The Eternal, Irresoluble Tensions in American Studies

This article discusses two tensions within American Studies, the first between discipline and interdisciplinarity, the second between national and transnational orientations. It argues that these tensions have characterized American Studies since at least the 1950s and that they are still awaiting their resolution. The article also proposes that recent controversies between representatives of the myth-and-symbol school and members of »New« American Studies can be understood in the light of the discipline -interdiscipline tension and that the kind of research that Transnational American Studies advocates has been performed, albeit with a different theoretical inflection, for decades by, primarily, European Americanists.