Obama and Transnational American Studies

Contributors from five continents address the widespread geographical and political reverberations connected with the emergence of the name Obama in the media and in the consciousness of the world and relate it to the transformation of a field of studies from a national to a transnational or even global focus. The multi-ethnic biographies of the Obama family extend from its Luo origins in Kenya to Hawai‘i, Asia, and Europe and lend themselves to a Transnational American Studies approach. Auma Obama’s opening address on the future of the young Kenyan generation connects with considerations of her own life in Germany and with Michelle Obama’s initiatives at home and abroad. Essays on early American literature and the Civil Rights Movement suggest the shared historical roots of Transnational American Studies and African American identities and trace the resonances in Barack Obama’s politics and reform efforts, such as Obama Care. Further contributions explore the manifold media representations of and references to Obama in Bollywood, the films of Quentin Tarantino and Sönke Wortmann, hip hop culture, transnational affiliations, legal interrelations, interpictorial and intertextual creations.