The Ends of New Americanism

Abstract

This essay responds to the New Literary History editorial query to assess the "state of American Studies" by arguing that such efforts of assessment are the state of the field. While scholars today applaud or lament the field's transnational turn, Wiegman contextualizes it in the context of long standing scholarly debate over the shape of Americanist knowledge. By reading the discourse of the state of the field as a key characteristic of the New American Studies, Wiegman explores what is at stake for practitioners in a field devoted to self-description and perpetual reinvention. © 2011 Project MUSE®.