American Studies Now: Critical Histories of the Present

Beyond the Pink Tide

Macarena Gomez-Barris

How can we create a model of politics that reaches beyond the nation-state, and beyond settler-colonialism, authoritarianism, and neoliberalism? In&#160;<I>Beyond the Pink Tide,&#160;</I>Macarena G&oacute;mez-Barris explores the alternatives of recent sonic, artistic, activist, visual, and embodied cultural production. By focusing on radical spaces of potential, including queer, youth, trans-feminist, Indigenous, and anticapitalist movements and artistic praxis, G&oacute;mez-Barris offers a timely call for a decolonial, transnational American Studies. She reveals the broad possibilities that emerge by refusing national borders in the Americas and by seeing and thinking beyond the frame of state-centered politics. Concrete social justice and transformation begin at the level of artistic, affective, and submerged political imaginaries&mdash;in Latin America and the United States, across South-South solidarities, and beyond.

Boycott!

Sunaina Maira

The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS) has expanded rapidly though controversially in the United States in the last five years. The academic boycott of Israeli academic institutions is a key component of this movement. What is this boycott? Why does it make sense? And why is this an American Studies issue? In this short essential book<I>,</I> Sunaina Maira addresses these key questions.&#160;<I>Boycott!</I>&#160;situates the academic boycott in the broader history of boycotts in the United States as well as in Palestine and shows how it has evolved into a transnational social movement that has spurred profound intellectual and political shifts.&#160;It explores the movement&rsquo;s implications for antiracist, feminist, queer, and academic labor organizing and examines the boycott in the context of debates about Palestine, Zionism, race, rights-based politics, academic freedom, decolonization, and neoliberal capitalism.&#160;