Christopher Castiglia is Distinguished Professor of English at the Pennsylvania State University.Susan Gillman is Distinguished Professor of Literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

"The book is a compelling starting point for Americanist literary critics to consider the affective shifts our field is undergoing at this present moment and from which to wonder whether we are writing ourselves back into alignment with a wider American imaginary, albeit through commitments to a more microscopic frame that reflect our shared desires to no longer look up and take in the full panoramic scale or to universalize about what America 'means.' Still,America is printed there as if it were a jeweler’s mark on every fragment or partial thing that the book takes up as its subjects. Each excellent essay in the collection has a strange aura about it that seems to be asking us to go outside and see if all the world changes again a little bit over that hill. The speculative is, after, a mode of romance, and Americanist literary criticism’s weird love of America, a fact that persists in spite of everything, it seems, dies hard or not at all."

Christopher Castiglia is Distinguished Professor of English at the Pennsylvania State University.Susan Gillman is Distinguished Professor of Literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

"The book is a compelling starting point for Americanist literary critics to consider the affective shifts our field is undergoing at this present moment and from which to wonder whether we are writing ourselves back into alignment with a wider American imaginary, albeit through commitments to a more microscopic frame that reflect our shared desires to no longer look up and take in the full panoramic scale or to universalize about what America 'means.' Still,America is printed there as if it were a jeweler’s mark on every fragment or partial thing that the book takes up as its subjects. Each excellent essay in the collection has a strange aura about it that seems to be asking us to go outside and see if all the world changes again a little bit over that hill. The speculative is, after, a mode of romance, and Americanist literary criticism’s weird love of America, a fact that persists in spite of everything, it seems, dies hard or not at all."

Christopher Castiglia is Distinguished Professor of English at the Pennsylvania State University.Susan Gillman is Distinguished Professor of Literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

"The book is a compelling starting point for Americanist literary critics to consider the affective shifts our field is undergoing at this present moment and from which to wonder whether we are writing ourselves back into alignment with a wider American imaginary, albeit through commitments to a more microscopic frame that reflect our shared desires to no longer look up and take in the full panoramic scale or to universalize about what America 'means.' Still,America is printed there as if it were a jeweler’s mark on every fragment or partial thing that the book takes up as its subjects. Each excellent essay in the collection has a strange aura about it that seems to be asking us to go outside and see if all the world changes again a little bit over that hill. The speculative is, after, a mode of romance, and Americanist literary criticism’s weird love of America, a fact that persists in spite of everything, it seems, dies hard or not at all."