Paul LauterAnmeldelser

Lauter demonstrates the way American Studies has evolved since its official inception around the middle of the twentieth century. What is studied and how it is studied has changed in American Studies as interdisciplinary expansion has allowed cultural studies, gender studies, queer studies, and other disciplines to inform and shape it. Lauter illustrates these changes throughout the book as he analyzes the history of American Studies and uses some of these new disciplines to look at certain issues in the discipline. Even though American Studies has diversified, Lauter contends that these methods are logically connected and essential in studying such diverse subject matter. By complicating the borders of American Studies, he seeks to expand and move the discipline forward towards a more politicized and meaningful discourse.

He also argues that the American literary canon was created and perpetuated by academic elites who served as the arbiters of taste in the first half of the twentieth century. The revival of Melville in the 1920s and the rise of the Modernists Eliot and Pound were emblematic of the creation of an American cannon to the exclusion of women and African-Americans writing at the same time. Literary anthologies and the development of the New Criticism served to a-historicize and depoliticize the American literary art of that time. Lauter contends that previous American Studies scholarship failed to take into account the “borderland” aspect of American culture, specifically Mexican-Americans and Native Americans. The canon of American studies therefore failed to fully acknowledge the contributions of these ethnic minorities to American culture.

From Walden Pond to Jurassic Park complicates what American Studies entails, thereby expanding and diversifying its method and subject of study. Lauter challenges the reader and scholars to contextualize and historicize subject matter in American Studies. An even more interdisciplinary and complex approach seems to be his solution to keeping American Studies viable and relevant in modern scholarship.

Textbook, No Comment.