Nationalism: Hyper and Post
The first issue of JAm It! will try to explore the intricacies of contemporary U.S. politics by addressing notions of hyper-nationalism and post-nationalism.
The last few years have seen a revitalization of hyper-nationalist movements, which are not only exaggerated forms of nationalism but also belie a growing yearning to safeguard established hierarchies based on race, ethnicity, and social status. Fueled by fears of terrorism, racial hostilities, and recent iterations of the vigilante syndrome, these movements rally the most intolerant parts of U.S. consciousness. On the other side of the political spectrum, many anti-nationalist and post-nationalist movements have sprouted out of a transnational outlook, disengaged from notions of national order and control. These reactionary radical sentiments are not only directed at the rising nationalist wave, but are also reared by discursive practices and global narratives that transcend a state’s domestic interests and extend to international struggles for socio-environmental and climate justice.
Despite the schismatic nature of contemporary U.S. society, spaces of protest, dialogue, and confrontation have proliferated far beyond geographic boundaries. Technological advances have rendered most of these boundaries obsolete and have thus championed new means to express dissent and connect with other dissenting voices across the world to create transnational sites where ideologies, claims, and conflicts are difficult to distinguish or gauge. Given these developments, nationalism and its afterlives become not only problematic but also call for further scrutiny.
Interested scholars should submit a 500-word abstract and short bio to journal@aisna-graduates.online by June 15, 2018. Essays of no more than 8,000 words will be due by October 1, 2018.
Possible areas of inquiry include:
- How are spaces of protest narrated in fiction? Could fiction in itself be defined/viewed as a space of protest? Could narratives be defined as dissenting? How is dissent narrated?
- Could “postnationalism” be viewed as a form of both independence from a power structure perceived as hegemonic and as political globalism? Could it be viewed as an evolutionary form of nationalism?
- To what extent will contemporary social and environmental justice movements contribute to creating viable narratives for the future of the human species on this planet?
- How is fictional and actual space “marked” in order to be classified as “safe” or “unsafe” with regard to specific communities/ideologies/minorities?
- “Make America Great Again”: the projection of the future as a mythic past oscillating between exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny.
- Epistemological short-circuits in a post-truth, post-ideological society: how is information currently constructed, construed, and how does it inform ideological structures? How are social media involved in this process?
- Implicit and explicit linguistic and discursive practices in the realization of hyper/post-nationalisms.
- The role of higher education, and liberal education, in creating, resisting, and dismantling the nation.
- Indigenous, black, and queer understandings of nation.
- Can notions of community overlap with notions of nationhood? How do these two notions interact, particularly when membership in a community contradicts the ideals/tenets of the nation within which that community exists?
- Controlling protest: what strategies does the state apparatus employ to control or muffle (limit spaces of) protest?
- Is history being redefined and re-interpreted in order to justify new forms of protest as well as new forms of repression?
- The identitarian values of the alt-right.
- The monument wars and the issue of who belongs to the American “nation”.
- Media (film, television, digital, documentary, etc.) as spaces of fictional representation of protest/dissent/politically-charged debates and as spaces of actual production/promotion/circulation of these protests and debates.
- Interactions and struggles between news media and fictional forms.
About Us:
JAm It! Journal of American Studies in Italy is an annual, peer-reviewed journal of American Studies created by Ph.D. students and early-stage researchers. We publish academic articles, book reviews, and creative writing, favoring innovative approaches and contributions. We aspire to be an inclusive and eclectic journal – a hub of intellectual exchanges on a wide range of critical approaches to the field of American Studies. Our thematic section is periodically open to submissions via CFPs. We accept unsolicited submissions for all the other sections of the journal. More at http://aisna-graduates.online/jam-it/