ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the crucial role that collaboration across borders, languages, and disciplines plays in Transnational American Studies. It describes the genesis of four collaborative, interdisciplinary transnational projects created between 2005 and the present in which the author played a key role: (1) an international forum on Mark Twain’s “The War-Prayer” originally published in a Japanese journal; (2) the development of the Journal of Transnational American Studies; (3) the identification, translation, and publication of writing on Mark Twain that was previously unavailable in English by Nobel laureates from Denmark and Japan, by two of Cuba’s most prominent public intellectuals, by Argentina’s most celebrated author, by one of China’s most famous modern authors, and by respected writers from Germany, Italy, Russia, Spain, and the Soviet Union—as well as an article from a Yiddish newspaper in Vilna that was a poignant reminder of the vibrant intellectual culture that once thrived in Yiddish-speaking communities in Eastern Europe; (4) The Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project at Stanford University, a venture that involves over 100 scholars from around the world. The chapter concludes with a discussion of some of the challenges and opportunities collaborative projects may entail in the future.
