Derek Rubin

A sometimes interesting, extremely uneven collection of essays commissioned by the American Studies Association (as I recall) and published by the University of Amsterdam. The charge to the contributors was to reflect on how multiculturalism in America changed after 9/11--most of them did something close to that, though there was one case of "I don't want to write about that so here's this instead", one case of incomprehensible (to me, certainly) film criticism and maybe a couple of entries in the "America Sucks Sweepstakes", but there's some wide-ranging and decidedly NOT mainstream thinking included, making it worth a (real) quick read.… (more)