American Studies after Postmodernism

This book explores the major challenges that the long-standing and diversely debated demise of postmodernism signifies for American literature, art, culture, history, and politics, in the present, third decade of the twenty-first century. Its scope comprises a vigorous discussion of all these diverse fields undertaken by distinguished scholars as well as junior researchers, U.S. Americanists and European Americanists alike. Focusing on socio-political and cultural developments in the contemporary U.S., their contributions highlight the interconnectedness of the geopolitical, economic, environmental and technological crises that define the historical present on global scale.

Chapter 16 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Chapter 1: Introduction: American Studies after Postmodernism.- Chapter 2: The Last Word: Writing in a Time of Emergency.- Part One: A Moment of Exigency.- Chapter 3: Post-2020 Vision: The Alternative Universes of Future U.S. Election Campaigns.- Chapter 4: Studying America (photographically): from Walker Evans to Taryn Simon.- Chapter 5: Sustainable American Studies: Intermedial Approaches to Climate Change.- Chapter 6: Posthuman(ist), Affective and Global Turns in Ecofiction and Ecocriticism: Philip Armstrong’s “Litter”.- Part Two: Continuities.- Chapter 7: Postmodernist Latinx Fiction in the 21st Century? The Writings of Giannina Braschi.- Chapter 8: Intersectionally Aware Urban Re-mappings of Self and Belonging after Postmodernism: Reading Angie Cruz’s Dominicana.- Chapter 9: Aspects of Mediation: Deceit, Desire and Post-Postmodernity in Paul Auster’s The Locked Room.- Chapter 10: Juxtaposing Postmodernist and Classic Narratives in New Literacies: The Case of Role-Playing    Games.- Part Three: 21st century Tropisms.- Chapter 11: The Metamodernist Epiphanies of Daytripper.- Chapter 12:  Transcultural with a Twist: Reading Americanah Contrapuntally.- Chapter 13: The American Photo-novel in the 21st century: Familial Ties and Historical Kinship in Emma Donoghue’s Akin.- Chapter 14: Literary Translingualism in the 21st century: Mobilizing Affect through Language.- Chapter 15: Electronic Literature at the Dawn of the 21st century: the Case of Reiner Strasser and M.D. Coverley’s ii-in the white darkness: about [the fragility of] memory.- Chapter 16: Paradigms of Cyberculturalism in Post-postmodernity.

Theodora Tsimpouki is Professor of American Literature and Culture at the Faculty of English Language and Literature, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. Her teaching and research interests focus on American realism, modernism and postmodern fiction, the 1960s, urban literature and theories of space, posthumanism. She is the author and editor of several books and articles in the field of American literature and culture and co- chief editors of Ex-Centric Narratives: Journal of Literature, Culture, and Media.

Konstantinos Blatanis is Associate Professor of American Literature and Culture at the Faculty of English Language and Literature, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. He is the author of Popular Culture Icons in Contemporary American Drama (2003) and co-editor of the volume War on the Human: New Responses to an Ever-Present Debate (2017). His research interests and publications are in the fields of American literature, American drama and theater, popular culture, media studies, and critical theory.

Angeliki Tseti specializes on word-image interactions and has published articles on photo-literature in peer-reviewed academic journals and academic volumes. Her research interests include trauma and memory studies, genocide and film. She has taught American literature and culture courses at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Her work also includes the translation and editing of Liliane Louvel's book The Pictorial Third: An Essay into Intermedial Criticism (2018).