Shelley Fisher Fishkin impresses upon us just how profoundly the transnational turn has transformed American studies. Citing scores of examples from exciting recent scholarship, she highlights some of these transformations, most obviously, perhaps, in immigration and ethnic studies, but also in cold war studies, in comparative studies of race and racism, and in labor and religion studies, to mention a few. Putting the transnational turn in the context of a genealogy of American studies, Fishkin notes that in the course of the last few decades a new generation of scholars brought to the fore subjects that were previously ignored or marginalized in academic inquiry—African Americans, women, and Latino/as and Asian Americans. These scholars challenged conventional wisdoms, opened up new areas of research, and in the process recentered and utterly transformed the discipline. Fishkin updates the question asked by previous ASA presidents—“What would the field look like if African Americans (or women, or...) were at the center?”—by asking:“What would the field look like if the transnational were at the center?” Before addressing that question, it may be useful to pause for a moment to examine the links between past and current trends; for, the transnational did not drop from the sky or simply appear as part of the recent interest in “globalization.” Scholars of the transnational owe an enormous debt, both intellectual and institutional, to earlier projects. For example, diaspora has long been one of the key concepts of Afro-American and Africana studies. Chicano/a and Asian American studies encouraged us to enlarge our frame of reference from one focused on the Atlantic world to one that includes the West and the Pacific. The study of American empire underscored that geographic shift and, moreover, pushed us to problematize the role of nationalism in American history, culture, and politics. We have also learned from scholars in non-US fields of study in history, anthropology, and literature, who in many ways are more advanced in their interrogation of nationalism than are Americanists. 1