"In The Cultural Politics of the New American Studies, leading American Studies scholar John Carlos Rowe responds to two urgent questions for intellectuals. First, how did neoliberal ideology use the issues of feminism, gay rights, multiculturalism, transnationalism and globalization, class mobility, religious freedom, and freedom of speech and cultural expression to justify a new "American Exceptionalism," designed to support U.S. economic, political, military, and cultural expansion around the world in the past two decades? Second, if neoliberalism has employed successfully various cultural media, then what are the best means of criticizing its main claims and fundamental purposes? Is it possible under these circumstances to imagine a "counter-culture," which might effectively challenge neoliberalism or is such an alternative already controlled and contained by such labels as "political correctness," the far left," "radicalism," "extremism," even "terrorism," which in the popular imagination refer to political and social minorities, doomed thereby to marginalization? Rowe argues that the tradition of "cultural criticism" advocated by influential public intellectuals, like Edward Said, can be adapted to the new circumstances demanded by the hegemony of neoliberalism and its successful command of new media. Yet rather than simply honoring such important predecessors as Said, we need to reconceive the role of the public intellectual as more than just an "interdisciplinary scholar" but also as a social critic able to negotiate the different media"--Publisher's description.

Winner of the English Book Award, Grand Prix du Livre 2006 de la Ville de Sherbrooke. In this original and groundbreaking study, Winfried Siemerling examines the complexities of recognition and identity, rejecting previous nationalized thinking to approach North American cultural transformations from transnational and interdisciplinary perspectives. Using material from the United States and Canada as case studies and drawing on a wide range of texts and theorists, he examines postcoloniality and cultural emergence from the sixties to the present against earlier backgrounds. Siemerling's argument for a retheorization of the field takes on the full history of multiculturalism debates, including radical readings of W.E.B. Du Bois and Charles Taylor and their relation to G.W.F. Hegel, and challenging many of the models of multiculturalism in use today. Tackling controversial subjects such as identity politics, The New North American Studies proposes a fresh outlook on the most central issues of North American cultural politics, from debates on canon formation to the role of racial and linguistic difference. Concluding with a look at the future of cultural difference, Winfried Siemerling's study is an innovative rethinking of the whole field of North American Studies.

The Hollywood Presidency of Ronald Reagan was founded on the skills of the 'Great Communicator'; Bruce Springsteen's 'Born in the USA' is used by the Chrysler Corporation to assure us that the 'pride is back'; feminists and right-wing militants converge to oppose pornography; racial tensions increased when the Cosby show tops the ratings. This book is a radical attempt to lay out the complex ways in which the American media and American culture are powerfully interlocked.

Winner of the English Book Award, Grand Prix du Livre 2006 de la Ville de Sherbrooke. In this original and groundbreaking study, Winfried Siemerling examines the complexities of identity and recognition in the meaning of 'American'.

How the immigration policies and popular culture of the 1980's fused to shape modern views on democracy In the 1980s, amid increasing immigration from Latin America, the Caribbean, and Asia, the circle of who was considered American seemed to broaden, reflecting the democratic gains made by racial minorities and women. Although this expanded circle was increasingly visible in the daily lives of Americans through TV shows, films, and popular news media, these gains were circumscribed by the discourse that certain immigrants, for instance single and working mothers, were feared, censured, or welcomed exclusively as laborers. In The Cultural Politics of U.S. Immigration, Leah Perry argues that 1980s immigration discourse in law and popular media was a crucial ingredient in the cohesion of the neoliberal idea of democracy. Blending critical legal analysis with a feminist media studies methodology over a range of sources, including legal documents, congressional debates, and popular media, such as Golden Girls, Who’s the Boss?, Scarface, and Mi Vida Loca, Perry shows how even while “multicultural” immigrants were embraced, they were at the same time disciplined through gendered discourses of respectability. Examining the relationship between law and culture, this book weaves questions of legal status and gender into existing discussions about race and ethnicity to revise our understanding of both neoliberalism and immigration.