Locating American Studies: The Evolution of a Discipline

Locating American Studies is a collection of seventeen essays first printed in American Quarterly, the journal of the American Studies Association. To mark the Association's celebration of its 50th anniversary in 1998, Lucy Maddox has brought together works by a distinguished group of scholars which "provide a useful window into the history and the evolution of the practice of American studies from its early, formational days to the present." Each essay, originally published between 1950 and 1996, is accompanied by a commentary in which a scholar from a related field provides useful critical information for understanding the continuing importance of the work to the American Studies field. Contributors include Gene Wise, Henry Nash Smith, Bruce Kuklick, R. Gordon Kelly, Robert Berkhofer Jr., Barbara Welter, Linda Kerber, Nina Baym, Janice Radway, Alexander Saxton, Houston Baker, Jr., George Lipsitz, Ramón Gutiérrez, Kevin Mumford, and K. Scott Wong.

"If the frequency with which an essay is cited in subsequent scholarship and assigned as required reading in academic courses may be taken as an indication of the respect it has achieved and the importance it has been granted, then many of the essays in this volume have come to be considered milestones, even classics, in the scholarly literature of American studies."—from the Introduction by Lucy Maddox

Lucy Maddox is Professor Emerita of English and American studies at Georgetown University. She is the author of The Parker Sisters: A Border Kidnapping and the editor of Locating American Studies: The Evolution of a Discipline.