Is the United States Postcolonial? Tansnationalism, Immigration, and Race

When I completed my doctorate in 1987, postcolonial studies was not a clearly defined field. I (like other diasporic Third World academics of my generation) applied for jobs in literature, to which we introduced the critical frame of Empire. And, like them, I began to shift my research and teaching away from European literature and toward the cultures of the ex-colonies. This shift occurred in response to the limitations of identifying colonial structures of power and knowledge without providing alternative frames of reference. But even as I say that my turn toward Third World literatures was in response to the demands of the classroom, I must also admit that I cannot disentangle my personal decision from the institutional demand for diasporic Third World intellectuals to teach what has come to be known as "postcolonial literature

Colonialism · Critical race theory · Economic history · Empire · Field (mathematics · Frame (networking · Immigration · Political economy · Political science · Postcolonialism (international relations · Power (physics · Race (biology · Sociology · Third world · Caribbean history, culture, and politics · Gender Studies · History · Law · Race, History, and American Society