Border Literary Histories, Globalization, and Critical Regionalism

Melting Pots & Mosaics: Children of Immigrants in US-American Literature

“…35 However, many recent studies even in these disciplines have abandoned the notion of race and ethnicity and are prefaced by cautionary remarks regarding the ethereality of personal and communal identification and the heterogeneity and volatility of communities. The increasing tendency towards transnational 34 | The same argument has recently been used to level criticism against the proliferating transnationalist research paradigms under the labels of "border literary histories," "globalization" or "critical regionalism" (Limón 2008). 35 | Even in legal and political contexts the increasing self-identification of many US-American citizens as multi-racial or multi-ethnic seems to point towards an eventual redundancy of these categories.…”

“…[w]hen we MLA members teach languages other than our native or first idiom and the cultures and histories embedded in those languages, when we read 'foreign' texts in 39 | For a succinct critical overview and discussion of many of the concepts involved, see Burke 2009. For representative studies, see, for example, Suárez-Orozco 2004, Friedman and Randeria 2004, Ilmberger and Robinson 2002, Appadurai 2001Appiah 2006, Stanton 2006, Breckenridge 2002Gilroy 2005, Huggan 2001, Behdad 2000, Fludernik 1998Mayer 2005, Fludernik 2003, Mishra 1996, Clifford 1994Limón 2008, Liang 2002, Mignolo 2002, Lenz 2000, Hawley 1996and Mizruchi 2008, Kelly 2003, Trotman 2002, Boelhower and Hornung 2000, Antonette 1998, Werbner and Modood 1997 on more recent multiculturalism.Caveat: In the evocations of an increasingly interconnected and globalized world, it is often ignored -owed to the hubris of a teleology of complexity -that the world has for literally thousands of years been quite interconnected, dynamic, heterogeneous and "transcultural" (just as personal identities have never been simple), as recent global histories show (for example Jürgen Osterhammel's magisterial history of the 19th century (2009) or the collection of essays edited by Conrad et al (2007); see also Alexander Demandt's recent biography of Alexander the Great [2009]). One should recall that while the internet and the world wide web have certainly facilitated and accelerated communication and exchange, the invention of the telegraph in the 19 th century constituted an at least equally drastic global change in communication.…”

Mexicans with Sweaters, Working in the Oil/Tar Sands, In Newfoundland’s Third Largest City

“…Many critical regionalist studies draw primarily on literature in attempt to reveal the imaginary that underlies a given region (Herr 1996, Powell 2007, Limón 2008), However, we cannot forget that there are a variety of types of cultural intellectuals, many of whom are more local, intimate, and hidden. There is a wealth of literature which embodies displaced Newfoundland regionalism, but contemporary popular song is more immediate and intimate in constructing the Alberta stage of this movement.…”