Inter-American Literary Studies in the Early Twenty-First Century: The View from the United States

Image & Text ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marsha MacDowell

Quilts and related textiles are a particularly capacious textile medium through which the intersection of materiality and narratives can be explored. There are thousands of extant historical examples to be found in public and private collections, and the "quilt world" of the early twenty-first century is robust and enormous. There are literally millions of individuals around the globe who are involved in some aspect of quilt production, preservation, and study. This article provides a brief overview of quiltmaking and quilt studies in the United States and in South Africa. It draws upon samples of work from both countries to illustrate how, through their needles and their stories, quilt artists provide unique windows into personal and public histories.


Author(s):  
Thomas J. Knock

This chapter explores American foreign policy and the country’s global position in the early twenty-first century, and in particular during the presidency of Donald Trump, employing the historical background of Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points. Specifically, the chapter discusses the importance of Wilson’s fourteenth point, which emphasizes the need for international cooperation and mutual understanding among nations. It explains why the United States needs internationalism and a strong foreign policy. The chapter concludes by stating the need for America’s involvement with the United Nations, in the midst of Trump’s efforts to separate America from the international community.


Author(s):  
James Lee Brooks

AbstractThe early part of the twenty-first century saw a revolution in the field of Homeland Security. The 9/11 attacks, shortly followed thereafter by the Anthrax Attacks, served as a wakeup call to the United States and showed the inadequacy of the current state of the nation’s Homeland Security operations. Biodefense, and as a direct result Biosurveillance, changed dramatically after these tragedies, planting the seeds of fear in the minds of Americans. They were shown that not only could the United States be attacked at any time, but the weapon could be an invisible disease-causing agent.


Author(s):  
Ellen Rutten

This conclusion reflects on today's dreams of renewing or revitalizing sincerity and rejects the notion that they are outdated or do not deserve any of our attention. It cites the work of several scholars to show that sincerity is anything but obsolete in twenty-first-century popular culture. Indeed, today's strivings to renew sincerity have not been neglected by scholars such as R. Jay Magill Jr., Epstein, and Yurchak. The rhetoric on new sincerity has been addressed in thoughtful analyses of contemporary culture that have helped the author in crafting a comprehensive and geographically inclusive analysis of present-day sincerity rhetoric. In post-Communist Russia, debates on a shift to late or post-postmodern cultural paradigms are thriving with at least as much fervor as—and possibly more than—in Western Europe or the United States. This conclusion discusses the newly gained insights which the author's sincerity study offers.


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