Introduction

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yasuko Takezawa ◽  
Gary Y. Okihiro
Keyword(s):  
American Studies ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Political Commitments

The Introduction explains how the book was generated through a series of dialogues between Japan- and US-based scholars held in Japan and the US. Those engagements highlighted what the contributors considered to be the subject matters and issues at stake in the field called “Japanese American studies.” While tracing the field’s literature and its past achievements in each country, the authors point out the field’s neglect in accounting for the subject positions, political commitments, and historical and social contexts of scholars and their consequences for their choice of subject matters and approaches to Japanese American studies. Finally, the Introduction describes the book’s structure and offers a brief summary of each chapter.

Trans-Pacific Japanese American Studies

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
English Language ◽  
American Studies ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
National Archives ◽  
The Us ◽  
Political Investments

Begun as a conversation among scholars of Japanese American studies in Japan and the United States, Transpacific Japanese American Studies is conceived of as an engagement across national archives, literatures, and subject positions to excavate personal investments, epistemologies, and social contexts. Is it possible to achieve a truly equal exchange in a field that defines itself as “Japanese American” studies and in a conversation conducted mainly in the English language? All of the contributors to this volume were asked to consider those foundational questions, and most discussed their subjectivities and work over the course of several years in meetings held in Japan and the US. The outcome, Transpacific Japanese American Studies, is a candid, self-conscious appraisal of scholars and their subject positions and personal and political investments.

Children Talk Horror Videos: Reading as a Social Performance

1993 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-181 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gemma Moss
Keyword(s):  
Social Theory ◽  
Social Performance ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Media Texts ◽  
Media Audience

This article argues that children should be treated as a specific media audience in their own right, who are engaged in actively learning how to read media texts. I use children's talk about horror videos to argue for a social theory of learning in which both talk about text and the social contexts in which the genre circulates orientate readers towards its content and the subject positions from which it can be read.

Thoughts on Positionality

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noriko K. Ishii
Keyword(s):  
Graduate School ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
American Studies ◽  
Academic Career ◽  
Learning Experience ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
First Year ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
Critical Turning Point

The question of positionality is a crucial one in academic pursuits. As a Japan-based historian of U.S. social and women’s history with a PhD from a U.S. university, I was struck by Professor Gary Okihiro’s question on our subject-positions and our stakes in Japanese American studies. His query reminded me of a life-changing incident during my first year of graduate school. Although this experience first turned me away from the field of Japanese American studies, it was an important learning experience and a critical turning point in my academic career. In short, it made me think about the meaning of my positionality as a Japanese person in relation to my academic research in U.S. history and American studies....

Epilogue: Americanists after America

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Blaustein
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
American Studies ◽  
International Order ◽  
American Empire ◽  
American Century ◽  
The Us ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Us Presidential Election ◽  
The Subject

If the American Century is over, must the Americanist Century be over, too? Nightmare Envy and Other Stories, in its circuitous way, has been about culture and the formation of the post-1945 international order. The epilogue reflects on the resonances of this cultural history for the present, as that international order breaks. The contemplation of the decline and fall of an American empire has long lurked as an Americanist preoccupation or perverse fantasy, and there are discernible continuities between the American Studies scholarship of the mid-twentieth century and that of our own time. The epilogue also ponders obituaries of the American Century, from before and after the US presidential election of November 2016. The paradigmatic narratives of “America” and “Europe” that are the subject of this book were minted in the mid-twentieth century. They appeared to be inverted in the twenty-first.

Transnational American Studies

2019 ◽  
pp. 217-238
Author(s):  
Shelley Fisher Fishkin
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
American Studies ◽  
Railroad Workers ◽  
Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn ◽  
Transnational American Studies ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
Chinese Workers ◽  
The Subject

This essay limns what American Studies scholars lose by ignoring work published outside the US or published in languages other than English. It then explores two current examples of transnational, interdisciplinary, collaborative research that cross national, disciplinary, linguistic and cultural borders. “Global Huck: A Digital Palimpsest Mapping Project, or Deep Map (DPMP)” centers on the question of how literature travels globally, taking the travels of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as the subject of its study. The essay outlines insights to be gained from looking at the novel’s travels in China, France, Germany, Japan, Mexico, and Portugal. The Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project at Stanford focuses on the Chinese workers who built America’s first transcontinental railroad. It brings together work by scholars in history, literature, anthropology, American Studies and archaeology in the US and Asia to generate insights into a venture that shaped the world on both sides of the Pacific. Both ventures would not have been possible before the era of digitization.

THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S APPROACH TO ENERGY SECURITY IN POLAND AND THE BALTIC STATES

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (1/2020) ◽  
pp. 33-67
Author(s):  
Olga Stevanovic
Keyword(s):  
Energy Security ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Energy Resources ◽  
Baltic States ◽  
Realist Theory ◽  
Main Research ◽  
Security Challenges ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Baltic

The subject of this paper encompasses US policy towards Poland and the Baltic States regarding energy security during Donald Trump’s presidency. It is discernible that vast domestic energy resources have created an opportunity for the US to project more power to these countries, and the surrounding region. We argue that Trump and his administration’s perceptions have served as an intervening variable in that opportunity assessment, in accordance with the neoclassical realist theory. The main research question addressed in this paper is whether US has used that opportunity to contribute to energy security in countries it has traditionally deemed as allies. Two aspects of US approach to energy security of the designated countries are taken into consideration: liquified natural gas exports and support for the Three Seas Initiative. The way Trump presented his policy and its results in his public statements has also been considered in this paper. The article will proceed as follows. The first subsection of the paper represents a summary of energy security challenges in Poland and the Baltic States. The second subsection is dedicated to the opportunity for the US to project energy power and to Trump’s perceptions relevant for the opportunity assessment. The third subsection deals with American LNG exports to these countries as a possible way for contributing to energy security in Poland and the Baltic States. The last part of the paper addresses the Three Seas Initiative and US approach to this platform.

scholarly journals Tolerance and intolerance: Cultural meanings and discursive usage

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 172-186
Author(s):  
Maykel Verkuyten ◽  
Rachel Kollar
Keyword(s):  
National Survey ◽  
Culturally Diverse ◽  
Cultural Meanings ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
Lay People ◽  
The Subject

The notion of tolerance is widely embraced across many settings and is generally considered critical for the peaceful functioning of culturally diverse societies. However, the concepts of tolerance and intolerance have various meanings and can be used in different ways and for different purposes. The various understandings raise different empirical questions and might have different implications for the subject positions of those who are tolerant and those who are tolerated. In this study, we focus on cultural understandings of tolerance and intolerance and how these terms are used in discourses. We first describe how in an open-ended question in a national survey lay people use a classical and a more modern understanding of tolerance to describe situations of tolerance and intolerance. Second, we analyze how those who tolerate and those who are tolerated can flexibly use these different understandings of (in)tolerance for discursively making particular “us–them” distinctions. It is concluded that the notions of tolerance and intolerance have different cultural meanings which both can be used for progressive or oppressive ends.

scholarly journals Hidden in the limelight: A feminist engagement with innovation studies

Organization ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 135050842110153
Author(s):  
Lara Pecis ◽  
Karin Berglund
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Bell Hooks ◽  
Innovation Studies ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
Space Race ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Political Dimensions ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Positively Charged ◽  
Blind Spots

Innovation is filled with aspirations for solutions to problems, and for laying the groundwork for new technological and social breakthroughs. When a concept is so positively charged, the hopes expressed may create blindness to potential shortcomings and deadlocks. To disclose innovation blind spots, we approach innovation from a feminist viewpoint. We see innovation as a context that changes historically, and as revolution, offering alternative imaginaries of the relationship between race, gender and innovation. Our theoretical framework combines bell hooks (capitalist patriarchy and intersectionality), Mazzucato (the entrepreneurial state and the changing context of innovation) and Fraser (redistributive justice) and contributes with an understanding of innovation from the margin by unveiling its political dimensions. Hidden Figures, the 2016 biographical drama that follows three Black women working at NASA during the space race, provides the empirical setting of the paper. Our analysis contributes to emerging intersectionality research in management and organisation studies (MOS) by revealing the subject positions and dynamics of inclusion/exclusion in innovation discourses, and by proposing a radical – and more inclusive – rethinking of innovation. With this article, we aim to push the margins to the centre and invite others to discover the terrain of the margin(alised). We suggest that our feminist framework is appropriate to study other organisational phenomena, over time and across contexts, to bring forward the plurality of women’s experiences at work and in organisations.

A corpus-based investigation of techno-optimism and propositional certainty in the National Intelligence Council’s ‘Future Global Trends Reports’ (2010–2035)

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-57
Author(s):  
Jamie McKeown
Keyword(s):  
Global Trends ◽  
Future Role ◽  
Ideological Bias ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Global Peace ◽  
Discursive Representations

This article reports the findings from a study of discursive representations of the future role of technology in the work of the US National Intelligence Council (NIC). Specifically, it investigates the interplay of ‘techno-optimism’ (a form of ideological bias) and propositional certainty in the NIC’s ‘Future Global Trends Reports’. In doing so, it answers the following questions: To what extent was techno-optimism present in the discourse? What level of propositional certainty was expressed in the discourse? How did the discourse deal with the inherent uncertainty of the future? Overall, the discourse was pronouncedly techno-optimist in its stance towards the future role of technology: high-technological solutions were portrayed as solving a host of problems, despite the readily available presence of low-technology or no-technology solutions. In all, 75.1% of the representations were presented as future categorical certainties, meaning the future was predominantly presented as a known and closed inevitability. The discourse dealt with the inherent uncertainty of the subject matter, that is, the future, by projecting the past and present into the future. This was particularly the case in relation to the idea of technological military dominance as a guarantee of global peace, and the role of technology as an inevitable force free from societal censorship.

Marcus Cunliffe Writes America

2005 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 371-382
Author(s):  
MICK GIDLEY
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
American Studies ◽  
Academic Career ◽  
The United States ◽  
Subject Area ◽  
Washington Dc ◽  
George Washington ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Washington University

Marcus Cunliffe (1922–1990) was incontestably an important figure in American studies. In the early part of his academic career he helped to found the subject area in Britain, and he was later both awarded professorial appointments at the Universities of Manchester and Sussex and elected to the chairmanship of the British Association for American Studies, from which positions he served as a personal inspiration and professional mentor to several “generations” of UK American studies academics. Those who knew him and worked with him were invariably struck by his tall good looks, charisma and charm – characteristics that no doubt also contributed to his successful career, in Britain and in the United States, first as a visiting scholar, and later, during his final years, as the occupant of an endowed chair at George Washington University in Washington, DC. As the correspondence in his papers attest, he was held in high – and warm – regard by many of the leading US historians of his heyday. More might be said about his charm here because it also permeates his writing and persists there as a kind of afterglow, and not only for those who encountered him in person – but this essay is a critical reconsideration of his published work that, though appreciative, at least aspires towards objectivity.

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