Commentary on “Assessing the Field: An Oral History Interview,” by Gary Kulik (Volume 23, No. 1, 1992)

222 Canadian Review of American Studies Commentary on "Assessing the Field: An Oral History Intetview," by Gary Kulik (Volume 23, No. 1, 1992) Sandra Tome, University of British Columbia I'd like to begin my response to Bruce Tucker's interview with Gary Kulik by providing an anecdotal gloss on what Kulik mentions as "one of the key fault lines in American studies today" (12). For the 1992 American Studies Association (ASA) conference in Los Angeles, whose theme, in honour of the Columbus anniversary, was "Exploration/Exploitation: The Americas," four of us-Robert Martin, Tom Carmichael, Michael Zeitlin, and myselfput together a panel that seemed to address exactly the conference's topic. As Americanists working in Canada, we had decided to bring our understanding of American paradigms to bear on their articulation in the work of Canadian authors: Sheila Watson's "creative appropriation" of William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha in The Double Hook; Margaret Atwood's response to Perry Miller's "Puritaniz.ation" of American culture in the The Handmaid's Tale; and Michael Ondaatje's writing of America as the site of an uncanny strangeness in Coming Through Slaughter. Our overt agenda was simply to examine cross-cultural representations as sites of combination, anxiety, and insurgency. But underneath this, we all later confessed, was a certain amount of pride as well: we were Americanists, perhaps, but this time we were representing Canada. The presence of our panel at the ASA seemed to constitute the very space of cultural difference, and potentially the space of insurgency, that our panel itself addressed. So there we were, keyed up. Swanky hotel in Los Angeles, a mediumsized room at 8:30 am the first day, our papers shuffling before us as we waited for the audience to assemble ... and no one showed. No one. We decided to give our papers anyway, dispersing ourselves throughout the room just to get rid of the echoes. Halfway through the first paper, a single Reactions:ThoughtsFromOurReadersI 223 person came in, then left. Halfway through the third, another entered, but didn't stay to ask questions. And these were lost-looking people, the sort who were still thumbing through their programs in bewilderment, people who had drifted in by accident not design. Our first response, once the shock had worn off, was to laugh. After all, itwas so ... so Canadian. Ambrosia for an Atwood anecdote: coming south of the border only to have your national self affirmed through lack of interest . But if the nationalist jokes ironed out our embarrassment and inspired a burst of patriotism we hadn't expected to feei they also started us thinking. Why such indifference? Where, if anywhere, had we gone wrong? This was, after all, a conference on the Americas. In its "Call for Papers," the ASA had seemed intent on crossing its traditionally national scholarly borders to address the complex relationships among the nations and peoples of the North and South American continents, with a focus, one would guess (since this was American studies), on America's own role in the "Exploration and Exploitation" of the Americas' many cultures. This, indeed, is how we had situated our own panel: Canadian authors who "write back" to America's neo-imperial domination of Canada's culture and economy. Yet a closer look at the program told me we were almost alone in our interpretation of the conference's agenda. Papers on Asian Americans, African Americans, native Americans, gayAmericans, Jewish Americans, all appropriate enough, given the focus on exploitation, but all predominantly to do with peoples living,however marginally,within America itself. Then, more bizarrely, a session on bungalows in California, another on censorship in Hollywood, another on American agricultural fairs. About America's relationships to any other, extranational "Americas" there was virtually nothing. The War of 1812, Manifest Destiny, the Mexican-American War, the building of the Panama Canal, the North American Free Trade Agreement , the tourist industry in Mexico and the Caribbean, America's relations with Cuba, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Grenada, Colombia, Chile--even popular representations of these relations in journalism, novels and film-were not on the agenda. And here, apparently, was where we had gone wrong. The lack of interest in our...