Session Abstract

In recent years calls to "internationalize" our approach to particular pasts have been omnipresent.  Advocates of what is sometimes termed the "transnational turn" have persuasively argued that disciplinary conventions and political mandates have too long pushed historians to investigate and narrate change over time in nation-sized chunks.  New attention to border-crossing processes and transregional connections has provided exciting insights and unsettled old insularities.  But are there hidden costs to this disciplinary reorientation?  By seeking out tales of transnational connection do we marginalize certain regions, actors, or themes?  Might the cachet of archive-hopping proposals cause us to underestimate hard-won local expertise?  Does a preference for multi-sited research reinforce disparities within international academia, leaving scholars at resource-poor institutions, in the U.S. or beyond its borders, without the price of admission to "cutting edge" debate?