Rubikon: Journal of Transnational American Studies
RUBIKON, Journal of Transnational American Studies (JTAS) specializes in American Studies especially transnational studies of the U.S. It is also intended to communicate American Studies issues and challenges. This journal warmly welcomes contributors from American Studies scholars, researchers, and those related to the discipline.
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<![CDATA[RECLAIMING VOICES: RED INTERSECTIONALITY AND SUBALTERN COUNTERPUBLICS IN INDIGENOUS TIKTOK TRENDS ‘SAVAGE DAUGHTER’ ]]>
<![CDATA[Emanuelle, Glory]]>
<![CDATA[ Rubikon : Journal of Transnational American Studies Vol 13, No 1 (2026) ]]>
Publisher : <![CDATA[Pengkajian Amerika, Universitas Gadjah Mada ]]>
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DOI: 10.22146/rubikon.v13i1.106695
<![CDATA[Popular culture often misrepresents Native American people by portraying them through a colonial lens; thus, Indigenous people of the northern part of America are mostly perceived by the caricature of their own culture or ultimately effaced from the media. In particular, Native American women are experiencing double marginalization. The colonial lens that put their people is mostly built on a patriarchal system, which is not only detrimental to the Indigenous’s existence but also almost effectively erases their women’s identity. Social media platforms such as TikTok have enabled marginalized groups to express themselves and regain their identities. This research employs Natalie Clark’s Red Intersectionality and Nancy Fraser’s Subaltern Counterpublics to analyze selected TikTok videos from the trend “Savage Daughter” by Sarah Hester Ross’ cover, which numerous Indigenous women creators use to show their pride and culture. This study suggests that Native American women are, in fact, not erased from the media representation, but also provides critical insight into how digital platforms empower marginalized groups to resist dominant ideologies.]]>
<![CDATA[VIOLA MCBEE’S DISLOCATED BELONGING: BLACK WOMANHOOD AND RACIAL VIOLENCE IN ARNOLD EDWARDS’ COME FULL CIRCLE ]]>
<![CDATA[Faqih, Achmad]]>;
<![CDATA[Zahroh, Fatimatuz]]>;
<![CDATA[Taufik, Moh.]]>;
<![CDATA[Utami, Yuni Putri]]>;
<![CDATA[Linia, Marisa]]>;
<![CDATA[Fane, Awati]]>
<![CDATA[ Rubikon : Journal of Transnational American Studies Vol 13, No 1 (2026) ]]>
Publisher : <![CDATA[Pengkajian Amerika, Universitas Gadjah Mada ]]>
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DOI: 10.22146/rubikon.v13i1.110832
<![CDATA[This article investigates how Black womanhood and racial violence are portrayed in Arnold Edwards’s Come Full Circle through the character of Viola McBee, a Black woman whose life is shaped by unresolved trauma, historical injustice, and spatial displacement. The research is motivated by the need to understand how literature represents the intersections of race, gender, and memory, particularly in narratives centered on Black women’s lived experiences. The central problem concerns how dislocated belonging operates in Viola’s identity as both victim and agent of justice. Drawing on Critical Race Feminism, Black Feminist Thought, and Spatial Theory, the study employs a qualitative textual analysis to examine how Viola’s response to racial and sexual violence challenges legal justice and redefines moral accountability. The findings reveal that Viola resists dominant cultural narratives that demand silence or forgiveness, asserting her agency by transforming personal memory into political resistance. Her character challenges the spatial and legal structures that exclude Black women, making visible the emotional and material costs of systemic violence. The article contributes to American Studies by demonstrating how fictional texts can confront historical silences and center Black women’s voices as vital frameworks for ethical and political critique.]]>
<![CDATA[PUBLISHING WHITENESS: RACIAL AUTHORSHIP, CULTURAL APPROPRIATION, AND MARKET-DRIVEN MULTICULTURALISM IN R.F. KUANG’S YELLOWFACE ]]>
<![CDATA[Traesar, Livia]]>
<![CDATA[ Rubikon : Journal of Transnational American Studies Vol 13, No 1 (2026) ]]>
Publisher : <![CDATA[Pengkajian Amerika, Universitas Gadjah Mada ]]>
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DOI: 10.22146/rubikon.v13i1.116956
<![CDATA[This article examines how R. F. Kuang’s Yellowface portrays the contemporary U.S. publishing Industry as a racialized system shaped by market-driven diversity discourse. Although publishing institutions increasingly promote diversity, questions remain about whether such initiatives distribute narrative authority or merely repackage inequality. The research addresses this problem by analyzing how the novel represents authorship, cultural appropriation, and institutional legitimacy. Drawing on whiteness studies, symbolic annihilation, and neoliberal multiculturalism, this research employs a qualitative interpretive method based on close textual reading. The findings reveal that diversity in the novel functions primarily as a market strategy rather than a transformative commitment. Minority narratives remain commercially valuable even when minority authorship is displaced, while whiteness continues to operate as an invisible norm that authorizes representation. The analysis also demonstrates how controversy, rebranding, and performative identity sustain institutional power within an attention-driven cultural economy. These dynamics show that inclusion can coexist with dispossession when authority over storytelling remains unevenly distributed. This article contributes to scholarship on contemporary cultural production by positioning Yellowface as a critique of neoliberal diversity discourse’s reshaping of authorship and legitimacy in the twenty-first-century publishing industry.]]>
<![CDATA[DECONSTRUCTING THE AMERICAN DREAM IN THE CHINESE-AMERICAN NARRATIVE OF REBECCA F. KUANG'S NOVELS ]]>
<![CDATA[Akbar, Rifqi]]>;
<![CDATA[Adi, Ida Rochani]]>
<![CDATA[ Rubikon : Journal of Transnational American Studies Vol 13, No 1 (2026) ]]>
Publisher : <![CDATA[Pengkajian Amerika, Universitas Gadjah Mada ]]>
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DOI: 10.22146/rubikon.v13i1.106302
<![CDATA[The American Dream as the axis of diaspora pathways has an impact on the construction of American diaspora novels, especially the perspective of Chinese-American female writers, one of whom is RF Kuang. This study focuses on RF Kuang's reflection in representing the American Dream. For the American diaspora, this dream still marginalizes the existence of minorities and is exclusive to white people. Diaspora writers always conflict with ambivalent values that must intersect with the American Dream so that this racism can be dissolved in American society and achieve equality. Through Derrida, American diaspora writers are given a third space to implement the American dream and ideological contestation that provides a nuance of transnational solidarity. This dream is conveyed through Kuang’s novels Poppy War Trilogy: An Arcane of History: Babel; and Yellowface. This research indicates that each of Kuang’s works is constructed within the myth as the foreground, and it is negotiated through her achievements, exclusivity, and inclusivity in literary production, the equality in the characterization, and the Chinese Dream, which forms the contestation. These elements represent the Chinese-American narrative, as well as the existence of the Asian-American diaspora within the American publishing system, which significantly pulls in a global popularity among international audiences.]]>
<![CDATA[THE TRANSNATIONAL AFFECT ECONOMY: EMOTIONAL CAPITALISM AND THE COMMODIFICATION OF AFFECT IN TAYLOR SWIFT AND INDONESIAN POPULAR MUSIC ]]>
<![CDATA[Ardana, Stefanus Galang]]>;
<![CDATA[Christiana, Merry]]>
<![CDATA[ Rubikon : Journal of Transnational American Studies Vol 13, No 1 (2026) ]]>
Publisher : <![CDATA[Pengkajian Amerika, Universitas Gadjah Mada ]]>
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DOI: 10.22146/rubikon.v13i1.108867
<![CDATA[This article examines the transnational flow of emotional capitalism, beginning with Taylor Swift’s industrialization of authentic pain in “All Too Well (10 Minute Version)”. The central problem is understanding how this global model of curated vulnerability is received and reshaped within the Indonesian cultural landscape. This study introduces the “Transnational Affect Economy” as a new analytical framework, synthesizing theories of the Culture Industry, brand culture, and structures of feeling to analyze this process. The analysis of Swift's work reveals a Cinema of Suffering—a deliberate aesthetic strategy that transforms personal heartbreak into a globally marketable emotional product through visual aestheticization and narrative commodification. The findings further demonstrate that this industrial-affective model is not merely replicated but localized by Indonesian musicians Hindia and Nadin Amizah to address the specific structure of feeling known as galau: Hindia packages this sentiment into collective catharsis for urban youth, while Nadin Amizah constructs an introspective, aestheticized refuge—together constituting a "Galau Industrial Complex" that transforms socio-economic precarity into cultural capital. The article's primary significance lies in providing a rigorous framework to analyze how personal emotion is produced, commodified, and made meaningful across diverse cultural contexts in the digital age.]]>
<![CDATA[REASSERTING CONSERVATISM THROUGH USAID REFORM: CULTURAL POLITICS DISCOURSE IN PROJECT 2025’S “MANDATE FOR LEADERSHIP: THE CONSERVATIVE PROMISE” ]]>
<![CDATA[Pratama, Rifka]]>;
<![CDATA[Laksono, Arido]]>;
<![CDATA[Falah, Fajrul]]>;
<![CDATA[Subhan, Muhammad]]>
<![CDATA[ Rubikon : Journal of Transnational American Studies Vol 13, No 1 (2026) ]]>
Publisher : <![CDATA[Pengkajian Amerika, Universitas Gadjah Mada ]]>
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DOI: 10.22146/rubikon.v13i1.111908
<![CDATA[The proposed reforms for the US Agency for International Development (USAID), as articulated in Project 2025’s “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise”, reflect the conservatives’ efforts to reconfigure the progressive values long upheld by liberal–democratic administrations in the US government. International aid is no longer viewed as a neutral humanitarian tool but as a strategic instrument of national interest. The reform proposal represents a contestation over cultural dominance, where competing political forces seek to legitimize their power through ideological control. This study employs a qualitative approach, analyzing policy documents “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise”, Section 2, Point 9 — pertaining to USAID. The analysis is conducted within the framework of cultural politics theory, wherein discourse—in both textual and oral forms—is conceptualized as a site of power and cultural contestation. The findings reveal that the proposed reforms to USAID constitute a systematic cultural–political strategy by the conservative bloc, aimed at realigning foreign aid priorities and ideologies.]]>
<![CDATA[TECHNOMORALISM AND EPISTEMIC HEGEMONY: A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF ACADEMIC KNOWLEDGE IN INDONESIA AND THE UNITED STATES ]]>
<![CDATA[Basuki, Amin]]>
<![CDATA[ Rubikon : Journal of Transnational American Studies Vol 13, No 1 (2026) ]]>
Publisher : <![CDATA[Pengkajian Amerika, Universitas Gadjah Mada ]]>
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DOI: 10.22146/rubikon.v13i1.116244
<![CDATA[This article examines technomoralism as a hegemonic discursive regime through which scientific rationality and moral authority are integrated in contemporary academic knowledge production. While previous studies have addressed morality in science, technocratic governance, and epistemic inequality separately, limited research has examined how these dimensions intersect within a unified analytical framework, particularly in comparative contexts across the Global North and Global South. Addressing this gap, the study employs Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to analyze four academic articles from Indonesia and the United States. The analysis integrates Fairclough’s three-dimensional CDA framework with Gramsci’s theory of hegemony and Althusser’s concept of Ideological State Apparatuses to examine how moral–scientific discourse operates across textual features, discursive practices, and broader social structures. The findings reveal two dominant configurations of technomoralism. In Indonesia, technomoralism operates through technocratic nationalism, where technical expertise and statist morality legitimize state-centered governance and developmental agendas. In the United States, it takes the form of ethical liberalism, in which scientific rationality reinforces individual moral responsibility and institutional legitimacy. Despite contextual differences, both configurations naturalize the fusion of morality and science as common sense, thereby sustaining global epistemic hierarchies. This study contributes theoretically by conceptualizing technomoralism as an integrated discursive mechanism of epistemic hegemony, and empirically by demonstrating how academic discourse reproduces global knowledge inequalities.]]>
<![CDATA[RAISING VOICES FOR PALESTINE: ANALYZING MACKLEMORE’S "HIND’S HALL" THROUGH BARTHES' SEMIOTIC LENS ]]>
<![CDATA[Sujiwa, Krisna]]>;
<![CDATA[Zulferdi, Lazuar Azmi]]>
<![CDATA[ Rubikon : Journal of Transnational American Studies Vol 13, No 1 (2026) ]]>
Publisher : <![CDATA[Pengkajian Amerika, Universitas Gadjah Mada ]]>
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DOI: 10.22146/rubikon.v13i1.116926
<![CDATA[This study examines Macklemore’s 2024 protest song “Hind’s Hall” as a cultural text that articulates transnational solidarity with Palestine amid escalating global attention to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. While popular music has long functioned as a medium of political expression, scholarly analyses of contemporary Western protest songs addressing this issue remain limited. The research investigates how the song’s lyrics and visuals construct meanings related to resistance, institutional repression, and global activism. Grounded in Roland Barthes’ semiotic theory, particularly the concepts of denotation and connotation, the study employs a qualitative method through close reading of lyrical content and selected scenes from the music video. The findings reveal that denotative elements depict protest actions, state violence, and humanitarian suffering, while connotative meanings expose deeper ideological critiques of colonialism, racial capitalism, media manipulation, and the criminalization of dissent. The song also mobilizes affect and empathy to foster a sense of collective responsibility and transnational unity. This study concludes that “Hind’s Hall” operates not merely as a protest anthem but as a layered cultural artifact that challenges dominant narratives and amplifies marginalized voices. By transforming personal expression into political discourse, the song demonstrates how contemporary music can function as a powerful instrument of global awareness and resistance.]]>
<![CDATA[ON RESISTANCE AND RESILIENCE TO HEGEMONIC POWER: A STUDY OF AMERICAN GUITAR REPLICAS IN INDONESIA ]]>
<![CDATA[Jatmiko, Rahmawan]]>
<![CDATA[ Rubikon : Journal of Transnational American Studies Vol 13, No 1 (2026) ]]>
Publisher : <![CDATA[Pengkajian Amerika, Universitas Gadjah Mada ]]>
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DOI: 10.22146/rubikon.v13i1.117271
<![CDATA[This article presents the results of a participation-based study conducted in Indonesia, focusing on the regions of Yogyakarta and Solo. Situated within the field of American Studies, the research adopts a postcolonial framework, particularly drawing on Homi K. Bhabha’s concept of mimicry in relation to multiculturalism and hybridity. The study primarily examines forms of resilience and resistance to hegemonizing power within the guitar industry and market in Indonesia, using counterfeit American-brand guitars, specifically those associated with Fender Musical Instruments Corporation, as its main object of analysis. This investigation focuses on the replica of two Fender company’s ever most widely used guitar products: the Stratocaster® and Telecaster® guitars. This research is somehow not dealing with the legal aspect of the counterfeiting practices, but it academically searches for and examines some proves underlying a premise that to imitate the hegemonizing power, which in certain circumstances is done illegally, might be considered as an instance and manifestation of resilience and resistance mainly performed by the hegemonized society in global capitalism. This can also be seen as the way the society sustains its existence, by performing adaptation or adjustment, and fighting back the hegemonizing power which is previously believed to be insurmountable.]]>
<![CDATA[INFIDELITY-THEMED MOVIES VIEWED THROUGH THE LENS OF POPULAR CULTURE ]]>
<![CDATA[Sriastuti, Anna]]>
<![CDATA[ Rubikon : Journal of Transnational American Studies Vol 13, No 1 (2026) ]]>
Publisher : <![CDATA[Pengkajian Amerika, Universitas Gadjah Mada ]]>
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DOI: 10.22146/rubikon.v13i1.117744
<![CDATA[In the middle of the rapid digital current, human relations are getting weaker. One of the concerns pertaining to the relationship is infidelity. It has emerged as a significant issue across various cultures, including that of Indonesia, in which infidelity has become a daily consumption topic. It is not just seen as a real scene, but also in literary works as literary works usually mirrors what happens in a society. Popular films, like “Supernova: Ksatria, Putri, & Bintang Jatuh”, “Surga Yang Tak Dirindukan”, “Layangan Putus” and “Ipar Adalah Maut” are some popular Indonesian films on infidelity. The popularity can be seen from the film ratings of IMDb. It arises a quest why the movie theme of infidelity becomes popular in Indonesia. This dilemma is based on Indonesia values and morals perceive infidelity as a taboo subject/issue Using a qualitative method through questions, participant context data, inductive analysis, and researcher interpretations, the popularity of infidelity through Indonesian movies is seen through the application of the elements of the house of popular culture introduced by Nachbar and Lause (1992). In the analysis it is found that although Indonesia values and laws forbid infidelity, but the fact tells that infidelity still occurs. The popularity of the films is also supported by the celebrities who become the magnets of the films. So real the actors and actresses play the roles that viewers can relate the stories with the stories in real lives.]]>
