, we constantly negotiate our courses, changing headings when necessary, and constantly learning. Still, the longer we sail the liquid expanse of our ever-changing reality, the more palpable our realization of our common condition becomes. Struggling, loving, worrying, joying, mourning, celebrating—we may live in different forecastles, but we really sail the same ship: a multilingual crew of navigators, more and more aware of the fact that we merely seem to be worlds apart. Eliminate the ‘l’ through learning and empathy—and the rest is negotiation of the shared space.
     And negotiate we must: of course, vivere non est necesse, but with us, or without us, the world/word will go on. Navigators ourselves, as teachers and thinkers we have a rare opportunity to train others in hope that the ship of humankind does not turn out to be the Ship of Fools or the Pequod, and that we do not end up in The Raft of the Medusa. We know that jumping ship is only possible when the ship has made port. Living our worrisome lives towards death, our final haven is always too far for us to consider any alternative to sailing on; responding to the universal thump that life democractically gives us, we may choose to follow Melville and negotiate the universal squeeze of the hand instead. Because navigare necesse est. 

Quod erat demonstrandum.

Paweł Jędrzejko
RIAS Associate Editor

2014-11-15



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Hugo Pratt and Milo Manara’s Indian Summer: An Italian “Source” for The Scarlet Letter

Giorgio Mariani

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

Giorgio Mariani
Università “Sapienza” di Roma
Italy

Hugo Pratt’s and Milo Manara’s Indian Summer:
An Italian “Source” for The Scarlet Letter

This paper examines the allusions of Milo Manara’s and Hugo Pratt’s graphic novel, Tutto ricominciò con un’estate indiana (Indian Summer), to Hawthorne’s novel The Scarlett Letter in a variety of ways. In particular, this paper argues that not only some of Pratt and Manara’s characters are very liberal, creative reinventions of Hawthorne’s figures—they might be seen as “spin-offs” of Hawthorne’s narrative—but in many ways Indian Summer is also thematically close to The Scarlet Letter.

2017-11-30



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Sicily, Not Italy

Claudio Salmeri

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

Claudio Salmeri
Faculty of Philology
University of Silesia in Katowice

Sicily, Not Italy

Abstract: Since the American continent became a part of the European imagination, it has always been seen to represent freedom. Especially after 1776, when the American democratic “experiment” giving rise to the United States proved durable, America became a source of social and political inspiration to generations of Europeans and non-Europeans alike. Unsurprisingly, also in the Italian context, the catalog of ways in which American values have been “translated into Italian” and adapted to Italy’s cultural space seems to be ever-growing. Yet, even though the cultural transfer dates back to Christopher Columbus, it is especially since the outbreak of World War II that Italy has been markedly influenced by intellectual and material values generated in the US. At some point, the fascination with the US soared to such a level that, incredibly as it may sound, one of the most iconic provinces of Italy would begin to imagine itself as the forty-ninth state of the US long before Alaska and Hawaii gained their present-day status: in Sicily, the American fascination seems never to abate.

2017-11-30



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

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

Dispersing the Field as “Reciprocal Healing”: A Response to Mena Mitrano “American Studies as Italian Theory”

Carlo Martinez

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

Carlo Martinez
Università "Gabriele d'Annunzio,"

Dispersing the Field as “Reciprocal Healing”: A Response to Mena Mitrano “American Studies as Italian Theory”

A Response to Mena Mitrano “American Studies as Italian Theory.” (In the present issue of RIAS).

Keywords: reflexivity, American studies as Italian Theory, literary theory, cultural theory, American Studies, the New Americanists

2017-06-30



Journal: Review of International American Studies

The Limitations of Theory: A Response to Ulrich Reichardt’s “Theories of the global, Global Literature, and American Literature in a Globalizing Age”

Marina Camboni

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

Marina Camboni
Dipartimento di Lingue Mediazione Lettere Filosofia
Studi Umanistici
UNIVERSITÀ DEGLI STUDI DI MACERATA

The Limitations of Theory: A Response to Ulrich Reichardt’s “Theories of the global, Global Literature, and American Literature in a Globalizing Age”

A Response to Ulrich Reichardt’s “Theories of the global, Global Literature, and American Literature in a Globalizing Age.” (In the present issue of RIAS).

Keywords: Limitations of theory, globalization, global literature, American literature

2017-06-30



Journal: Review of International American Studies

The Cultural Logic of America’s Pivot to the Asia-Pacific

Lei Zhang

Language: EN | Published: 15-11-2014 | Abstract

Lei Zhang
Renmin University of China
China

The past few years have witnessed the Obama administration’s rhetoric from ‘return to Asia-Pacific’ to pivoting/rebalancing toward Asia-Pacific’ under which a comprehensive package of political, economic and military moves has been implemented, signifying America’s endeavor to shift its focus from the Middle East to Asia-Pacific. However, the notion of ‘America’s Pacific Century’ by Hillary Clinton and the strategy of ‘America’s Re-balancing toward Asia-Pacific’ evade the persistently long history of America’s dominance in Asia and the Pacific and America’s cultural representation and construction of Asia-Pacific as one region. by reading Obama’s foreign tactics toward Asia-Pacific as literature and tracing the translation of America’s cultural literacy of this region into policy, this paper treats Obama’s pivoting/rebalancing toward Asia-Pacific as a cultural heritage and historical continuity rather than a gravity shift in America’s global strategy. That is, such political trope and actions need to be scrutinized from a historical and cultural perspective and the cultural logic behind deserves a careful examination. To do so, I would examine the hegemonic vision and free-trade imperialism, historically upheld and culturally shaped by America, in the very fashionable’ transpacific project promoted by U.S.-TPP (the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement) in the climate of globalization and transnational capitalism. Also, the discourse of sublimity and American Orientalism should be evaluated in the course of America’s ambitious political engagement and aggressive military deployment in this region. In conclusion, the cultural logic of the current U.S. foreign policy toward Asia-Pacific is inextricable from the Imperialist Imaginary, American Orientalism and American Sublime, all of which but not limited to, render this rebalancing strategy problematic. Rather than dealing with a rising Asia, particularly being anxious about China’s threat, America needs a critical self-reflexive examination of its imperialist culture which has shaped the Asia-Pacific Other and translated into its current foreign policy toward Asia and the Pacific.

2014-11-15



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Luciano Curreri and Michel Delville, Il grande ‘Incubo che mi son scelto.’ Prove di avvicinamento a Profondo Rosso (1975-2015)

Daniele Pomilio

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

Daniele Pomilio
University of Udine
Italy

Luciano Curreri e Michel Delville, Il grande ‘Incubo che mi son scelto.’ Prove di avvicinamento a Profondo Rosso (1975-2015), Piombino, Edizioni Il Foglio, 2015

The text offers a review of Il grande “Incubo che mi son scelto” - a collection of essays written in three different languages by a group of international scholars to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of Profondo Rosso, the cult movie by Dario Argento. The book contributes to the canonization of an Italian classic long neglected by those critics who still consider horror movies a low-rated subgenre comparable to B-movies.

2017-11-30



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Abandoning America the Better to Save American Studies: A Proposal

Markha Valenta

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

Markha Valenta
Radboud University Nijmegen

Abandoning America the Better to Save American Studies: A Proposal

Abstract: This paper argues that the most fruitful future for American Studies is one that subsumes it to global projects, critical sensibilities, political, intellectual and aesthetic fields greater than itself. Correspondingly, the prime referent of American Studies ought not to be a reified “America” but rather the paradoxes, tensions and contestations between democratic and inhumanely extractive relations that gave birth to and continue to shape the US/Americas, even as their reach and flow far exceed “America.” The US – as icon, social field and political actor – is as much the effect as the source of global forces. The most important of these today are ones that qualify, selectively dissolve, concentrate and reconfigure constitutive elements of the nation-state and political geography. Taking this seriously – as the US follows in the footsteps of other countries that have been producing one chauvinist strongman leader after another – means making American Studies not about either “America” or the US but about the world. One particularly promising avenue entails scholarship engaging and contributing to a radical, globalizing democratic culture that is, in fact, deeply aligned with some of the most important traditions and sensibilities in American Studies itself.

Keywords: Globalization, Democracy, Politics, America, American Studies

2017-06-30



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Introducing American Multiculturalism in Contexts: Views from Home and Abroad (edited by Sämi Ludwig)

RIAS Editors

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

A brief introduction of the 2017 collection American Multiculturalism in Contexts: Views from Home and Abroad edited by Sämi Ludwig, Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2017 (ISBN 10: 1-4438-1691-4; ISBN 13: 978-1-4438-1691-5).

2017-11-30



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

Building a Counterarchive: A Response to Cristina Iuli’s “Trans-Atlantic American Studies and the Transatlantic Pedagogies: Some Methodological Perspectives and Questions”

Ugo Rubeo

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

Ugo Rubeo
Dipartimento di Studi Europei, Americani e Interculturali
Università "Sapienza" di Roma
 
Building a Counterarchive: A Response to Cristina Iuli’s “Trans-Atlantic American Studies and the Transatlantic Pedagogies: Some Methodological Perspectives and Questions”

A Response to Cristina Iuli’s “Trans-Atlantic American Studies and the Transatlantic Pedagogies: Some Methodological Perspectives and Questions.” (In the present issue of RIAS).

Keywords: archive, counterarchive, memory, Trans-Atlantic Studies, Cristina Iuli

2017-06-30



Journal: Review of International American Studies

"Believe and tremble": A Note on Margaret Fuller's Roman Revolution

John Matteson

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

John Matteson
John Jay College of Criminal Justice
City University of New York
USA

“Believe and tremble”: A Note on Margaret Fuller’s Roman Revolution

Abstract: 1848, Europe’s year of revolutions, was also a revolutionary moment in the United States, for it witnessed the holding of the Seneca Falls Convention, the first formal gathering for the purpose of discussing the social and civil rights of women in America. A significant step on the road to Seneca Falls had taken place three years earlier when Margaret Fuller, the former editor of Emerson’s literary magazine The Dial, published Woman in the Nineteenth Century, an erudite and impassioned plea for female equality that had no precedent in American letters. Yet when the pioneering band of feminists gathered to ratify its Declaration of Sentiments at Seneca Falls, Fuller was thousands of miles away. The revolutionary movement to which she devoted her heart and toil that year was not the cause of American feminism, but the democratic revolution in Rome.

2017-11-30



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

All Paths Lead to Rome. Establishing an Italian American Archive of the Visual Arts of the late 1950s and early 1960s

Laura Blandino

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

Laura Blandino
University of Turin
Italy

All Paths Lead to Rome.
Establishing an Italian American Archive of the Visual Arts
of the late 1950s and early 1960s

This paper examines the role Rome played in the 1950s as an important outpost for the development of a distinct art scene, where the American and the Italian experience had the opportunity to blend with the artists gathering and sharing innovative ideas. It is a part of an ongoing research and it presents and sums up the early stage of the project which focuses mostly on archival sources and interviews with the central figures of this period. This paper, in particular, follows some of the members of this tran-Atlantic community, focusing in particular on the art galleries that fostered an international dialogue. Above all, this paper addresses the fundamental questions concerning whether this period could be considered as an “archive” of Italian and American art. It aims at demonstrating that, though not altogether free from contradictions and misconceptions, the period under study was very fertile in terms of the results of cross-cultural experience.

2017-11-30



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Agnotology and the Know-Nothing Party: Then and Now

Djelal Kadir

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

Belligerent ignorance has always proved strategic in the hegemonic goals of empire. The imperial history of the present is no exception. The Know-Nothing Party was founded in the USA in 1843, a pivotal year in America’s history of territorial expansion. It was disbanded as a national political party in the no-less pivotal year of 1860, a year in which patriotic gore would turn on itself as the grossly misnamed Civil War. Nonetheless, the political and ideological tenets of the Know-Nothing Party endure with global repercussions in the twenty-first century. The literary and historiographic diagnoses of this deliberate bellicosity founded on the cultivation of ignorance have ranged from poetic to critical discourse starting in the nineteenth century. Nonetheless, in the twenty-first century, what the Germans termed schrecklichkeit (“ruthless terror”) to describe the horrors of World War I continues to be visited on peoples and nations targeted by imperial hubris and economic rapacity through a cynical strategy of expediently manufactured ignorance.

Keywords: agnotology, doublespeak, empire, epistemology, hegemony, media, realpolitik, xenophobia.

2017-06-30



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

"This Town Is Against Gender": Bending Gender in Italian Culture

Valeria Gennero

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

Valeria Gennero
University of Bergamo
Italy

“This Town Is Against Gender”: Bending Gender in Italian Culture

This essay describes the misrepresentation of gender theory in Italian culture and politics, arguing that the violence of the attacks unleashed against gender in Italy constitutes a paradoxical example of the importance of a category of analysis that in today’s United States has come to be represented as tame (and even tedious).

2017-11-30



Journal: Review of International American Studies

“Things Change but the Amerecano Is Here to Stay”: America in Italian Popular Movies of the 1980s

Sostene M. Zangari

Language: EN | Published: 30-11-2013 | Abstract

Sostene M. Zangari
University of Milan
Italy

“Things Change but the Amerecano Is Here to Stay”:
America in Italian Popular Movies of the 1980s

The article focuses on a number of film comedies of the early 1980s. In different ways, the movies rearticulate the relationship between Italy and the United States. In showing how Italians can beat Americans at sports, how they can indulge in conspicuous consumption and finally how even the United States are not alien to provincialism and backwardness, these movies express a new mood of confidence that was widely felt in Italian society at the time. However, these movies came at a moment when the Italian film industry was on the verge of its decline. Starting from the 1980s, in fact, American movies and distributors would colonize the Italian movie market and depress the Italian movie industry.

2013-11-30



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Zones of Discomfort in US Latino Politics: When Sharing a Sea Does Not Suffice. What is a US Latino and what does US Latino politics look like?

Virginia R. Dominguez

Language: EN | Published: 15-11-2014 | Abstract

Virginia R. Dominguez
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA

What is a U.S. Latino and what does U.S. Latino politics look like? Moreover, what does space, location, and travel over sea, land, and air have to do with U.S. Latino life and politics? Over the years many people have come to anticipate certain things as characteristic of the Latino presence in the U.S. (either from media coverage or political analysis). Many concentrate on the large population of at least partial Mexican family origin. But what happens when different questions are asked and different locations are privileged? In this paper, I look at the southeast coast of the U.S. and not the central, western, or southwestern parts of the country, and I examine expectations of who lives in Florida, what their relation to ‘the U.S’. is, and what their sense of diaspora and nation-ness are. Typical and long-standing associations placing Cubans in southern Florida and Puerto Ricans in the New York metropolitan area are shown here to be more problematic than expected. This paper will show (a) that a noteworthy difference still exists between Puerto Rican and Cuban-American engagement with the U.S. but that it is full of paradoxes, (b) that much of the difference concerns racialization, and (c) that it may be most productive now and in the future to concentrate on the surprises, what I have elsewhere (Dominguez, American Anthropologist, September 2012) recently called the ‘zones of discomfort’, rather than our ‘comfort zones’ as students, scholars, and academics. Among the most provocative points made reframing the issue will be the idea that the Cuban diaspora has made more Cubans into Americans than the 1917 Act made Puerto Ricans Americans.

 

2014-11-15



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Introduction

Virginia R. Dominguez

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

Virginia R. Dominguez
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
USA

Walls, Material and Rhetorical:
Past, Present, and Future

Abstract: An introduction to this special issue of RIAS on walls, in light of President Trump’s proposal to build a tall and beautiful wall along the US-Mexico border and the multiple concerns it raises, this essay, like this issue of RIAS as a whole, provides comparative background on walls built at different times in the past and in different locations around the world, exploring their intended efficacy and questionable results, their transformation over time into sites of tourism, uncertain peace, and unstable truces.  Raising questions about both rhetoric and materiality, it suggests that the matter does not just concern Trump’s views and policies but, rather, much more general views in the US toward Mexico and Mexicans. The essay raises the specters of both racism and imperialism in the rhetoric and proposals coming from the White House, and it seeks to use contributions from scholars in Italy, Israel, Mexico, the U.S., Hungary, South Korea, Denmark, and Canada to put it all in broader perspective.

Keywords: Trump’s proposed wall, introduction, rhetoric, polls, comparisons

2018-06-30



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

RIAS Editorial Policy and RIAS  Style

RIAS Editors

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

Information for potential contributors.

2017-06-30



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Joyful Tanks Meet Gay Poet. Commemorating Liberation by ‘America’ in the Age of Global War on Terror

Kryštof Kozák

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

This paper explores cultural memory in U.S.-Czech relations as one of the critical factors influencing the bilateral relationship. It argues that it is possible and indeed desirable to move beyond the dominant post-1989 memory discourse of “America” in Czech context. After an introduction that links cultural memory to international relations, it will explore two different commemorative events relevant for U.S.-Czech ties. The first is the official Liberation Festival celebrating 70 years since the U.S. Army entered West Bohemia at the end of WWII. The event is heavy on military symbolism, celebrating U.S. military strength as well as U.S. role as a savior of weaker European countries. The second event is the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Allen Ginsberg being crowned the King of May during the Majales of 1965, a major student celebration in Prague at that time. This commemorative event highlighted aspects of U.S.-Czech cultural memory that are based on shared values of personal freedom as well as a critical stance towards the governing regime. By comparing and analyzing the two case studies, the conclusion offers new perspectives on potential commemorative activities related to U.S.-Czech ties.

2016-11-15



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Children and Youth: Disadvantaged and Disenfranchised by the Current U.S. Immigration Regime

Marietta Messmer

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

Marietta Messmer
University of Groningen
the Netherlands

Children and Youth: Disadvantaged and Disenfranchised by the Current U.S. Immigration Regime 

Abstract: Focusing on undocumented immigrant children who were brought to the US by their parents at a young age (the so-called 1.5 generation) and US citizen children living in irregular or mixed-status immigrant families, this essay argues that the current US immigration regime is too strongly adult-centered and in this way not only systematically disenfranchises immigrant children but also structurally disadvantages US citizen children living with at least one undocumented parent because the parent’s irregular status in practice tends to extinguish the child’s citizen status. Analyzing the US’s current immigration regime through the lens of under-age youth can thus function as an enabling prism to highlight the extent to which current US immigration laws and policies collide with both national and international legal practices and produce inherently contradictory or paradoxical situations; it can throw into relief the extent to which children (even US citizen children) lack sufficient agency and voice in current US immigration law; and it can foreground the deleterious consequences of the current immigration regime’s prioritization of deterrence and deportation for one of the most vulnerable segments of the US population for whom not even DACA can provide sufficient protection.

2018-12-30



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Preface: The “Other” Border and the Present Moment

Virginia R. Dominguez

Language: EN | Published: 13-02-2025 | Abstract | pp. 21-24

This thematic issue of RIAS explores the evolving dynamics of US-Canada relations amidst the backdrop of Donald Trump’s second presidential term and Justin Trudeau’s resignation as Canadian Prime Minister. The issue gains heightened relevance due to Trump’s provocative rhetoric, including threats of economic tariffs, discussions of annexation, and broader expansionist ambitions. The US-Canada border has historically been viewed as stable compared to the US-Mexico border, yet this assumption is being challenged. 
The issue examines how the US imagines Canada, often overlooking its Indigenous and multicultural realities, and interrogates  historical and contemporary border tensions. Featuring interdisciplinary perspectives from scholars in Canada, the US, and beyond, the issue contextualizes current political shifts by addressing historical policies on immigration, Indigenous rights, and cultural representation. Through its engagement with global American studies, this issue underscores the necessity of examining US-Canada relations from multiple international perspectives.

2025-02-13



Journal: Review of International American Studies

The Troubled Presence of the United States in Italy’s Political Culture: An Overview

Stefano Luconi

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

Stefano Luconi
University of Naples L’Orientale
Italy

The Troubled Presence of the United States in Italy’s Political Culture: An Overview

This brief article examines the impact of US values on Italy’s political system since the end of World War II. It argues that, during the Cold War, the allegiance of the sizeable Communist Party to the Soviet Union, on the one hand, and the Catholics’ distrust of Americanism, on the other, prevented US principles from shaping the nation’s republican institutions and playing a significant influence on Italian political culture, notwithstanding Washington’s efforts to spread its own philosophy in the country. It also suggests that, after the end of the West-versus-East ideological conflict, the two major party coalitions paid only lip service to US values and referred to them mainly out of expediency while jockeying for position in their struggle for political power.

2017-11-30



Journal: Review of International American Studies

RIAS Editorial Policy /  Stylesheet

RIAS Editors

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

Information for potential contributors to RIAS.

2017-11-30



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

Photo Essay: Re-Mapping the US-Mexico Border/lands

Alejandro Lugo

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

Alejandro Lugo 
Independent Scholar
USA

Photo Essay: Re-Mapping the US-Mexico Border/lands

Abstract: The United States-Mexico international border has been unilaterally re-mapped by the US government for almost three decades. A series of US congressional acts have intensified efforts to secure the border, inlcuding by building fences and walls. This photo essay presents images of the border barriers as well as borderland images. The fence or wall images are then intended, on my part, to be juxtaposed with borderland images that capture the social and political relations that manifest the complex ways the borderlands are being remapped through walls and their consequences—all in the context of the still so-called ‘American Dream.’ The goal of the photo essay is to help identify the different ways the remapping of the U.S.-Mexico border itself is being carried out, with or without the “great, beautiful wall” Donald Trump and his supporters are currently imagining and proposing.

Keywords: photography, US-Mexico border, imperialism, the everyday, photoessay

2018-06-30



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Introduction

Sonia Caputa , Anna Gonerko-Frej

Language: EN | Published: 15-11-2014 | Abstract

The 6^th World Congress of the International American Studies Association, ‘Oceans Apart: In Search of New Wor(l)ds’, in August 2013 attracted scholars from all over the world to Szczecin, a Polish harbor city with a long multicultural, multinational, and multilingual history. Offering their multidisciplinary perspectives, the participants answered the call of Paweł Jędrzejko (the initiator and organizer) for debate on ‘the transoceanic dynamics of history’. This publication is a collection of papers presented at the conference; the first volume centered on literary topics, and the present one takes a broader, cultural angle, with articles from the world of politics, literature, education, and sociology.

Read more

2014-11-15



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

Apocalypse Then: Visual Memory and the Transnational Afterlives of the Vietnam/American War

Paweł Jędrzejko

Language: EN | Published: 31-12-2025 | Abstract | pp. 5-25

This article examines the global afterlives of the Vietnam/American War through the intertwined lenses of photography, cinema, and Cold War cultural circulation. Beginning with Chris Niedenthal’s iconic 1981 photograph of an armored SKOT before Warsaw’s Kino Moskwa during martial law, the essay analyzes how a contingent act of witnessing became a visual allegory that re-situated the American War within Poland’s own history of repression. Drawing on Barthes’s concepts of studium and punctum, it argues that the image’s enduring force lies in the tension between the photographer’s embodied immediacy and the mythological readings later attached to it. Juxtaposed with globally circulating images such as Eddie Adams’s ­“Saigon Execution” and Nick Ut’s “Napalm Girl,” Niedenthal’s photograph becomes a case study in the transnational migration of wartime imagery and the asymmetries that structure public memory. The essay then turns to Vietnamese, Vietnamese-American, and Vietnamese-Polish literary and artistic archives, highlighting how these testimonies unsettle the dominance of American cinematic narratives that have long framed the war as an American psychological event rather than a Vietnamese historical catastrophe. The conclusion outlines a hemispheric and transoceanic framework for the Review of International American Studies, urging contributors to explore the war’s dispersed legacies as a shared, global archive of memory, representation, and resistance.

2025-12-31



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Abstracts and Notes on Contributors

RIAS Editors

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

Abstracts and biographical notes on the Authors of feature texts of the issue.

2017-11-30



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Presidential Address

Giorgio Mariani

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

Giorgio Mariani's Presidential Address at the 6th World Congress of the International American Studies Association, Szczecin, Poland, followed by the introduction of the central themes of the present issue.

2015-05-01



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

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

Call for Papers: Captive Minds. Norms, Normativities and the Forms of Tragic Protest in Literature and Cultural Practice

RIAS Editors

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

Call for papers for the 23rd International Conference of the Institute of English Cultures and Literatures University of Silesia in Katowice,
September 20–23rd, 2018,
Szczyrk, Poland

2017-11-30



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Mending Wall? The War over History in South Korea

Sangjun Jeong

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

Sangjun Jeong
Seoul National University
South Korea

Mending Wall?
The War over History in South Korea

Abstract: Until Korea was divided into North and South in 1945, it had maintained its territorial unity on the Korean peninsula for well over 1,000 years. Then, two young US officers drew an arbitrary line along the 38th parallel. Developing into a heavily militarized zone only several years later, ironically called the De-Militarized Zone (DMZ), that division has lasted for decades and into the present. Recently, several symbolic acts were performed in the zone and innovative plans were suggested to make the land strip into a peace park as a symbol of ideological reconciliation and ecological paradise. Yet to many Koreans, the zone is still inscribed as a wall permanently bisecting the peninsula not only physically but also culturally.  Through an analysis of Robert Frost’s poem “Mending Wall,” this article contemplates the divisions within South Korean society over the North –South divide as a war over the telling of history. This history, however told, must be understood alongside the sentiment of han, a Korean word loosely defined as frustration, anger, and sadness, something that has been shaped by centuries of suffering from wars, invasions, colonization, injustice, and exploitation. 

Keywords: Korean Peninsula, Political Divisions, History, War, Demilitarized Zone

2018-06-30



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Abstracts and Notes on Contributors

RIAS Editors

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

Abstracts and notes on the Authors of feature texts of the issue.

2017-06-30



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Masthead and Table of Contents

RIAS Editors

Language: EN | Published: 30-06-2017

2017-06-30



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Masthead and Table of Contents

RIAS Editors

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

Editorial pages and the list of contents of the issue.

2017-11-30



Journal: Review of International American Studies

The Transpacific Travel from India to Canada in Life of Pi by Yann Martel and Its Link to Transculturality and Transdisciplinarity

Patrick Imbert

Language: EN | Published: 15-11-2014 | Abstract

Patrick Imbert
Univeristy of Ottawa
Canada

The goal is to see how the transpacific travel of the immigrant Piscine from India to Canada in the best seller and Booker Prize novel Life of Pi allows us to revisit the dynamic of exclusion, and the idea of nation and place as well as to recognize alterity in perspectives emphasizing more transculturalism than multiculturalism. This anthropo-thematic analysis will lead us to a theoretical perspective based upon the comparison between trans-multi-interdisciplinary and trans-multi-intercultural perspectives and to establish links between the trans, the multi and the inter in the context of the legitimacy of symbolic and geographic displacements and of multiple encounters as they are linked to the Americas.

2014-11-15



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Masthead and Table of Contents / Páginas iniciales e conteúdo

RIAS Editors

Language: EN | Published: 15-05-2016 | Abstract

Masthead and Table of Contents (in Portuguese).

2016-05-15



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

Dracula as Inter-American Film Icon: Universal Pictures and Cinematográfica ABSA

Antonio Barrenechea

Language: EN | Published: 16-08-2020 | Abstract | pp. 259-277

My essay explores the vampire cinema of Hollywood and Mexico.  In particular, I trace the relationship between Universal Pictures as the progenitor of horror during the Great Depression and Cinematográfica ABSA's "mexploitation" practices.  The latter resulted in the first vampire film in Latin America--"El vampiro" (1957).  Rather than strengthening separatist national cinemas, the unintended consequences of genre film production make this a case of inter-American scope.

2020-08-16



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

RIAS Editorial Policy / Stylesheet

RIAS Editors

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

Information for potential contributors to RIAS.

2018-06-30



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Introduction: Culture, Politics, and the Canada-US Border

Jasmin Habib , Jane Desmond

Language: EN | Published: 01-02-2025 | Abstract | pp. 25-48

In this thematic issue of RIAS, we address a number of issues about the border, drawing on perspectives from multiple disciplines in the social sciences and humanities, from anthropology to political science, economics, and literature, and including the works of scholars based in Canada, the US, and Germany. Their works engage issues of Indigeneity, Africandescendant populations, Franco-Canadians, Gender and Race, Colonialisms, and the more-than-human world. Topics include hunting, cross-border Indigenous relations, treaties, oil protests, immigration, domestic workers, historical memory, creative fiction, and the notions of borders as textures, zones, lines, connections, and cultural imaginaries. Our emphasis on combining social science and humanities approaches is essential to this work. Much previous work on the Canada-US border has tended to focus either on political/legal issues or on literary/media studies. Instead, we strive instead to bring multiple disciplinary perspectives into conversation and include artistic/visual
work. This volume thus contributes to a broader project than one that would center on nationalist interests—either the US or Canada’s—and rather brings to the study of bordering practices and border theory a continental approach, one that attends to the places and spaces that are and/or become the border.

2025-02-01



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

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

“All-Electric” Narratives: Time-Saving Appliances and Domesticity in American Literature, 1945–2020 by Rachele Dini (A Book Review)

Mena Mitrano

Language: EN | Published: 15-06-2022 | Abstract | pp. 143-148

Filomena Mitrano's review of  Rachele Dini's book “All-Electric” Narratives: Time-Saving Appliances and Domesticity in American Literature, 1945–2020, Bloomsbury, 2022.

2022-06-15



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Masthead and Table of Contents

RIAS Editors

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

Masthead and table of contents of the issue.

2018-12-30



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

Introduction

Molly Geidel , J. D. Schnepf

Language: EN | Published: 15-06-2022 | Abstract | pp. 17-29

The recent intensification of gendered surveillance in the United States underscores how surveillance technologies continue to abet criminalization domestically while enabling the US to renew orientalist narratives of rescue with respect to its military interventions abroad. Building on the 2015 Feminist Surveillance Studies volume edited by Rachel E. Dubrofsky and Shoshana Amielle Magnet, this issue seeks to make a number of new interventions in the study of surveillance and gender. First, it calls for the incorporation of scholarship that approaches the US-led war on terrorism through the lens of gender and sexuality to develop a more refined understanding of how surveillance practices and contemporary imperial imaginaries overlap and inform one another. Second, it reconsiders the frame of carceral feminism by unpacking some of the assumptions around “carcerality” and “feminism.” Finally, it builds on the premise that existing black feminist scholarship has for some time theorized surveillance’s relation to gendered oppression. To do so, it considers how critical framings of hypervisibility and invisibility help us make sense of the racialized, gendered forms of surveillance deployed across the decades: from the mid-twentieth-century national security state to the contemporary neoliberal postfeminist regimes of the twenty-first century.

2022-06-15



Journal: Review of International American Studies

RIAS Editorial Policy/Stylesheet

RIAS Editors

Language: EN | Published: 01-05-2015

2015-05-01



Journal: Review of International American Studies

RIAS EDITORIAL POLICY / STYLESHEET

RIAS Editors

Language: EN | Published: 15-11-2015

2015-11-15



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Treading the Battlefields of Memory: “Vietnam” and “America” Fifty Years After

Justin Michael Battin , Giacomo Traina

Language: EN | Published: 31-12-2025 | Abstract | pp. 27-35

Marking fifty years since the Fall/Liberation of Saigon, this issue of Review of International American Studies revisits the intertwined histories and memories of “Vietnam” and “America” through the lens of literature, visual culture, and transnational exchange. The introduction reflects on the enduring resonance of Hubert van Es’s 1975 rooftop photograph—an image that has come to symbolize both the end of the Vietnam War and the beginning of a global struggle over its remembrance. As state-sanctioned and diasporic narratives continue to diverge, Vietnam’s postwar landscape and its global diaspora reveal competing modes of memorialization: triumph and loss, exile and belonging, ideology and affect. The featured contributions trace how writers and artists—among them Marcelino Truong, Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai, Lan Cao, and Viet Thanh Nguyen—reconfigure these contested memories through narrative, philosophy, and art. The issue underscores how the “American War” must be reframed as a Vietnamese and transnational experience, extending beyond national or temporal boundaries. Engaging with the “transnational turn” in American Studies (Fishkin 2004), it argues that the afterlives of the war persist in literature’s ongoing negotiation of trauma, identity, and reconciliation—revealing “Vietnam” and “America” as interwoven cultural constructs on the ever-shifting battlefields of memory.

2025-12-31



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Masthead and Table of Contents

RIAS Editors

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

Editorial pages and the list of contents of the issue.

2018-06-30



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Latin America in Focus

German A. Duarte , Justin Michael Battin

Language: EN | Published: 31-12-2022 | Abstract | pp. 19-23

A key distinction of Review of International American Studies is its commitment to the notion that the Americas are a hemispheric and transoceanic communicating vessel. This angle provides a unique path to de-center the American Studies discipline, which has become tantamount to studies of the United States. This angle also expands the discipline beyond its traditional literary roots, inviting critical investigations into other forms of communicative media, such as cinema, television, and photography. Informed and inspired by this conceptualization of the discipline, this issue of RIAS is composed of several pieces specifically focused on Latin America, each of which employs a unique interpretive approach of visual media to, collectively and comprehensively, articulate how this multilayered cultural landscape manifests in our contemporary social imaginary.

The arbitrary delineation of the globe through the notion of ‘the western world’ has, seemingly, transformed the Latin American continent a no man’s land. In its vast extension, this part of the planet seems condemned to exist between two worlds. Despite being part of the western hemisphere, and despite its deep Catholic tradition, this vast region is surprisingly excluded as a member of ‘the west.’ Yet, it was neither placed in ‘the east,’ nor on the other side of the wall, when the world was politically, culturally, and economically divided by the Iron Curtain. This land’s perpetual homelessness might be due to its consistent political instability, to the weakness of some of its democracies, or even its colonial past, one that bears no relation to the Commonwealth of Britain, a belonging that placed Australia in the topos of the West. These reasons, in addition to others, have fostered an understanding of Latin America as being generally alien to the ‘western world.’

Being a no man’s land, deprived of a hemisphere, and broadly unintelligible by the general imaginary of the western cultural industry, this continent, populated by almost 700-million people, was traditionally subjected to stereotypes formulated during the twentieth century, and that remained unchangeable in this new millennium. Latin America has become, for the global imaginary, a place of military juntas, a vast lowland displaying desertic features, a tropical yet savage jungle, a poverty-stricken favela, and a land fought over by romantic revolutionarios.

Certainly, the question remains if the obsolete model ‘western world,’ the also obsolete ‘third world,’ or ‘periphery,’ and even the in vogue ‘global south’ would be able to embrace and reproduce a closer image of this heterogenous and vast continent, and by extension if this generalization is able to denote a set of multiple series of social diversities. We doubt it. This doubt encouraged us to gather diverse scholars from diverse academic disciplines to contribute to this issue of Review of International American Studies. And this doubt, which was at a first glance only intuitive, brough us to avoid the topic of identity and representation as the main theme for this journal’s issue. Our initial plan was to structure the series of contributions on some problematics relating to the photographic medium, a medium that is widely regarded as exerting an objective representation of reality, yet also places the pictorial representation on an undetermined semiotic field. The choice of photography was also a choice of intuition that we quickly abandoned since, in our twenty-first century mediascape, photography represents only one element of a fast and global visual stream that shapes and refashions the collective imaginary of the Latin American continent. Thus, we expanded our scope to include other media such as films, paintings, and any visual-oriented human expression that could provide insights on the complex and chaotic mechanism that formulates and constructs the imaginary on the turbulent entity that we call society. 

2022-12-31



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Wall Art and the Presence of Absence

Jasmin Habib

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

Jasmin Habib
University of Waterloo
Canada

Wall Art and the Presence of Absence

Abstract: This photoessay takes the reader on a walking tour through Wadi Nisnas, Haifa, Israel, where art appears on walls and where walls become art. Using de Certeau, Jasmin Habib reflects on the way that these pieces represent the political and cultural histories of Palestinian displacement, a politics of belonging as well as their return.  The artists’ imaginary of coexistence is set in stark contrast to the nativism that marks the world outside of these walls.

Keywords: Palestinians; wall art; photoessay; coexistence, de Certeau; Haifa

2018-06-30



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Decolonizing Vietnamese Literature: Voices from Within. An Interview with Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai, Author of Dust Child (2023)

Quế Mai Phan Nguyễn , Mariya Doğan

Language: EN | Published: 31-12-2025 | Abstract | pp. 65-77

This interview features Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai, an acclaimed Vietnamese author, poet, and translator, whose works explore themes of historical memory, the aftermath of war, and the resilience of family. The conversation delves into Nguyễn’s literary journey and her dedication to decolonizing narratives about Việt Nam. She discusses her novels, The Mountains Sing and Dust Child, both of which weave historical fiction with personal and national history. The interview highlights her approach to storytelling, blending Vietnamese traditions, autobiographical elements, and poetry, and her commitment to amplifying underrepresented voices. This discussion provides an insight into her creative process and the enduring relevance of her work.

2025-12-31



Journal: Review of International American Studies

“Down Beside where the Waters Flow": Reclaiming Rivers for American Studies (Introduction)

Manlio Della Marca , Uwe Lübken

Language: EN | Published: 30-09-2021 | Abstract | pp. 13-24

Over the past three decades, rivers have become a fascinating and popular subject of scholarly interest, not only in the field of environmental history, where river histories have developed into a distinct subgenre, but also in the emerging field of environmental humanities. In this scholarship, rivers have often been reconceptualized as socio-natural sites where human and non-human actors interact with the natural world, generating complex legacies, path dependencies, and feedback loops. Furthermore, rivers have been described as hybrid “organic machines,” whose energy has been utilized by humans in many different ways, including the harvesting of both hydropower and salmon. Indeed, as several environmental historians have noted, in many regions of the world, watercourses have been transformed by technology to such an extent that they increasingly resemble enviro-technical assemblages rather than natural waterways. Rivers have also been discussed through the lens of “eco-biography,” a term coined by Mark Cioc in his influential monograph on the Rhine River, a book informed by “the notion that a river is a biological entity—that it has a ‘life’ and ‘a personality’ and therefore a ‘biography’.” Quite surprisingly, despite this “river turn” (to use Evenden's phrase), rivers have played a marginal role in recent American Studies scholarship. To address this gap, this issue of RIAS brings together scholars from different disciplines, countries, and continents to analyze a wide variety of river experiences, histories, and representations across the American hemisphere and beyond. Hence the title of this volume, Rivers of the Americas, should be seen as both an allusion to the Rivers of America book series (a popular series of sixty-five volumes, each on a particular US river, published between 1937 and 1974) and as a reminder of the still untapped potential of hemispheric, transnational, and comparative modes of critical engagement with rivers in American Studies.

2021-09-30



Journal: Review of International American Studies

The Land of Heathens versus the Land of Liberty. Mark Twain’s The Innocents Abroad and Ubeydullah Efendi’s Travels

S. Bilge Mutluay Çetintaş

Language: EN | Published: 27-06-2024 | Abstract | pp. 67-86

Mark Twain’s (1835-1910) literary travelogue, The Innocents Abroad (1869), remarks on and/or subverts previously established interpretations of places and objects. Twain’s adopted persona allows him to assume the double role of a fool and an intellectual, simultaneously, by deploying a peculiar type of humor. By openly distaining and emphasizing certain aspects of his travel experiences, Twain’s narrator seems naïve on one hand, but a savvy social critic on the other. Twain’s account of İstanbul (Constantinople) streets, drinking Turkish coffee, and Turkish bath experience become farcical descriptions of the Ottoman Empire. His choice of words—such as “the rustiest old barn in heathendom”—also confirms his ideological viewpoint of Ottoman lands. Unlike Twain, Ubeydullah Efendi (1858-1937), who travels in the opposite direction, to the United States from the Ottoman Empire, paints a positive picture of American urban life. He spends most of his time at the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893, which he describes in detail. One could argue that since the Ottoman Empire was on the cusp of becoming the Turkish Republic, Ubeydullah Efendi’s descriptions of his American voyage were naturally written in a progressive tone. Yet, a closer inspection reveals subtle criticism, as well as an awareness of how others viewed him as an Ottoman gentleman. Thus, his portrayals do not stem from internalized Orientalism; rather, they are the result of informed observations based on his cultural experiences. Both Mark Twain’s and Ubeydullah Efendi’s journalistic travel accounts to each other’s countries cannot be separated from the ideological and rhetorical dimensions of the era’s travel writing. This presentation will focus on both narrators’ approach and gaze in a comparative manner. While Twain portrays Ottoman lands in a hostile or condescending manner, with descriptors such as “filthy,” “brutish,” “ignorant,” or “unprogressive,” Ubeydullah Efendi’s accounts are not so one dimensional. Twain’s peculiar humor and narrative attitude were obviously influenced by the political events of the time, and his views were tainted by his orientalist approach. Conversely, Ubeydullah Efendi’s straightforward depictions, and occasional humor, are connected to his personality and offer a far more realistic portrayal of late nineteenth-century America.

2024-06-27



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

America’s Automobile: Affection or Obsession, Myth or Reality?

David Arthur Jones

Language: EN | Published: 19-12-2021 | Abstract | pp. 25-55

Mythology plays an important part of the role of the American automobile, less so in terms of its primary function that is transportation, more so in terms of an ancillary purpose: its metaphorical significance to both owner or operator and the onlooking public. Across much of the 20th century and continuing now into the third decade of the 21st century, the American automobile has undergone many design changes that have buttressed its metaphorical significance: become streamlined, gained then lost then partially regained size together with a colorful exterior, and in the 21st century become focused on an array of interior gadgets, some cast into hibernation because of an electronic chip scarcity resulting from trade wars and the Covid-19 pandemic. Many Americans seem to have almost become besotted by automobiles, including their own and those driven by others, because in some respects the American automobile has come to define its driver. Automobiles in the United States that are visually appealing symbolize affluence, material success, preoccupation with speed, including the rapid pace of social change, as well as, at least arguably, a lesser regard for protecting the environment. On balance, in the mindset of many Americans, the automobile is larger than life, “a mode of signification, a form” in contrast to a mere machine. Change in automotive design has been heralded as the talisman of a new generation of drivers. However, what is cause and what is effect? American automobiles conflate myth and reality; that which is together with that which might be sometime temporal frustrations with the American Dream.

2021-12-19



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Abstracts and Notes on Contributors

RIAS Editors

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

Abstracts and biographical notes on the Authors of feature texts of the issue.

2018-06-30



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

Contestations Over Sacred Spaces in North America

Lucie Kýrová , Nathaniel R. Racine

Language: EN | Published: 28-08-2023 | Abstract | pp. 15-30

The article serves as an introduction to the present issue, offering the reader an insight into the Editors' overall concept, as well as an overview of the contents of the issue's "Features" section.   

2023-08-28



Journal: Review of International American Studies

“The Justest of All Views”: Traveling to Mardi and Beyond with Agnes D. Cannon

Paweł Jędrzejko

Language: EN | Published: 22-12-2024 | Abstract | pp. 5-42

Herman Melville’s Mardi emerges as a pivotal work that bridges the domains of narrative realism and philosophical allegory, reflecting the writer’s evolving artistic ambitions and his quest for truth. This article
examines Melville’s exploration of the poet’s role and literature’s potential as a medium for conveying profound philosophical insights. Drawing on Agnes D. Cannon’s critical framework and Melville’s marginalia, 
the analysis highlights how the writer constructs a multidimensional vision of the artist as entertainer, mouthpiece, interpreter, visionary, savior, and mythmaker. Melville’s poetic philosophy integrates Romantic notions of art’s transformative power with a critical stance on truth, emphasizing the poet’s duty to grapple with both beauty and the sublime while navigating the moral and existential ambiguities of human existence.
By reimagining narrative as an epistemological journey, Melville challenges his contemporaries’ aesthetic expectations and affirms literature’s capacity to inspire intellectual and spiritual growth. This article situates Mardi within 19th-century debates on aesthetics and truth, shedding light on Melville’s literary aspirations and his enduring contributions to the philosophy of art.

2024-12-22



Journal: Review of International American Studies

RIAS Editorial Policy / Stylesheet

RIAS Editors

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

Information for future Contributors to the Review of International American Studies

2018-12-30



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Notas biográficas/Notes on Contributors

RIAS Editors

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

Notes on Contributors in Spanish and in English.

2015-11-15



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Masthead and Table of Contents

RIAS Editors

Language: EN | Published: 15-11-2014

2014-11-15



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Abstracts/ Resúmenes

RIAS Editors

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

Abstracts of feature articles in English

2015-11-15



Journal: Review of International American Studies

RIAS Editorial Policy /  Stylesheet

RIAS Editors

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

Information for future Contributors concerning the submissions policy and the new RIAS stylesheet.

2016-11-15



Journal: Review of International American Studies

On Voyaging and "Bildung" (The Case of Wellingborough/Redburn)

Paweł Jędrzejko

Language: EN | Published: 27-06-2024 | Abstract | pp. 5-27

Paweł Jędrzejko’s reflection on the career trajectories of Americanists from Eastern Bloc countries, including his own, spurs off his autoethnographic account of how sea sailing in Poland became a gateway to the world, leading to his involvement in Melville Studies. His chance encounter with the Polish training ship Zawisza Czarny in the Baltic Sea, marking the beginning of his Americanist journey, becomes a point of departure for a literary analysis, in which the author draws parallels between his own youthful experiences and those of Melville’s character Wellingborough Redburn. Exploring the character’s transatlantic journey in the context of the autobiographical characteristics of the genre of bildungsroman, Jędrzejko analyzes Redburn’s journey from
naïve boyhood to mature identity, emphasizing Melville’s use of Redburn’s voyage to Liverpool as a mirror of his own confrontation with reality, the collapse of inherited ideals, and the development of independent self-awareness. The author highlights the importance of direct (unmediated) experience in the shaping of one’s self-awareness, and poses questions concerning the reliability of narratives as “guides to reality.” By reflecting on the transformative nature of travel and the epistemological shifts it entails, Jędrzejko integrates his personal narrative with broader philosophical inquiries into identity formation, the fallibility of inherited knowledge, and the existential challenges faced by individuals in their pursuit of truth. The text serves as a meditation on the fluidity of discourse and the necessity of embracing uncertainty and impermanence as inextricable determinants of the human condition.

2024-06-27



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

Knights Across the Atlantic: The Knights of Labor in Britain and Ireland by Steven Parfitt

(A Book Review)

György Tóth

Language: EN | Published: 09-09-2019 | Abstract | pp. 151-156

György Tóth's review of Steven Parfitt's Knights Across the Atlantic: The Knights of Labor in Britain and Ireland. Studies in Labour History, 7. Liverpool
University Press, 2016.

2019-09-09



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

A Note from the New Book Review Editor

Manlio Della Marca

Language: EN | Published: 08-09-2019 | Abstract | pp. 129-130

Starting with this issue, our journal will include a completely redesigned Book Review Section, featuring three to five high-quality reviews by leading and emerging scholars from around the world. As for the selection of the books to be reviewed, even though I am a literary scholar, it is my intention as Review Editor to consider books that engage with the U.S. and the Americas as a hemispheric and global phenomenon from a wide range of perspectives and disciplines, including anthropology, art history, and media studies.

2019-09-08



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

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

Masthead and Table of Contents

RIAS Editors

Language: EN | Published: 15-05-2014

2014-05-15



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Masthead and Table of Contents

RIAS Editors

Language: EN | Published: 01-05-2015

2015-05-01



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Masthead and Table of Contents

RIAS Editors

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

Front pages and the table of contents of the issue.

2016-11-15



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Abstracts and Notes on Contributors

RIAS Editors

Language: EN | Published: 15-11-2014 | Abstract

Abstracts of feature articles and Notes on Contributors in the order of appearance.

2014-11-15