Archipelagic American Studies

Departing from conventional narratives of the United States and the Americas as fundamentally continental spaces, the contributors to Archipelagic American Studies theorize America as constituted by and accountable to an assemblage of interconnected islands, archipelagoes, shorelines, continents, seas, and oceans. They trace these planet-spanning archipelagic connections in essays on topics ranging from indigenous sovereignty to the work of Édouard Glissant, from Philippine call centers to U.S. militarization in the Caribbean, from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch to enduring overlaps between U.S. imperialism and a colonial Mexican archipelago. Shaking loose the straitjacket of continental exceptionalism that hinders and permeates Americanist scholarship, Archipelagic American Studies asserts a more relevant and dynamic approach for thinking about the geographic, cultural, and political claims of the United States within broader notions of America.

Brian Russell Roberts is Associate Professor of English at Brigham Young University.

 

Michelle Ann Stephens is Professor of English and Latino and Caribbean Studies at Rutgers University, New Brunswick.