In a globalizing age, studying American literature in isolation from the rest of the world seems less and less justified. But is the conceptual box of the nation dispensable? And what would American literature look like without it? This book takes up this debate.

The contributors are Rachel Adams, Jonathan Arac, Homi K, Bhabha, Lawrence Buell, Wai Chee Dimock, Susan Stanford Friedman, Paul Giles, David Palumbo-Liu, Ross Posnock, Joseph Roach, and Eric J. Sundquist.

Introduction: Planet and America, Set and Subset by Wai Chee Dimock 1


PART ONE: The Field, the Nation, the World 17


Chapter 1: Global and Babel: Language and Planet in American Literature by Jonathan Arac 19
Chapter 2: The Deterritorialization of American Literature by Paul Giles 39
Chapter 3: Unthinking Manifest Destiny: Muslim Modernities on Three Continents bySusan Stanford Friedman 62


PART TWO: Eastern Europe as Test Case 101


Chapter 4: Mr. Styron's Planet by Eric J. Sundquist 103
Chapter 5: Planetary Circles: Philip Roth, Emerson, Kundera by Ross Posnock 141


PART THREE: Local and Global 169


Chapter 6: World Bank Drama by Joseph Roach 171
Chapter 7: Global Minoritarian Culture by Homi K. Bhabha 184
Chapter 8: Atlantic to Pacific: James, Todorov, Blackmur, and Intercontinental Form by David Palumbo-Liu 196
Chapter 9: Ecoglobalist Affects: The Emergence of U.S. Environmental Imagination on a Planetary Scale by Lawrence Buell 227
Chapter 10: At the Borders of American Crime Fiction by Rachel Adams 249
Chapter 11: African, Caribbean, American: Black English as Creole Tongue by Wai Chee Dimock 274


Index 301