Legal Borderlands: Law and the Construction of American Borders Mary L. Dudziak and Leti Volpp, eds. (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006) first published as a Special Issue of American Quarterly, September 2005 
| Reviews and Ordering Information
"This book assembles a set of riveting essays that rip deeply into some of the biggest topics in current headlines." Prelinger Library "By weaving together colorful and contentious strands of culture, history and law, these essays make a compelling argument that "it is in its bleeding borders that law itself, and with it American identity, is constructed, contested, and made meaningful." Harvard Law Review "The breadth and interdisciplinary reach of this issue is testimony to the immense ambition and intellectual acumen of guest editors Mary L. Dudziak and Leti Volpp, who have brought together an extraordinary group of scholars and shaped their work into a deep and rewarding conversation, one that points to the emergence of a field of legal American Studies in itself." Marita Sturken, Editor, American Quarterly, Preface to Legal Borderlands Review, Linda Bosniak, Constitutional Commentary Johns Hopkins University Press Amazon.com |
| This collection focuses broadly on the role of law in the construction of U.S. borders and takes up an important question raised by the global turn in American studies scholarship: once territory becomes less critical to scholarship in the discipline, what constitutes the frame of American studies?
For this project, a "border" is not simply a territorial boundary. Borders are created through formal legal controls on entry and exit, through the construction of rights of citizenship and noncitizenship, and through the regulation of American power in other parts of the world. Where legal rights are at issue, borders and territory continue to play a powerful role, especially as certain spaces, such as Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are marked by the U.S. government as outside legal restraints on government power. Yet the law also extends the United States beyond its literal borders, through, for example, efforts to export democracy to the Middle East.
This is the first collection to map the intersection of law and American studies, and it captures the excitement of interdisciplinary work at this intersection.
Table of Contents Preface, Marita Sturken Introduction: Legal Borderlands: Law and the Construction of American Borders, Mary L. Dudziak and Leti Volpp Law's Borders At the Boundaries of Law: Executive Clemency, Sovereign Prerogative, and the Dilemma of American Legality, Austin Sarat Borders of Identity Racial Naturalization, Devon W. Carbado Outlawing "Coolies": Race, Nation, and Empire in the Age of Emancipation, Moon-Ho Jung Between "Oriental Depravity" and "Natural Degenerates": Spatial Borderlands and the Making of Ordinary Americans, Nayan Shah Toward a History of Statelessness in America, Linda K. Kerber In the Shadow of NAFTA: Y tu mama tambien Revisits the National Allegory of Mexican Sovereignty, Mara Josefina Saldaa-Portillo Borders of Territory The Edges of Empire and the Limits of Sovereignty: American Guano Islands, Christina Duffy Burnette Romantic Sovereignty: Popular Romances and the American Imperial State in the Philippines, Andrew Hebard Where Is Guantnamo? Amy Kaplan Borders of Power Canton Is Not Boston: The Invention of American Imperial Sovereignty, Teemu Ruskola Liberation under Siege: U.S. Military Occupation and Japanese Women's Enfranchisement, Lisa Yoneyama Between Camps: Eastern Bloc "Escapees" and Cold War Borderlands, Susan Carruthers The Biopolitics of Security: Oil, Empire, and the Sports Utility Vehicle, David Campbell "Setting the Conditions" for Abu Ghraib: The Prison Nation Abroad, Michelle Brown Click here for chapter abstracts. |