John Carlos Rowe

Nineteenth-Century United States Literary Culture and Transnationality

This essay originated as a presentation in the session devoted to this special topic at the 2001 MLA convention.

Highway Robbery: "Indian Removal," The Mexican-American War, and American Identity in The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta

Representatives of their nation these gold-seeking Californian Americans were; yet it remains true, and is, under the circumstances, a very natural result, that the American had nowhere else, save perhaps as conqueror in Mexico itself, shown so blindly and brutally as he often showed in early California, his innate intolerance for whatever is stubbornly foreign. Josiah Royce, California from the Conquest in 1846 to the Second Vigilance Committee in San Francisco: A Study of American Character (1886)

Exceptional State: Contemporary U.S. Culture and the New Imperialism

Exceptional State analyzes the nexus of culture and contemporary manifestations of U.S. imperialism. The contributors, established and emerging cultural studies scholars, define culture broadly to include a range of media, literature, and political discourse. They do not posit September 11, 2001 as the beginning of U.S. belligerence and authoritarianism at home and abroad, but they do provide context for understanding U.S. responses to and uses of that event. Taken together, the essays stress both the continuities and discontinuities embodied in a present-day U.S. imperialism constituted through expressions of millennialism, exceptionalism, technological might, and visions of world dominance. The contributors address a range of topics, paying particular attention to the dynamics of gender and race. Their essays include a surprising reading of the ostensibly liberal movies Wag the Do g and Three Kings , an exploration of the rhetoric surrounding the plan to remake the military into a high-tech force less dependent on human bodies, a look at the significance of the popular Left Behind series of novels, and an interpretation of the Abu Ghraib prison photos. They scrutinize the national narrative created to justify the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the ways that women in those countries have responded to the invasions, the contradictions underlying calls for U.S. humanitarian interventions, and the role of Africa in the U.S. imperial imagination. The volume concludes on a hopeful note, with a look at an emerging anti-imperialist public sphere. Contributors . Omar Dahbour, Ashley Dawson, Cynthia Enloe, Melani McAlister, Christian Parenti, Donald E. Pease, John Carlos Rowe, Malini Johar Schueller, Harilaos Stecopoulos

Henry James and Globalization

The essay analyzes Henry Jamess relevance to recent debates regarding globalization in three different ways: 1) Jamess responses to the modernization process anticipate our concerns with one-way globalization; 2) Jamess criticisms of the relationship between imperial expansion and second-stage modernization in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; 3) the commodification of Henry James as a high-cultural writer in the modern and postmodern periods. The essay examines works from throughout Jamess career, including fiction and nonfiction.

Mao II and the War on Terrorism

Oh! the only part of life that matters is contemplation. When everybody understands that as clearly as I do, they will all start writing. Life will become literature. Half of human kind will devote itself to reading and studying what the other half has written. And contemplation will be the main business of the day, preserving it from the wretchedness of actual living. And if one part of human kind rebels and refuses to read the other half ’s effusions, so much the better. Everyone will read himself instead; and people’s lives will have a chance to repeat, to correct, to crystallize themselves, whether or no they become clearer in the process. . . . I mean to take up writing again. —Italo Svevo, ‘‘An Old Man’s Confessions’’ ()

A Concise Companion to American Studies

List of Contributors. Acknowledgments. Introduction (John Carlos Rowe). Part I Foundations and Backgrounds. 1. Puritan Origins (Philip F. Gura). 2. Cultural Anthropology and the Routes of American Studies,1851 1942 (Michael A. Elliott). 3. The Laboring of American Culture (MichaelDenning). 4. Is Class an American Study? (Paul Lauter). 5. Religious Studies (Jay Mechling). 6. American Languages (Joshua L. Miller). Part II Ethnic Studies and American Studies. 7. Blood Lines and Blood Shed: Intersectionality andDifferential Consciousness in Ethnic Studies and American Studies(George Lipsitz). 8. Native American Studies (John Gamber). 9. The Locations of Chicano/a and Latino/a Studies (RichardT. Rodriguez). 10. African American Studies (Jared Sexton). 11. Reckoning Nation and Empire: Asian American Critique(Lisa Lowe). Part III The New American Studies. 12. Western Hemispheric Drama and Performance (HarilaosStecopoulos). 13. Postnational and Postcolonial Reconfigurations of AmericanStudies in the Postmodern Condition (Donald Pease). 14. Culture, US Imperialism, and Globalization (John CarlosRowe). 15. Sugar, Sex, and Empire: Sarah Orne Jewett s TheForeigner and the Spanish-American War (RebeccaWalsh). 16. The Rapprochement of Technology Studies and American Studies(David E. Nye). 17. The World Wide Web and Digital Culture: New Borders, NewMedia, New American Studies (Matthias Oppermann). Part IV Problems and Issues. 18. Regionalism (Kevin R. McNamara). 19. The West and Manifest Destiny (Deborah L.Madsen). 20. Canadian Studies and American Studies (AlyssaMacLean). 21. The US University under Siege: Confronting AcademicUnfreedom (Henry A. Giroux). 22. Popular, Mass, and High Culture (ShelleyStreeby). Index.

The Cultural Politics of the New American Studies

Rights

The Politics of the Uncanny: Newman's Fate in The American

Everything was over, and he too at last could rest. . . . The most unpleasant thing that had ever happened to him had reached its formal conclusion, as it were; he could close the book and put it away. He leaned his head for a long time on the chair in front of him; when he took it up he felt that he was himself again. Somewhere in his mind, a tight knot seemed to have loosened. He thought of the Bellegardes; he had almost forgotten them. —-Henry James, The American, 111

Areas of Concern: Area Studies and the New American Studies

American Studies has thus far avoided the heated debates concerning the restructuring of area studies prompted by dramatic changes in the geopolitical and economic maps as a consequence of globalization. In view of the US role in the economic, political, and cultural changes produced by that globalization, we might expect that American Studies would be as fiercely contested in its disciplinary borders as East Asian, Middle Eastern, Southeast Asian, Soviet, and Latin American Studies, to mention only a few of the areas established by post-World War II scholarship and facing dramatic challenges since the 1970s and later the aftermath of Soviet decolonization.

Visualizing Barack Obama

The Obama presidential campaign certainly used the internet, including its visual imaging and streaming video capabilities, to great effect in the recent primaries and successful presidential campaign. The ‘Obama Is Hope’ image was also extremely effective in advertising Obama’s commitment to cultural diversity and the effort to overcome racial and ethnic divisions in the United States. In his first ‘100 days’ as President, Obama created a one-way ‘Facebook’ page, retained his private Blackberry amid much publicity regarding possible breaches of its security, and otherwise announced himself as the most technologically sophisticated of any US president in history. The ‘visibility’ of Barack Obama is not entirely a consequence of new digital, internet technologies; it relies on many traditional media, including the theatricality of political speeches, the body language (especially facial expressions) he employed in the Presidential Debates, his self-deprecating humor (such as he employed while giving the Commencement Address at Arizona State in May in response to Arizona State’s refusal to award him an honorary degree) and his fashion statements. As a candidate for the presidency, Obama made the news for not wearing the conventional American flag lapel-pin, but then appeared with one that remained on his lapel for the rest of the campaign. Once elected, he allowed himself to be photographed in the Oval Office without his jacket, prompting criticism from former President George W. Bush regarding the ‘respect’ Obama ought to show for the ‘office’. And, of course, Michelle Obama’s fashion statements are based on her support of various fashion designers from outside the usual world of haute couture, especially ethnic minority designers whose fashions she has worn to considerable publicity. Much of the visibility of Barack Obama has to do with the visualization of the Obama family, with photography and video of the romantic couple and of the family values exemplified by their visible attention to their two daughters, Sasha and Malia.