Transnational America: Contours of Modern US Culture

Transnational America is an interdisciplinary analysis of the interaction between today’s globalization and Americanization. Transnationalism involves a loosening of boundaries, a de-territorialization of the nation-state, and higher degrees of interconnectedness among cultures and peoples across the globe. As people make transnational voyages and live lives of flexible citizenship in two or more cultures, they adhere to a new type of nationalism that creates an exclusionist discourse and builds the “Other” as conservative defenders of cruder territorial loyalties. This transnational solidarity — a new communitarianism beyond the loyalties to any one place or ethnic group — threatens the old order with its conceptions that assimilation and integration will remake the foreigner into a particular national citizen. The authors address the complex issues of globalization, American mythology, Christian proselytizing, modern slavery, conspiracy theory, apocalyptic terrorism, Vietnam stories, international feminism, changing gender roles, resurgent regionalism and the changing definitions of place.