Introduction: American Studies after Postmodernism

This introductory essay explains the aims and goals of the present volume, clarifies its tripartite organization, and presents the fifteen original contributions it hosts. Attention is first devoted to the multiple dimensions of the critical debate on the demise of postmodernism that persists from the early 1990s to the present 2020s. The essay reviews the most prominent critical and theoretical paradigms of the present moment that aspire to respond to the severe sociocultural, political, economic, and ecological crises that not only the United States but the entire, highly globalized world experiences well past the heyday of postmodernism. The essay captures the distinctive qualities of this time of upheaval and shift and concludes by drawing on the continuities with postmodernism but mostly by introducing new trends and tropisms for the twenty-first century.