At the dawn of a new decade, Rutgers Today challenged university scholars across half a dozen disciplines – economics, American studies, history, political science, law, science, and sociology – to predict what the next few years hold in store. Based on the opening years of the new millennium, we asked, what trends do you see evolving, and what might life look like when this newly hatched decade draws to a close? In this article, we interview Alice Echols about the flow of ideas across national boundaries.
Alice Echols, American studies
And although there will always be a place for the nation-state – and there should be, the scholar says – this trend is likely to continue.
“Transnationalism involves studying the flow of ideas, people, musical idioms, literary styles, political movements, fashion, you name it, and the ways in which these are reformulated as they move across national boundaries,” Echols says.
Having written extensively about two seemingly diverse topics – American feminism and American popular music during the 1960s and 1970s – the professor says a transnational analysis has much to offer in both arenas.
“Think about music,” Echols says. “Globalization is breaking down both the boundaries of nation-state and the boundaries of genre as pop becomes an increasingly hybrid affair. It’s not uncommon for music fans to count among their favorites musicians as disparate as Afrobeat’s Femi Kuti, America’s performance/dance artist Lady Gaga, and British classic rockers Led Zeppelin. This is bound to affect the ways in which we study music.
As for feminism, Echols says scholars are taking the emphasis off the United States and pointing to the vitality of women’s movements in other countries. “This leads to a different history of ‘second wave’ feminism; for example, one of the ways in which feminism gets reignited in America during the '60s is through the work of Pan-Asian and Latin-American feminists working through the United Nations.
“I look forward to the ways in which this rich scholarship will further enrich our understanding of America and the world,” Echols says.
– Fredda Sacharow
- More Perspectives
- Perspectives on the Next Decade: Law in the 21st Century
- Perspectives on the Next Decade: Transnational Popular Culture
- Perspectives on the Next Decade: Race, Class and Ethnicity
- Perspectives on the Next Decade: Global Development and Foreign Investment
- Perspectives on the Next Decade: Economics and the Job Market