Constructing the Enemy

Rajini Srikanth is Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. She is the author of The World Next Door: South Asian American Literature and the Idea of America and the coeditor (with Sunaina Maira) of Contours of the Heart: South Asians Map North America and (with Lavina Dhingra Shankar) of A Part Yet Apart: South Asians in Asian America.

• Acknowledgements 1. Introduction: The Landscape of Empathy 2. Literary Imagination and American Empathy 3. Deserving Empathy? Renouncing American Citizenship 4. Hierarchies of Horror, Levels of Abuse: Empathy for the Internees 5. Guantanamo: Where Lawyers Connect with the "Worst of the Worst" Conclusion

"Constructing the Enemy is a fascinating book-nuanced and engaging-that weaves together legal theory, the realities of legal practice, historical vignettes, and literary analysis. Srikanth artfully straddles disciplines and adds important new insights. Her refined, subtly developed topic is quite timely, and her ideas about empathy/antipathy are both challenging and accessible." -Daniel Kanstroom, Boston College