has always been a bit of an island, a place where
multilingualism, or even holding a passport, is
less common than in many other lands.
Now, the notion of a virus that came from a
distant “elsewhere” stands to carve deeper
grooves into that landscape.
“It’s a continuation of the same kinds of fears
that we have had,” says Jennifer Sciubba, an
international studies professor at Rhodes
College in Memphis, Tennessee. “We’ve seen this
conversation before.”
As the outbreak worsens by the day, the United
States, like other nations, is drawing quite
literally inward. With little ability to plan and
increasing numbers of Americans out of work,
that’s a natural reaction. “The coronavirus is
killing globalization as we know it,” one foreign-
affairs journal said.
It’s unlikely that much of the globalization that
touches Americans daily — the parts in their
iPhones, the cheap consumer goods, the out-of-
season fruit in their produce aisles, the ability to
communicate around the world virtually — is
going anywhere, at least for good.
But a protracted period of coronavirus anxiety
and impact will almost certainly redraw — and
in many cases reinforce — opinions about the
wider world’s role in American lives.
Throughout its 244-year existence, America’s
relationship with the rest of the world has
been marked by the tension between working
together with other nations, or going it alone as
a land of “rugged individualists.”
Isolationism was, in fact, a dominant American
policy until the 20th century — except when it