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What happens to ´America´ when it does not coincide with the geographical and institutional boundaries of the U.S. nation-state? What does ´America´ mean when it is performed abroad and circulates among populations and publics outside U.S. national contexts? ´Performing America Abroad´ explores an unlikely American studies archive: contemporary cultural performances in Austria and Germany which refer to the American cultural imaginary, but enact it with a ´transnational difference.´

The book discusses the ambivalent cultural politics of these enactments in the context of neoliberal capitalism; specifically, it looks at several cross-racial performances of ´Indianness´ on various Austrian stages, it examines queer political demonstrators on Vienna´s central Ringstraße, who celebrate the legacy of the 1969 New York Stonewall riots, and it discusses the ´Americanness´ of a series of theatrical adaptations of Arthur Miller´s 1949 play ´Death of a Salesman´ in Germany and Austria.

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