Author Description

See Attached Sheets Cover Enclosed To Scan American Studies has been a growing and dynamic interdisciplinary field in China since the early 1980s. Most of the institutions of higher education provide courses on American studies in their departments of history, foreign languages or international studies. The disciplinary basis of American Studies has extended from the domain of solely literary and cultural studies to almost all academic fields which touch on different aspects of the United States. Moreover, with advances in media and communication technologies, it is now possible for people of both Asian and European cultural backgrounds, to exchange views and improve their understandings of American culture. This reshaping has been providing both changes and challenges in our approaches to modern American literary and cultural creation. With the increasing academic interest in and teaching experience of American Studies, the Faculty of English Language and Culture of the Guangdong University of Foreign Studies hosted an international conference on American literature and culture from May 24 through 27, 2002.The Conference, entitled Re-reading America: Changes and Challenges, brought together not only Chinese and U.S. scholars with expertise in this interdisciplinary field, but also scholars from other Asian and European countries or regions who are involved in American literary and cultural studies. It was a truly international occasion when participants, who are from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds, all benefited from the diversity of research topics and multiplicity of approaches. The program of this conference, therefore, included speakers specializing in the field of American Studies from around the world; they presented a variety of topics with provocative implications for the future of American Studies. Among the keynote speakers are recognized scholars like Hazel V. Carby (Yale University), Michael Denning (Yale University), He Qixin (Beijing Foreig