Lexington Books
Pages: 212
•
Trim: 6 x 9
978-1-4985-4514-3 • Hardback • December 2018 • $90.00 • (£69.00)
978-1-4985-4515-0 • eBook • December 2018 • $85.50 • (£66.00)
Susan Hodgett is professor and director of area studies at the University of East Anglia, England.
Patrick James is Dornsife Dean’s professor of international relations at the University of Southern California.
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Part I – Overview
Chapter 1 Introduction: Context – Theorizing the New Area Studies
Susan Hodgett, and Patrick James
Part II – New Area Studies Around the Globe
Chapter 2 New Area Studies in the Borderlands of Asia
Mandy Sadan
Chapter 3 New Area Studies, the Problem of Russia and ‘Recursive Nationhood’
Stephen Hutchings
Chapter 4 Area Studies as Refugee Studies
Peter Gatrell
Chapter 5 Latin American Studies: What Have We Achieved and Where are We Heading?
Christopher Sabatini, and Nicolas Albertoni Gomez
Chapter 6 Mastering the Current. Studying Central Asia in the 21st Century
Claus Bech Hansen
Chapter 7 Muslim World Studies or Middle East Studies?
Rob Gleave
Chapter 8 Blurring the Boundaries of History and Fiction: Re-imagining the Past and Re-defining the Present through the Lens of Saudi Women Novelists
Zahia Smail Salhi and Ibrahim A. I. Alfraih
Part III – Canada in Comparative Perspective
Chapter 9 TransArea Studies: Gendered Mobility in North American Literature
Caroline Rosenthal
Chapter 10 Area and Circus Studies: The Case of and for a Boundary Crossing Quebec
Charles R. Batson
Chapter 11 Figurations of the Border and New Area Studies
Claude Denis with Abdelkarim Amengay
Chapter 12 The State Against Canadian Studies
Colin Coates
Part IV – Reflections on New Area Studies
Chapter 13 What Have We Learned?
Susan Hodgett, and Patrick James
About the Contributors
This volume is a timely effort to draw attention to the latent potential of area studies in addition to highlighting recent methodological and conceptual innovations of significance within the broader field of study. The collection is imbued with a desire to utilize the strengths of area studies in order to address the trivialisation of social, cultural and economic complexity with respect to rapidly changing regional, national and global context. This collections provides an effective introduction to the changing character and ambition of area studies.
— British Journal of Canadian Studies
The editors and contributors to this volume are critical of both conventional social scientific practice for its obvious failure to anticipate key developments in the contemporary world, and of traditional area studies research for its a-theoretical and descriptive qualities. Collectively, they advance a compelling case for a ‘New Area Studies’ that embraces comparative and multiple disciplinary perspectives and that seeks to contextualize the impact of globalizing forces in particular places and cases. This timely and provocative volume deserves a wide readership across the social sciences and humanities.— Munroe Eagles, SUNY Buffalo
Hodgett and James powerfully advocate for the development of New Area Studies (NAS) by demonstrating how productive a re-imagining of traditional area studies can and will be. After surveying critical regions around the world, the deeper dive into a much neglected region of area studies -- Canada -- offers both a salutary example of rethinking old models and a promise of what is to be gained in NAS. An interdisciplinary must-read for an academy in search of new models and modes of knowledge production and transmission.— Miléna Santoro, Georgetown University
By bringing together a first-rate team of contributors, this consistently stimulating collection gives new life to Area Studies by exploring links and tensions between the local and the global.— Simon Dixon, University College London