Transnational American Studies

This essay limns what American Studies scholars lose by ignoring work published outside the US or published in languages other than English. It then explores two current examples of transnational, interdisciplinary, collaborative research that cross national, disciplinary, linguistic and cultural borders. “Global Huck: A Digital Palimpsest Mapping Project, or Deep Map (DPMP)” centers on the question of how literature travels globally, taking the travels of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as the subject of its study. The essay outlines insights to be gained from looking at the novel’s travels in China, France, Germany, Japan, Mexico, and Portugal. The Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project at Stanford focuses on the Chinese workers who built America’s first transcontinental railroad. It brings together work by scholars in history, literature, anthropology, American Studies and archaeology in the US and Asia to generate insights into a venture that shaped the world on both sides of the Pacific. Both ventures would not have been possible before the era of digitization.