This collection focuses broadly on the role of law in the constructionof U.S. borders and takes up an important questionraised 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 onentry and exit, through the construction of rights of citizenshipand noncitizenship, and through the regulation ofAmerican power in other parts of the world. Where legalrights are at issue, borders and territory continue to play apowerful role, especially as certain spaces, such as GuantanamoBay, Cuba, are marked by the U.S. government asoutside legal restraints on government power. Yet the lawalso extends the United States beyond its literal borders,through, for example, efforts to export democracy to theMiddle East.This is the first collection to map the intersection of lawand American studies, and it captures the excitement of interdisciplinarywork at this intersection. 22 illustrations.
