A future for American Studies (Chapter I)
In the first chapter it is generally argued that the American Studies have to transform in order to address how America signifies in the new global issues such as politic, environment and so forth. Further it is very important for the New American Studies to become more comparative which can be achieved by rethinking and improving the current methods of American Studies.
One of the main things that has to be achieved is to get the current, influential scholars to learn from non-U.S-scholars in order to broaden their horizon and maybe get some insights that wouldn’t be possible otherwise. Further it is suggested that people and also scholars should overcome their prejudices and fears in order to create a New American Study where all nations and minorities, no matter how small they are, are included.
It is very important to create a multicultural society in order to reform and renew curricula. It is very hard to achieve a change in curricula and the general thinking of people as most of them stick to their known and approved methods and systems. A lot of schools and universities simply do not want any changes and so refuse to rethink their curricula.
Lauter’s model of the New American Studies attracts a lot of scholars as it says that different cultures influence each other and so does literature. Further it is argues that every culture needs its own studies in order to fully understand it and that way the uneven cultural development that is currently taking place can be stopped.
The aim of scholars now is to create an integrated comparative study of U.S. literature. One thing that is very important for doing is to derive the theories and methods from a developed theory of the contact zones ( it says there are social spaces where cultures meet, clash or grapple with each other).
Postnationalism and Globalism
In this chapter the question of how many cultural identities the U.S has and why introducing the New American studies at schools and university is a problem.
The New American Studies should include border studies that investigate the intersection and interaction of places that are near the borders, such as Mexico, Canada and so forth. Due to this border countries there are a lot of immigrants that come to the U.S in order to find a better life or at least hope to do so.
This process transformed a monocultural and monolingual U.S into a state with several cultural identities and languages. Werner Sollors , for example, called the U.S. a polylingual and multicultural country. This is the case because a lot of immigrants though speaking English, still keep their mother tongue to communicate within their cultural society.
The New American studies’ approach also stresses and investigates the way in which cultures change when they are interacting. One example here for the interaction between two languages and the outcome would be Spanglish as it developed from English and Spanish I interaction.
Scholar have also worked to increase the participation of non-U.S-scholars in the American Studies Associations. The American Studies Association wants to achieve a change in curricula at university, which seems to be a very difficult and slow-going process as most university hold firmly on to their system and their strict division between disciplines that would all be in one way or another, included in the New American Studies.
It is to say that it will take a long time to introduce the New American Studies in schools and university.
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