Publisher's Synopsis
American Borders: Inclusion and Exclusion in US Culture provides an overview of American culture produced in a range of contexts, from the founding of the nation to the age of globalization and neoliberalism, in order to understand the diverse literary landscapes of the United States from a twenty-first century perspective. The authors confront American exceptionalism, discourses on freedom and democracy, and US foundational narratives by reassessing the literary canon and exploring ethnic literature, culture, and film with a focus on identity and exclusion. Their contributions envision different manifestations of conviviality and estrangement and deconstruct neoliberal slogans, analyzing hospitable inclusion in relation to national history and ideologies. By looking at representations of foreignness and conditional belonging in literature and film from different ethnic traditions, the volume fleshes out a new border dialectic that conveys the heterogeneity of American boundaries beyond the opposition inside/outside.
