Transnationalism has become one of the new key concepts designed to highlight areas of a positive dynamics in the context of an as yet amorphous process of globalization (which many consider as tantamount to Americanization). But what does the much-quoted "fading of borders" imply when we study its manifestations in the Western Hemisphere? Are the classic markers and containers of self, of culture, of ethnic or racial identity, of economic and political nation truly fading? Or are we witnessing a realignment of bordersi Perhaps merely a displacement, that is new borders and with it a tacit reconfiguration of empire?

The contributors of this volume originally presented their ideas at a conference organized by the Bavarian American Academy. Thomas J. Courchene, Jürgen Kähler, Ricardo D. Salvatore, Stefan Rinke, Reg Whitaker, John Urry, Paul Ashdown, Todd Gitlin, Susan H. Armitage, John Carlos Rowe, Werner Sollors, Stephan Palmié and Patricia Fernßndez-Kelly address the question of transnationalism from the perspectives of political sciences, economics, cultural studies, history, sociology and literature. Novelist Bharati Mukherjee concludes the volume by responding to the theoretical aspects raised by the contributors and by adding a fictional exemplification of the formation of a truly transnational American consciousness.