Blackwell Reference Online

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American Studies is a field in crisis, divided between its original nationalist focus on the United States and new interests in the interrelations of the different nations and cultures of the western hemisphere. Some scholars have defended the traditional emphasis of American Studies on the United States, because such an interdisciplinary project is sufficiently complex as to require its own methodology and national boundaries ( Ickstadt 2002 : 543–7). Other scholars contend that the multicultural and multi-ethnic US cannot be understood adequately without considering its transnational sources, hemispheric interests, and global relations ( Rowe 2002 : xiii–xxviii). Intellectuals advocating the former position insist that American Studies should not try to cover too many subjects and thus complicate the proper object of study. Scholars advocating the broader contexts of the field contend that American Studies should lead the way in developing new methods of inquiry better suited to global, transnational conditions. In many different fields, the national paradigm for knowledge is no longer an unquestioned universal; the crisis in American Studies is simply one more example of the epistemological problems facing Comparative Literature, American Literature, English, French, German, Italian, and History. Most of these fields developed their scholarly protocols as higher education in ... log in or subscribe to read full text