Introduction

Abstract

This special issue aims to formulate a 'worlded' version of American Studies to deal with emergent complexities of Asia/Pacific as well as North–South trans-Americas flows and imbalances characterizing today's empire of neo-liberal globalization. Scholars of this sublimated new world order face a strange and uneven moment of international globalization-cum-decolonialization. Disciplinary critique and field transformation are urgently needed. This issue would help forge a 'cross-roads' vision of US area studies refracting North/South and East/West transactions, theorizing comparative discrepancies, trans-oceanic linkages, and a cultural studies refiguring of the transnational field-imaginary.