Author Description

America Where? Transatlantic Views of the United States in the Twenty-first Century gathers essays by distinguished American Studies scholars from both sides of the Atlantic. The articles address changing representations of ‘America’ in their many and mutual transnational exchanges, both in the Americas and in Europe. Atlanticism, neo-liberalism, transnationalism, borders, racism, prisons, labor, war and intercultural relations compose the range of approaches to be found in this book. While paying close attention to the geopolitical, social, and cultural fabric of the United States as a nation in its intercultural, cross-border time-spaces, this work brings to question the location of ‘America’ in our time. How does this ‘America’ – both the material, secular nation in the economic and political world, and the mythical, sacred, and spiritual entity, enormously charged with symbolic power – present itself today in the Western and Eastern Hemispheres? The book’s provisional answer is that the most productive «America» is to be found in the conversations that the cultures of the United States encourage and engage in, both nationally and internationally.