Books by Adam Lifshey

Argues that the moment the US became an overseas colonial power in 1898, American national identity was redefined across a global matrix. The Philippines, which the US seized at that point from Spain and local revolutionaries, is therefore the birthplace of a new kind of America, one with a planetary reach that was accompanied by resistance to that reach by local peoples.

Argues that literature in Spanish from Asia and Africa, though virtually unknown, reimagines the supposed centres and peripheries of the modern world in fundamental ways. Through archival research and comparative readings, The Magellan Fallacy rethinks mainstream mappings of diverse cultures while advocating the creation of a new field of scholarship: global literature in Spanish.

Intervenes in transatlantic and hemispheric studies by positing that America's not a particular country or continent but a foundational narrative, in which conquerors arrive at a shore intent on overwriting local versions of humanity, culture, and landscape with inscriptions of their own design.