In her 1988 ASA presidential address, Linda Kerber warned against the parochial, inward turning tendencies of American studies, and she looked toward the day when every American scholar s training would require significant academic experience abroad. Events of the past twelve years including the end of the Cold War and the surge of transnational capitalism, the permeability of political boundaries and inadequacy of the nation-state as an isolated unit of study have made the call for an internationalized American studies even more convincing. The United States has never existed in splendid isolation, and the age of cyberspace and the new global order have made it even more imperative to forge a truly cosmopolitan American studies. The most effective approach to this global perspective is to follow Kerber s suggestion and live outside America in order to understand it better. After spending a year teaching American studies 6,000 miles away, I can attest to the transforming benefits of such international experience both for the globalization of our discipline and the revitalization of American studies scholars at any stage of their careers.
American studies is in demand throughout the world.
According to Karen Adams, Assistant Director of the Fulbright Program for Europe and the Newly Independent States, Americanists are the most zealously recruited academics in many nations. With at least one sixth of all Fulbrights for 2001-2002 designated for American studies and with many more in the fields of American literature and history, there are ample opportunities to add international dimensions to our research and teaching and contribute these perspectives to our home departments and universities. Although taking this leap requires careful career timing and involves inevitable tensions and risks, the ultimate rewards far outweigh the immediate costs I hope that my impressions of teaching American studies on the eastern edge of Central Europe echo Fulbright experiences elsewhere and convey the sheer elation of cultural rediscovery that this process brings. In 1998-99, I was the Laszlo Orszagh Fulbright Chair of American Studies at Kossuth University in Debrecen, Hungary. For varied reasons some inherent in every Fulbright experience this was the most intellectually exhilarating year of my career.