Current Issue: Vol. 78, No. 1 (March 2026)
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.”
March Edition: Note from Editor in Chief Jason Ruiz
Whether you are reading this issue of American Quarterly online or in hard copy, I hope that you noticed the radical change to our cover design. When I assumed the role of Editor in July 2024, I made it a priority to redesign the look of the journal, which had had pretty much the same cover design for over twenty years. For the past several months our Associate Managing Editor Marie Shelton and I have been working with the American Studies Association’s brilliant Program Manager, Christine Shell, to completely reimagine how the journal could look and have landed on what you now see. We wanted to make AQ more graphic and colorful, with a full-bleed image and color overlay on every cover. Subsequent issues of AQ will follow this new design schema, with the cover changing color with each issue, which will eventually make for a colorful area on your bookshelf when you line up your American Quarterlies. I want to personally thank Christine and Marie for their work on the redesign, as well as the multiple audiences to whom I have presented our ideas, for all the encouragement and feedback, and hope that this new design will feel to readers, as it does to me, like a more contemporary and handsome look for the journal.
Of course, one should not judge a journal by its cover, no matter how shiny and new, and the contents of this issue are even more exciting and provocative than its outside. It includes four research essays that all deal with questions of racial justice. David Barrera’s work on the art collective Asco examines that group’s “resignifying” work in relation to the Chicano Moratorium in Los Angeles in the early 1970s. (A rather great image from ASCO’s performance art is the cover image for this redesigned issue.) Hannah Manshel analyzes recent discourse around the Indian Child Welfare Act and the claims that it is unconstitutional because it “discriminates” against white people, teasing out a fascinating and important argument about race, indigeneity, and the law. Derek Xavier Garcia looks at the history, especially the naming, of an experimental school—also in the early 1970s—to offer an important case study in Chicano education activism. And Jennifer Nash revisits some of the biggest questions in Black feminist theory and proposes “arithmetical thinking” as a way to interpret and counter antiblack violence. In addition to these essays, this issue contains a provocative forum that takes a comparative approach to martial law across Asia and the Americas, along with two book reviews and two event reviews, and a praxes piece that grew out of the 2024 annual meeting. Truly, the content of this issue is even more compelling than its cover.
Featured Open-Access Article
Missionary Positions: How American Evangelicals Learned to Love Global AIDS Work, 1985-2005, by Hannah Waits
Beyond the Page
“Beyond the Page” features supplementary materials that enhance the content of American Quarterly. This month: Joseph D. Martin writes about “Acid Test.”
Editorial Leadership
Editorial Staff
Editor: Jason Ruiz, University of Notre Dame
Managing Editor: Cengiz Salman, University of Notre Dame
Associate Managing Editor: Marie Shelton, University of Notre Dame
Associate Editors:
Benjamin Balthaser, Indiana University South Bend
Korey Garibaldi, University of Notre Dame
Perin Gürel, University of Notre Dame
Digital Projects Review Editors
Aleia M. Brown, University of Maryland
Kristy H. A. Kang, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Carly A. Kocurek, Illinois Institute of Technology
Book Review Editors
Selina Lai-Henderson, Duke Kunshan University
Patrick McKelvey, University of Pittsburgh
Event Review Editors
Sarah Leavitt, Lillian & Albert Small Capital Jewish Museum
Susette Min, UC Davis
Board of Managing Editors
Benjamin Balthaser, Indiana University South Bend
Sarika Chandra, Wayne State University
Joseph Darda, Michigan State University
Korey Garibaldi, University of Notre Dame
Perin Gürel, University of Notre Dame
Jennifer Huynh, University of Notre Dame
Su’ad Abdul Khabeer, University of Michigan
Jinah Kim, University of California, Merced
Kate Marshall, University of Notre Dame
Francisco Robles, University of Notre Dame
Nitasha Tamar Sharma, Northwestern University
Joshua Specht, University of Notre Dame
Board of Advisory Editors
Tanja Aho, University at Buffalo
Sari Altschuler, Northeastern University
Rachel Buff, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Bianet Castellanos, University of Minnesota
Susan Garfinkel, Library of Congress
Melani McAlister, George Washington University
Richard Rath, University of Hawai‘i at M ̄anoa
Nitasha Tamar Sharma, Northwestern University
Kate Griffin, Executive Director, American Studies Association
Chih-ming Wang, Institute of European and American Studies, Academia Sinica
Henry Yu, University of British Columbia, Vancouver