Hostname: page-component-7b7567c8c-2n9c9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-14T16:33:01.454Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Global Turns and Cautions in Rhetoric and Composition Studies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the 'Save PDF' action button.

In her 2003 Presidential Address to the American Studies Association, Amy Kaplan suggests that current crises have “exposed certain limitations of our available tools” (2). Kaplan's address reflects the move beyond the traditionally nationalist concerns of American studies, but her appeal to think more critically about disciplinary identities and methods at this point in our nation's history has wider implications. Alarmed by the “uncanny mirroring” between the lexicon of the champions of empire and that of its critics, Kaplan urges scholars “to do more than expose the imperialistic appropriation of the name America and then turn away from it” (2, 10). Embracing the transnational turn in American studies, Kaplan calls for a comparative historical approach that recognizes the ideological force of “America” and that understands how “America” “changes shape in relation to competing claims to that name and by creating demonic others, drawn in proportions as mythical and monolithic as the idea of America itself” (11).

Information

Type
The Changing Profession
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2006