After American Studies: special topics panel proposal for MLA 97

Much recent theoretical discussion of American literature and American studies has attributed an intellectual, political, and cultural bankruptcy to traditional understandings of American studies. This panel solicits discussion of and/or contributions to recent theories of American studies, especially postnational, postcolonial, and transnational accounts of the Americanist field-imaginary. What are the political, pedagogical, and intellectual advantages or limitations of a radically deconstructed "American" cultural historiography? Has the pluralist model of American studies exhausted its critical potential? Where is, or is there, the United States in a "remapped" North American cultural field? All approaches--interventionary, skeptical, and pedagogical--to these sets of questions are welcome. All inquiries will receive a response.

500-750 word proposals by March 15 to:

Bryce Traister
Department of English
University of Western Ontario
London, Ont. N6A 3K7, Canada

or email: btraiste@julian.uwo.ca