Are We Post-American Studies?

The one-word answer to the question posed by the title would have to be “no.” As one fellow Americanist has written, “Cancellation-by-prefix more often than not preserves as connection what it pretends to erase as sign.” ¹ I doubt that we shall ever truly become post-American studies, however earnest our resolves, until or unless the United States ceases to be a unit of jurisdictional and curricular organization, and neither is likely to happen soon. But this much at least is certain: what for the last half-century or more has called itself American studies surely will change and indeed is changing fast.