"The goal of this issue is to undertake a critical engagement with Bernie Sanders' ‘New Deal’ style liberalism, his ‘democratic socialism’, and his long-standing interest in Eugene Debs as a labor leader and a candidate for office. The contributors outline the intellectual and political strands that have informed Sanders’ approach to governing, while at the same time identifying what makes him unique in the history of American socialism. The  challenges that Sanders addresses are significantly different from those faced by figures from the American socialist past; so it seemed important to assess his sense of a ‘future to believe in’, while at the same time determining why he appeals to the younger generation of American voters. I therefore created a course about Sanders at Vanderbilt University, in order to glean what some of our students have to say about the Bernie they knew, and the Bernie they came to know better as they read primary and secondary texts relating to his life and work. Within weeks of starting the course, these students began to submit some really fascinating position papers. This special issue, The Mittens and the Dove, is the result."

-- Robert F. Barsky, Editor

Edited by Robert F. Barsky (Vanderbilt) and Marco Martiniello (FRS-FNRS & Université de Liège). Over the last years, artistic activities have found increasing interest among migration researchers because they prove to be a means of moving beyond ethnic differences towards narratives of identity and belonging that are more apt to capture the current post-migrant reality in many cities and countries. This issue contributes to that work by focusing on the cultural and artistic participation of migrants and descendants of migrants in a transatlantic perspective, and also on the spaces and the moments when this participation intersects with, and binds to, public forms of intercultural collective engagement, whether artistic, political, or both.Empirical and theoretical papers addressed some overriding questions, such as: what role do culture and the arts play in the lives of newcomers and descendants of migrants? Which cultural and artistic practices and forms of participation do newcomers and descendants of immigrants develop? How do cultural institutions take into account those publics often considered to be disengaged at the cultural and artistic level? Do these cultural practices contribute to creating bonds of solidarity between migrants and natives? And if so, what forms of political representation and collective engagement do they inspire? The papers included in this special issue present diverse but connected approaches to the broad themes of art and border crossings. 

Photo credit -- Sculpture by Susan Clinard, who writes: "I am captivated by the weight that these small sculptural objects hold. I intentionally made them small scale so that they would be held in one’s palm and intimately reflected upon. The Talisman boats are quiet meditative sketches; with no oars, no sails… they glide through life with purpose and strength.  Each boat is unique: as each person has a different story to tell and journey in front of them.

Edited by Robert F. Barsky. Over the 15 years of its existence, AmeriQuests has evolved to address new challenges in the realm of border crossings. Along the way, we have become an important venue for book reviews of new works that describe the challenges facing vulnerable migrants as they seek protection across borders of all kinds, including geographical boundaries, the regions that exist between mental states, and the disciplinary boundaries that sometimes impede the transmisson of useful knowledge. This has led us into the realms of art and culture, with the idea that we can often only go so far with judicial or policy solutions, and sometimes we need to look to shift deeply-held attitudes by fictional or symbolic representations. As such, we are creating a new Contours Collaboration space alongside of MIT's Knowledge Futures and PubPub. You can follow our progress at: (https://contours.pubpub.org)

AmeriQuests has also broadened its author base, and for this issue, we are featuring for the first time ever a collection of works written by advanced-level students. The quality of their work attests to the great potential of each of them, and speaks to the power of work being done by young authors.

The cover art was photographed at the Tate Modern Museum by Victoria Herring, and the subject matter is consistent with the aesthetic border-crossing work that AmeriQuests promotes. The piece, by Yinka Shonibare, consists of a huge room filled with thousands of books with the names of refugees who chose to seek protection in Britain, as well as the names of those who oppose immigration. Some of the book spines are blank too, suggesting the full refugee story is yet to be written. 

Obstacles to Protection of Vulnerable Migrants offers a sweeping overview of current issues in border crossing through rigorous reviews of new scholarship and original work. Covering topics such as homelessness, refugee children, religion and migration, refugee camps, the law of asylum, refugees on the high seas and the pathways taken by vulnerable migrants seeking protection, this issue, edited by Robert F. Barsky, will serve as a valuable resource for researchers and practitioners who work with refugees, undocumented persons, and migration from legal, humanistic and social sciences perspectives. This marks the last issue that will be published under the banner of AmeriQuests as the journal prepares to move to a broader border-crossing mandate, under a new title of BorderQuests. Stay tuned for details!

This issue, edited by Robert F. Barsky, features a broad array of border crossings, in narrative, literature, law and in geographical spaces all around the world. The genres, approaches and methods are as diverse as the problems named, and are tackled first by a major article by Thomas Spijkeboer that makes a provocative parallel between the irregularization and eviction of non-white in South Africa during the Apartheid, and the refugee policies carried out in Europe in recent times. Several researchers have also answered the call for 'commentaries', an effective way of interjecting critical voices at this juncture, when the rate of new policies and actions on borders worldwide seems to be moving at break neck (sometimes literally) speed. Finally, AmeriQuests is pursuing with vigor the task of reviewing recent and new works on border crossing, in part because of the urgency of issues discussed therein, and in part because of the lamentable dearth of venues for such reviews, particularly venues that are open access and easily accessible, worldwide. The image for this issue is part of an on-going effort to create BorderQuests/Global Stories, a new platform linked to AmeriQuests that features articles, stories, videos and commentaries devoted to the crossing of borders.

This issue, edited by Robert Barsky and David Maraniss, features a series of timely position papers regarding current issues in border-crossing, as well as a collection of Beat Generation inspired ruminations about "America".

This issue, co-edited by Robert F. Barsky and Daniel Ridge, is the fourth in a series on "cultural modernism" that considers the impact of French modernism upon different parts of the world. The articles were first presented at a 2015 conference at the W.T. Bandy Center devoted to the impact of the poetry and prose of Charles Baudelaire on modern Japanese culture.

Cultural border-crossing from France to Japan, and then to America, is complemented by new work by Vanderbilt Law School students on the sanctuary movement and its relation to current events in the United States.

Edited by Robert F. Barsky and Jonathan Cohen

Lawrence B. Cohen began revising his Columbia University PhD dissertation on worker self management in the spring of 1949, with an eye to publishing it for broad circulation. He completed the first draft in the spring of 1950, and then revised it over the next few years with input from Stanley Aranowitz and Seymour Melman.
The final manuscript offers intimate details regarding the workings of a local union, and provides significant insight into worker decision making. The goal of the union that Cohen investigated was to establish "rules which can be applied without bias," and on this basis he sets forth a framework for active worker participation in decision making that relates to production.
The complete manuscript of this book is hereby presented for the first time, and it is accompanied by scholarly and historical commentary that helps situate it within its historical context, while at the same time providing illuminating insights for workers and scholars concerned with shifting power relations in the workplace.
This issue also offers commentary on Donald Trump's Executive Orders of January 2017 in regards to refugee rights and sanctuary.

Edited by Andrea Mirabile and Daniel Ridge, this issue emerges from the second and third conferences on Cultural Modernisms, held at the W.T. Bandy Center, Vanderbilt University. These articles discuss aspects of the migration and reception of modernisms, in Europe and Latin America. Commentaries on the migrant crises in Europe and the Americas, by Robert Barsky and Julius Grey, speak to current issues in border crossings.

Edited by Juan M. Amaya-Castro (VU University) and Bas Schotel (University of Amsterdam)

Recent years have seen the development of increasingly sophisticated legal and policy approaches to address the phenomenon of irregular immigration. Many states have moved beyond traditional means of law enforcement, such as criminalization, without necessarily abandoning them. In addition, they have begun to employ other areas of law (such as administrative law and labor law) in pursuit of controlling irregular immigration. For example, the verification of legal residence status, by means of ID-controls, has become increasingly necessary in the day to day life of all people: citizens and non-citizens alike. Private citizens, and not government agents, are evolving into the primary enforcers of these policies, as they have been made legally responsible for the control of legal residence status, for example in the case of employment.
These legal and policy instruments have sometimes been justified with reference to economic theories, such as 'attrition through enforcement', the broken window theory, and most recently 'self-deportation', a term that ironically originated in a stand-up sketch performed by two Hispanic comedians in the mid '90s, and has since then been promoted to a major policy proposal in the Romney campaign for the US presidential elections. Among economic scholars, a debate about the (lack of) effectiveness of these policies has been growing the last couple of years. What is still absent, however, is a more rigorous analysis by legal and other social science scholars. This special issue aims to explore the more systemic dimensions of these responses to irregular migration.

This issue addresses the emergence of modernism and modernity in Quebec, and the ways this process has been influenced by French modernism. The articles presented here grew out of a conference on the effects of French modernism upon the work of Québécois artists and writers, presented in collaboration with Vanderbilt University's W.T. Bandy Center in 2013. The next conference, Cultural Modernism in the Americas 2, is scheduled for April of 2014, and will focus upon Latin America. The proceedings will be published in AmeriQuests in 2015.

This issue features two seminal works, by Marc Angenot and Julius Grey, that contribute to and expand the field of literature and law by bringing to bear historical and political perspectives from two of Canada's most powerful and crucial voices. In addition, the issue continues AmeriQuests longstanding work in the Americas, in the publication of new fiction, and an on-going commitment to reviewing new titles relating to the missions of the journal. In the spirit of the dialogism we hope to promote, we have also included a commentary by one of the authors, Marc Angenot, describing the intellectual path that led him to "1889", and the "social discourse" framework elaborated in its wake.

Edited by Robert F. Barsky

This issue features works on myths in Brazil, an assessment of Canadian literature's place in Comparative Literary Studies and, through a wide array of book reviews, the current approaches to postcolonial studies and laws relating to obscenity.

"Dance Across Americas" features a series of three articles on different aspects of dance in the Americas. Guest Editor: Marsha D. Barsky. Inspired by the Beat Generation, this issue also features a group of creative works that speak to the various intersections the Beat writers had with France and with French writers, edited by Robert Barsky. Finally, the growing book review section is devoted to recent works on the intersection between literature and the law.

This special issue, edited by Robert Barsky, aims to recall, assess and promulgate ideas of radicalism in the Americas, with a special focus on the particularities of Quebec. This issue focuses upon the idea of "America" as an absolute but unachievable objective, and therefore it contains some creative work that expresses ideals and dreams for worlds imagined in time, space and imagination. This issue is dedicated to the memory of Howard Zinn, with whom we communicated about the issue in the course of its preparation, and who died just as we were going to press. We deeply regret his passing.

The cover art titled "Big Smoke"© (artist Charly Palmer) depicts - Jack Johnson, the first African American heavyweight boxing World Champion in his famous fighting pose. Before and since Johnson's victory in 1908, Black Masculinity has been socially constructed many times over. From villain to hero, from margin to center and back on ideas of manhood, fatherhood, sexuality, political leadership, violence, popular culture, sports, music, education, and psychology, this issue, "On Manliness: Black American Masculinities" Edited by Gilman W. Whiting and Thabiti Lewis, is a timely collection that brings together authors from numerous academic disciplines to investigate Black manhood in 2008, particularly in light of Election 2008. For more information on other works by the artist visit:

In War Inc. Seymour Melman sought to introduce a new generation of readers to his lifelong critique of the operation of the war economy in the United States, and the ongoing process of deindustrialization that has destroyed much of America’s once formidable manufacturing industries. Aimed at a wide variety of readers, the book draws on and synthesizes Professor Melman’s prior research and books, especially Pentagon Capitalism, The Permanent War Economy, and Our Depleted Society. It also extends some of the arguments and research of his major 2001 study, After Capitalism: From Managerialism to Workplace Democracy.

*For those familiar with Melman's work and interested in discussing it, or its relation to the life and work of Zellig Harris, please contact robert.barsky@vanderbilt.edu

This special issue is devoted to comparative literary studies, and features examples of such work in the Americas setting, as well as a special commentary section which includes contributions from some of its leading practitioners. Readers are invited to comment on articles, or offer up their own sense of comparative literary work; a discussion section will be mounted to create dialogism within and beyond this issue.

This open issue includes work by Arnold Reisman, who notes in his article that Felix Haurowitz, the great biochemist, survived extermination because, starting in 1933, Turkey offered refuge for many intellectuals who were fleeing the Nazis. America was out of reach for the likes of Haurowitz because of restrictive immigration laws and widespread anti-Semitic hiring and gender bias at its universities.

Edited by Saleem Ali and Robert Barsky, this special issue of AmeriQuests is comprised of papers and commentaries which were first presented to the MIT Communications Forum entitled “Public Intellectuals and the Academy.” The authors have aggrandized and edited their respective contributions with an eye to creating a collection that approaches this complex subject from a range of perspectives, East and West.

the special issue on "Quebec and Canada in the Americas," is the cover of the Refus globale manifesto: "In 1948, Paul-Emile Borduas, then a little-known painter on the international scene, living in the Province of Quebec, Canada, together with sixteen friends and students, proclaimed publicly a new era in terms of art and social attitudes by publishing a manifesto that they called Refus global." [excerpt from "Borduas -- Then and Now"]

This issue was taken by Chalene Helmuth in Nashville, TN during the immigration demonstrations of April 2006. The Commentary section of this issue contains her description of a recent conference on "The New Latino Immigration".

'The Paycheck,' is excerpted from "The Migrant Project: Contemporary California Farm Workers," a photographic and text exhibit created by Rick Nahmias. Recorded in over forty towns across California, the exhibit profiles the stories and lives of the people who supply over half the nation's produce. For more information on the artist, image, or exhibit visit rcnphoto.com. © Rick Nahmias. All Rights Reserved.