Multiculturalism and the American Self

The articles of this volume, which derive from two symposia held under the auspices of the Erasmus cooperation among seven European universities, address issues of the inter- and intracultural relations of different ethnic groups in America from the colonial period to the present time. In addition to the intercultural contacts between European settlers and immigrants on the one hand and minority groups on the other hand, emphasis is also given to the intercultural relations within white American literature. The common thread in all of these multicultural productions is the formation of an American self. Treatments of encounters between white settlers and Native Americans in the colonial period are set next to analyses of the minority works ranging from the poetry of Phillis Wheatley in the early republic, to questions of gender in slave narratives, to the fictions of Nella Larsen, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Gerald Vizenor, and Chicana writers. The implicit, often unintentional, stirrings of multiculturalism are the subject of articles on Henry Adams, Henry James, Thomas Wolfe, and Paul Green. Finally, the volume includes discussions of multicultural stereotypes, which determine the construction of American selfhood, in such motion pictures as Pocahontas, Forrest Gump, and Malcolm X.