Mobile and Entangled America(s)

by Maryemma Graham (Editor), Wilfried Raussert (Editor)

Overview

A superb combination of focused case studies and high level conceptual thinking, this volume is an important monument in the ongoing development of Inter-American studies The articles gathered here closely examine a wide variety of cultural phenomena implicated in the 'entanglements' which have defined the history of the Americas. From religious networks to music and dance, and across a range of literary and artistic works, the mobility of people, objects, and ideas in the Americas is expertly mapped. At the same time, the book represents a serious enterprise of theory-building. Drawing on the histories of postcolonial thought, mobility studies, and work on human migration, Mobile and Entangled America(s) clearly establishes a new interdisciplinary field attentive both to the complexities of cultural form and the pervasiveness of power relations. Each article stands as a significant piece of scholarship on its own, but all are in dialogue with each other. The result is a richly satisfying and important volume of cultural scholarship.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781032097947
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	06/30/2021
Series:	InterAmerican Research: Contact, Communication, Conflict
Pages:	354
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Maryemma Graham is Distinguished Professor at the University of Kansas, Lawrence.

Wilfried Raussert is Chair and Professor of North American Literary and Cultural Studies and Director of Inter-American Studies at Bielefeld University, Germany.

Table of Contents

Lists of Figures and Tables vii

Notes on Contributors ix

Acknowledgments xiii

Introduction: Just a Small Step: From Jamaica Kincaid’s

A Small Place to Mobile and Entangled America(s) 1

Maryemma Graham and Wilfried Raussert

PART I LITERARY AND CULTURAL MOBILITIES

1 On Routes and Roots: Movement and Rootedness in

Garifuna Culture 13

Paula Prescod

2 CircumCaribbean Sisterhood: Patterns of Migration in

Cristina Garcia’s The Agüero Sisters 25

John Lowe

3 Tracing Afro Diasporic Histories: Translocational Storytelling

and Entangled Afro Americas in Ntozake Shange’s Sassafrass,

Cypress & Indigo and Edwidge Danticat’s Brother I’m Dying 51

Wilfried Raussert

4 “My history is a creature nobody really believes in. My history is

a foreign word.” Second-Generation Immigrant Identity in

David Chariandy’s Soucouyant 73

Miriam Brandel

5 From Granny’s Knee to Graduate Seminar: The Travels of

the Soucouyant 91

Giselle Liza Anatol

6 Translocating the Caribbean, Positioning Im/Mobilities:

The Sonic Politics of Las Krudas from Cuba 103

Julia Roth

vi Mobile and Entangled America(s)

PART II BIOCULTURAL AND NEW MEDIA MOBILITIES

7 Intimate Ties: Biotic Mobility and Inter‑American Studies 131

Rüdiger Kunow

8 Tattoo Travels: On Mobilities and Mobilizations of

American Skin Art 155

Martin Butler

9 United Colors of Belonging? Participatory Culture and

Diversity 2.0 in the Crowd-sourced Documentary Life in a Day 167

Sebastian Thies

10 Transnational Forces, Technological Developments, and

the Role of the State in the Mexican Audiovisual Sector 189

José Carlos Lozano

11 Mission Inverted: Inter-American Religious Flows and

How to Capture Them 203

Heinrich Wilhelm Schäfer

PART III TRAVELING POLITICS, TRAVELING IDEOLOGIES,

AND TRANSMIGRATIONS

12 The Polysemic Use of Identity and Culture in International

Migration: The Case of Central American Migration in Mexico 245

Rodolfo Casillas

13 The Mobility of Hope and Violence in Sin Nombre 265

Josef Raab

14 Mexican Indigenismo in a Hemispheric Context―Elements for

a Historiography of Inter-American Entanglements in the

First Half of the Twentieth Century 283

Olaf Kaltmeier

15 Boas Goes to Americas: The Emergence of Trans-American

Perspectives on “Culture” 301

Afef Benessaieh

16 Moby-Dick and Globalization 321

John Carlos Rowe

Index 337

Editorial Reviews

’This volume transcends celebrations of multiculturalism and condemnations of globalization through its insightful reflections on the positive and negative aspects of entanglements in the Americas. Essays on literature, music, media, travel, and biocultural and spiritual mobilities explore issues of identity and displacement, mobility and stasis, rupture and growth. A timely collection that pushes the boundaries of Inter-American Studies.’ Catherine Leen, National University of Ireland, Maynooth ’A resolutely interdisciplinary Inter-American Studies collection by an international group of scholars in ongoing dialogue. So rigorously do the editors stir up the collection’s key concepts, mobility and entanglement, that the words stopped striking me as opposites about halfway through the introduction, and seemed to increase in dynamism as author after author pushed them together to spark new insights in a vast range of cultural studies across the Americas. Not a metaphor or map in sight, this is a disorientating collection in the best sense of the word.’ Sherrie Tucker, University of Kansas, USA

From the Publisher