Introduction to The Chinese and the Iron Road

Excerpt from The Chinese and the Iron Road: Building the Transcontinental Railroad, edited by Gordon H. Chang and Shelley Fisher Fishkin, with Hilton Obenzinger and Roland Hs

“Deep Maps”: A Brief for Digital Palimpsest Mapping Projects (DPMPs, or “Deep Maps”)

This article proposes a potentially fruitful “next step” for transnational American Studies, inviting colleagues around the world to collaborate on Digital Palimpsest Mapping Projects—DPMPs, or “Deep Maps.” “Deep Maps,” curated collaboratively by scholars in multiple locations, would put multilingual digital archives around the globe in conversation with one another, using maps as the gateway. “Deep Maps” could be read as palimpsests, allowing multiple version of events, texts, and phenomena to be written over each other—with each version visible under the layers. “Deep Maps” would bring multilingual perspectives from multiple archival locations together to complicate our understanding of topics that engaged people across the globe. Links to secondary sources and interpretive frameworks introducing the topic of any given “Deep Map” would help tell transnational stories in fresh ways. “Deep Maps” would not replace traditional scholarship; rather, they would present it in new contexts, amplifying its impact. Some examples of “Deep Maps” currently under construction are explored. By requiring collaboration—across borders, languages, nations, continents, and disciplines—Digital Palimpsest Mapping Projects would bring our interdependence—as scholars, as citizens, as human beings—to the foreground and could help us take the field of transnational American Studies in some exciting new directions

Excerpt from Writing America: Literary Landmarks from Walden Pond to Wounded Knee (A Reader's Companion)

Excerpt from Writing America: Literary Landmarks from Walden Pond to Wounded Knee (A Reader's Companion) (Rutgers University Press, 2015

Redefinitions of Citizenship and Revisions of Cosmopolitanism—Transnational Perspectives: A Response and a Proposal

<p>It is both a pleasure and a privilege to offer this response to the essays in the symposium “Redefinitions of Citizenship and Revisions of Cosmopolitanism—Transnational Perspectives” by five of the leading scholars in the field. Indeed, without the transformative earlier work by these five scholars, the field of American Studies would look very different than it does today. Each of them has pioneered in bringing transnational perspectives on our field of study to the fore, and for that we owe them a debt of gratitude. These short pieces are typical of their key contributions to the field: they are eloquent and insightful, and they give credit to the work on which they build and which they extend.</p&gt

From the Editors

<p>The <em>Journal of Transnational American Studies</em> (<em>JTAS</em>) seeks to broaden the interdisciplinary study of American cultures in a transnational context. In her 2004 presidential address to the American Studies Association, Shelley Fisher Fishkin noted the growing recognition that understanding the United States requires looking beyond and across national borders. This "transnational turn" has emphasized the multidirectional flows of peoples, ideas, and goods, and in the process has thrown into question the "naturalness" of political, geographical, and epistemological boundaries. <em>JTAS</em> functions as an open-access forum for Americanists in the global academic community, where scholars are increasingly interrogating borders both within and outside the nation and focusing instead on the multiple intersections and exchanges that flow across those borders. Sponsored by UC Santa Barbara’s American Cultures and Global Contexts Center and Stanford University's Program in American Studies, <em>JTAS</em> is hosted on the eScholarship Repository, which is part of the eScholarship initiative of the California Digital Library.</p&gt

From the Editors

The Journal of Transnational American Studies (JTAS) seeks to broaden the interdisciplinary study of American cultures in a transnational context. In her 2004 presidential address to the American Studies Association, Shelley Fisher Fishkin noted the growing recognition that understanding the United States requires looking beyond and across national borders. This "transnational turn" has emphasized the multidirectional flows of peoples, ideas, and goods, and in the process has thrown into question the "naturalness" of political, geographical, and epistemological boundaries. JTAS functions as an open-access forum for Americanists in the global academic community, where scholars are increasingly interrogating borders both within and outside the nation and focusing instead on the multiple intersections and exchanges that flow across those borders. Sponsored by UC Santa Barbara’s American Cultures and Global Contexts Center and Stanford University's Program in American Studies, JTAS is hosted on the eScholarship Repository, which is part of the eScholarship initiative of the California Digital Library

“Deep Maps”: A Brief for <u>D</u>igital <u>P</u>alimpsest <u>M</u>apping <u>P</u>rojects (DPMPs, or “Deep Maps”)

This article proposes a potentially fruitful “next step” for transnational American Studies, inviting colleagues around the world to collaborate on Digital Palimpsest Mapping Projects—DPMPs, or “Deep Maps.” “Deep Maps,” curated collaboratively by scholars in multiple locations, would put multilingual digital archives around the globe in conversation with one another, using maps as the gateway. “Deep Maps” could be read as palimpsests, allowing multiple version of events, texts, and phenomena to be written over each other—with each version visible under the layers. “Deep Maps” would bring multilingual perspectives from multiple archival locations together to complicate our understanding of topics that engaged people across the globe. Links to secondary sources and interpretive frameworks introducing the topic of any given “Deep Map” would help tell transnational stories in fresh ways. “Deep Maps” would not replace traditional scholarship; rather, they would present it in new contexts, amplifying its impact. Some examples of “Deep Maps” currently under construction are explored. By requiring collaboration—across borders, languages, nations, continents, and disciplines—Digital Palimpsest Mapping Projects would bring our interdependence—as scholars, as citizens, as human beings—to the foreground and could help us take the field of transnational American Studies in some exciting new directions.<br /&gt