American Borders: Inclusion and Exclusion in US Culture

American Borders: Inclusion and Exclusion in US Culture provides an overview of American culture produced in a range of  contexts, from the founding of the nation to the age of globalization  and neoliberalism, in order to understand the diverse literary  landscapes of the United States from a twenty-first century perspective.  The authors confront American exceptionalism, discourses on freedom and  democracy, and US foundational narratives by reassessing the literary  canon and exploring ethnic literature, culture, and film with a focus on  identity and exclusion. Their contributions envision different  manifestations of conviviality and estrangement and deconstruct  neoliberal slogans, analyzing hospitable inclusion in relation to  national history and ideologies. By looking at representations of  foreignness and conditional belonging in literature and film from  different ethnic traditions, the volume fleshes out a new border  dialectic that conveys the heterogeneity of American boundaries beyond  the opposition inside/outside.