American Quarterly is a premier journal in the field and the flagship publication of the American Studies Association since 1952.

American Quarterly publishes interdisciplinary scholarship that examines the sociopolitical, economic, and cultural formations of the United States and the Americas, broadly construed. It examines the histories and ongoing effects of indigenous dispossession upon which the U.S. nation stands, the roles of diverse subjects and institutions in and outside those formations, and the United States’ relations with the world. The journal engages both traditional and emerging fields and disciplines, including but not limited to critical race studies, digital culture, ethnography, gender studies, history, literature, material culture, performance studies, sexuality studies, religion, and visual culture.

With the editorial office located at the University at Notre Dame, the journal is poised to lead the field of American Studies in new directions, with a particular commitment to Indigenous studies as well as transnational and comparative approaches that critically interrogate the boundaries of “America.”

Current Issue: Vol. 78, No. 1 (March 2026)

March Editor’s Note

Jason Ruiz, University of Notre Dame

The four research essays that make up this first issue of our seventy-eighth volume represent exciting new work on wildly disparate subjects. In “The Sexual Life of Blight,” René Esparza examines the impacts of urban renewal on homosocial and queer spaces in mid-twentieth-century Minneapolis, providing a fascinating case study for the politics of urban space and sexuality. In a very different but equally compelling essay, Francesca Sawaya investigates the somewhat surprising history of the mermaid as an imperialist trope, especially when she took the form of an Undine, which is the eponymous title of a text with some unexpected connections to European narratives of the Haitian Revolution. An image from this essay appears on this issue’s cover, a beautiful second entry in our new design regime. Grace Dutt, in “The Color of Money,” looks at the ways that money and both social and financial capital influenced how some African American travelers represented European travel in the 1930s. Lastly, Molly McGarry excavates the meanings of “moral injury” as a concept that has functioned as both a diagnosis for soldiers and an organizing principle among labor activists and others in the United States, exploring some of the deeper narratives surrounding trauma and injury that seem to proliferate the discourse of our current moment.

In addition to these four stellar contributions, this issue is packed with content that goes beyond the research essay. An insightful forum tackles queer archival practices across the cuir/queer Américas. In a lively interview, Ashlee Bird and Lisa Nakamura discuss the latter’s now-iconic AQ essay, “Indigenous Circuits,” ten years after its initial publication. A book review, two event reviews, and a digital project review assess recent works in those formats, showcasing some of the phenomenal research and outreach happening in the field of American studies. Finally, two brief praxes close out the issue, one explicating the lab model for the humanities and one fondly remembering Professor Lauren Rabinovitz, who died in September 2025, as a scholar, teacher, mentor, and friend.

The editorial team and I finalized this issue on the heels of an invigorating annual meeting of the American Studies Association in San Juan (we were the ones walking around the convention center with snazzy AQ tote bags), and look forward to publishing Alex Lubin’s presidential address and two responses in our next issue. One thing that struck me about the various sessions that I attended at ASA was the vast number of sessions and talks devoted to how we continue to do American studies in “a moment of danger,” as George Lipsitz put it a quarter century ago. AQ can’t tackle everything that’s wrong with the world—or even just our corner of academia—right now, but we will continue to draw inspiration from our brave colleagues we heard at the conference.

Editorial Leadership