Departing from conventional narratives of the United States and the Americas as fundamentally continental spaces, the contributors to Archipelagic American Studies theorize America as constituted by and accountable to an assemblage of interconnected islands, archipelagoes, shorelines, continents, seas, and oceans. They trace these planet-spanning archipelagic connections in essays on topics ranging from Indigenous sovereignty to the work of Édouard Glissant, from Philippine call centers to US militarization in the Caribbean, and from the great Pacific garbage patch to enduring overlaps between US imperialism and a colonial Mexican archipelago. Shaking loose the straitjacket of continental exceptionalism that hinders and permeates Americanist scholarship, Archipelagic American Studies asserts a more relevant and dynamic approach for thinking about the geographic, cultural, and political claims of the United States within broader notions of America.
Contributors
Birte Blascheck, J. Michael Dash, Paul Giles, Susan Gillman, Matthew Pratt Guterl, Hsinya Huang, Allan Punzalan Isaac, Joseph Keith, Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel, Brandy N¿lani McDougall, Ifeoma Kiddoe Nwankwo, Craig Santos Perez, Brian Russell Roberts, John Carlos Rowe, Cherene Sherrard-Johnson, Ramón E. Soto-Crespo, Michelle Ann Stephens, Elaine Stratford, Etsuko Taketani, Alice Te Punga Somerville, Teresia Teaiwa, Lanny Thompson, Nicole A. Waligora-Davis

Editors' Acknowledgments  xi
Introduction. Archipelagic American Studies: Decontinentalizing the Study of American Culture / Brian Russell Roberts and Michelle Ann Stephens  1
Part I. Theories and Methods for an Archipelagic American Studies
1. Heurestic Geographies: Territories and Areas, Islands and Archipelagoes / Lanny Thompson  57
2. Imagining the Archipelago / Elaine Stratford  74
Part II. Archipelagic Mappings and Meta-Geographies
3. Guam and Archipelagic Black Global Imaginary / Craig Santos Perez / 97
4. The Archipelagic Black Global Imaginary: Walter White's Pacific Island Hopping / Etsuko Taketani  113
5. It Takes an Archipelago to Compare Otherwise / Susan Gillman  133
Part III. Empires and Archipelagoes
6. Colonial and Mexican Archipelagoes: Remiagining Colonial Caribbean Studies / Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel  155
7. Invisible Islands: Remapping the Transpacific Archipelago of US Empire in Carlos Bulosan's America Is in the Heart / Joseph Keith  174
8. "Myth of the Continents": American Vulnerabilities and "Rum and Colca-Cola" / Nicole A. Waligora-Davis  191
Part IV. Islands of Resistance
9. "Shades of Paradise": Craig Santos Perez's Transpacific Voyages / John Carlos Rowe  213
10. Insubordinate Islands and Coastal Chaos: Pauline Hopkins's Literary Land/Seascapes / Cherene Serrard-Johnson  232
11. "We Are Not Americans": Competing Rhetorical Archipelagoes in Hawai'i / Brandy N¿lani McDougall 259
Part V. Ecologies of Relation
12. Performing Archipelagic Identities in Bill Reid, Robert Sullivan, and Syaman Rapongan / Hsinya Huang  281
13. Archipelagic Trash: Despised Forms in the Cultural History of the Americas / Ramón E. Soto-Crespo  302
14. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch as Metaphor: The (American) Pacific You Can't See / Alice Te Punga Somerville  320
Part VI. Insular Imaginaries
15. The Tropics of Josephine: Space, Time, and Hybrid Movements / Matthew Pratt Guterl  341
16. The Stranger by the Shore: The Archipelization of Caliban in Antillean Theatre / J. Michael Dash  356
Part VII. Migrating Identities, Moving Borders
17. The Governors-General: Caribbean Canadian and Pacific New Zealand Success Stories / Birte Blascheck and Teresia Teaiwa  373
18. Living the West Indian Dream: Archipelagic Cosmopolitanism and Triangulated Economies of Desire in Jamaican Popular Culture / Ifeoma Kiddoe Nwankwo  390
19. Offshore Identities: Ruptures in the 300-Second Average Handling Time / Allan Punzalan Isaac  411
Afterword. The Archipelagic Accretion / Paul Giles
Selected Bibliography  437
Contributors  453
Index
 

Brian Russell Roberts is Associate Professor of English at Brigham Young University.

Michelle Ann Stephens is Professor of English and Latino and Caribbean Studies at Rutgers University, New Brunswick.