In this eloquent and erudite exploration of an imperial Hollywood that framed and edited images of Europe for domestic consumption, Anna Cooper forensically shows the reader how to follow an untrustworthy tour guide.

Peter Stanfield, Emeritus Professor of Film, University of Kent, UK

The American Abroad offers a detailed and complex view of American imperialism using the institution of Hollywood cinema for fostering cultural dominance over Europe. Anna Cooper foregrounds the figure of the tourist to unravel in nuanced detail just how Hollywood's utopian aesthetics “outrageously” depicts Europe as its Orientalist Other on screen. With rich textual analyses of a specific corpus of Post-War films set in Europe, The American Abroad forms an important contribution to the renewed interest in Transatlantic cinematic encounters.

Jeroen Gerrits, Associate Professor in Comparative Literature, Binghamton University (SUNY), USA and author of Cinematic Skepticism: Across Digital and Global Turns

The American Abroad addresses the complex ideological relationship between the U.S. and Europe through a lively and attentive analysis of postwar Hollywood cinema's visual strategies. By illuminating the ways that the “dream factory” imagined a Europe that exists primarily for the white traveler, Cooper's study contributes to a richer understanding of U.S. imperialism and its cinematic narratives.

Peter Limbrick, Professor of Film and Digital Media, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA and author of Arab Modernism as World Cinema: The Films of Moumen Smihi and Making Settler Cinemas: Film and Colonial Encounters in the US, Australia, and New Zealand