A theatricalised space that prompts visitors to immerse themselves into spectacles of what was construed as racial otherness, while acknowledging notions of Western cultural superiority and investing in public approval of US imperial efforts abroad—that was the fundamental idea underlying the Midway Plaisance, an amusement park committed to displaying human… Continue reading
Video games can be understood as a medium characterized by remediation and convergence: they often take elements from other media, adapt them to their medial specifics, and add their own unique aspects, thus creating new, playable versions of cultural material. Such adaptations apply to certain plot elements, character archetypes, or… Continue reading
In the view of the late Amy Kaplan, the practice of US imperialism is denied and projected onto other nations in the discourse of American culture studies (13). Whereas the research in this field only marginally engages with the idea of the US being an imperial force, a cursory look… Continue reading
The rise of Catholicism in the United States has been examined for the most part in relation to the expansion of the US empire. Early studies focus especially on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Only recently have the first arduous steps been taken in understanding the complex transformation of Protestantism and Catholicism in the US from the late seventeenth to the nineteenth century. Continue reading
“We are Distressed for you, O our BRETHREN, We are Distressed for you!” (3) Puritan minister Cotton Mather thunders in the opening of his “Pastoral Letter to the English Captives, in Africa” (1698). The letter addresses American captives in North Africa,[1] but Mather’s concern for their personal safety is only… Continue reading
For centuries, one of the roles of the poet has been as oracle, acting as witness, interpreter and seer about societies and individuals. Poetry serves to illuminate, even if—especially if—the truths unveiled reflect the shadowed soul of a people. Contemporary American poetry offers ample examples of the frictions and… Continue reading
The contours of what we refer to as the Caribbean have been indelibly shaped by US empire: fault-lines inscribed in the landscape, as in the Panama Canal; in more classically colonial articulations as US commonwealths; a reach extended through bases, bananas and business. Adopting the analytical lens of ‘securityscape’, I… Continue reading
In order to understand the relationship between empire and space in American history, it is necessary to address the historiographical tendencies and myths of the past four hundred years.[i] Retrospective historiographical myths of the nascent United States, as it sought to establish its own history in the shadow of the… Continue reading
The notion of the United States as a (and eventually the sole) global power of the 20th and 21st century is a shorthand that seeks to reconcile the United States’ self-fashioned identity as an alleged vanguard of democracy, a proliferator of universal human rights, and an exceptional nation of liberty… Continue reading
Imagine the excitement of the more than two hundred adolescent boys, each about to enter the biggest stage of their lives. Selected to represent the Boy Scouts of America abroad, they had crossed the Atlantic in July 1929 to participate in the largest summer camp held at the time: the… Continue reading