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| IFUSS Presents . . . |
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America in the World: Images of America, and Discourses of
"Americanization" and "Anti-Americanism" |
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Pretoria, South Africa (photo courtesy of Charlie Williams) |
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This new multi-year research initiative by the International Forum for U.S.
Studies began in the Spring of 2003. The project brings together scholars
from several countries, working in trans-national collaborative teams to
conduct on-site research. In addition to typical academic outcomes, like
articles, books, and conferences, we plan to develop web-sites and other
modes of communication and dissemination of ideas and findings.
Despite the enormous amount of academic energy current expended discussing
issues of "globalization," relatively little work has carefully analyzed the
distinctions and overlaps between these ideas and processes called
"globalization" and those dubbed "Americanization." This project seeks to
intervene in and contribute to those large debates by engaging in
ethnographic research, discourse analysis, and political and economic
analysis which compares the situation in specific countries.
We are interested in how the symbolic notion of "America" circulates within
specific national and subnational contexts. (We use the word advisedly
instead of "the U.S." not to indicate all of the Americas, but rather to try
to capture the symbolic power of the word when it is used to indicate the
imaginary of "America.") Of what does this imagined construct consist? How
does this differ in different countries? Among various groups within
countries or arrayed across national boundaries? We propose that "American
Studies" as a discipline should include the study and analysis of these
multiple imaginaries so that the object of study includes the multiple
"Americas" that circulate in the world.
We are also interested in how ideas, people, modes of social organization,
commodities, and cultural practices perceived as "American" circulate
outside the U.S. national context. And finally, we are interested in
analyzing how these first two issues are related to a third: discourses and
actions that are named, perceived, or promoted as "anti-Americanism." Of
what does this term consist in specific national or subnational contexts
outside the U.S.? Under what circumstances, and with what effects, for
whom, are particular discourses and actions named as "Anti-American?" How
does the power of this term relate to the circulation of images, ideas, and
discourses about the U.S., and to the circulation of U.S.-identified
commodities, cultural practices, and ideas or organizational structures?
These are some of the issues and questions we are engaging with colleagues
from Germany, South Africa, and elsewhere.
This current Web Exhibit is one part of this larger project, one which takes
advantage of the visual capabilities of the Web. Our aim is to offer a
specific case study of the visual discourse of political critique as a mode
of considering the questions above. The photographic images assembled here
are of protests against the U.S.'s foreign policy in Iraq as it is performed
by groups of activists in Capetown, South Africa. While this exhibit cannot
by any means capture the full range of South African opinions about U.S.
foreign policy, it does allow us all to begin to engage with the complex
process of understanding how images of the U.S. circulate, and how concepts
of who and what is "American" are mobilized in specific, historical and
geographical contexts abroad. |
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