Cover Page -- Title Page -- Copyright -- Contents -- The Imaginary and Its Worlds: An Introduction -- Laura Bieger, Ramón Saldívar, Johannes Voelz -- Part I: Literary Imaginaries -- 1. Imagining Cultures: The Transnational Imaginary in Postrace America RAMóN SALDíVAR -- 2. The Necessary Fragmentation of the (U.S.) Literary-Cultural Imaginary LAWRENCE BUELL -- 3. Imaginaries of American Modernism Heinz Ickstadt -- Part II: Social Imaginaries -- 4. William James versus Charles Taylor: Philosophy of Religion and the Confines of the Social and Cultural Imaginaries HERWIG FRIEDL -- 5. The Shaping of We-Group Identities in the African American Community: A Perspective of Figurational Sociology on the Cultural Imaginary CHRISTA BUSCHENDORF -- 6. Russia's Californio Romance: The Other Shores of Whitman's Pacific LENE JOHANNESSEN -- 7. Form Games: Staging Life in the Systems Epoch MARK SELTZER -- Part III: Political Imaginaries -- 8. Real Toads WALTER BENN MICHAELS -- 9. Obama Unwound: The Romanticism of Victory and the Defeat of Compromise CHRISTOPHER NEWFIELD -- 10. Barack Obama's Orphic Mysteries DONALD E. PEASE -- Coda: The Imaginary and the Second Narrative: Reading as Transfer WINFRIED FLUCK -- Contributors -- Index.