A Companion to American Literature and Culture

Copyright © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd except for editorial material and organization © 2010 Paul Lauter

A Companion to American Literature and Culture

Editor(s): Paul Lauter

Published Online: 16 MAR 2010

Print ISBN: 9780631208921

Online ISBN: 9781444320626

DOI: 10.1002/9781444320626

About this Book

Product Information

About The Product

This expansive Companion offers a set of fresh perspectives on the wealth of texts produced in and around what is now the United States.

* Highlights the diverse voices that constitute American literature, embracing oral traditions, slave narratives, regional writing, literature of the environment, and more

* Demonstrates that American literature was multicultural before Europeans arrived on the continent, and even more so thereafter

* Offers three distinct paradigms for thinking about American literature, focusing on: genealogies of American literary study; writers and issues; and contemporary theories and practices

* Enables students and researchers to generate richer, more varied and more comprehensive readings of American literature

Table of contents

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      Front Matter (pages i–xix)

    1. Introduction (pages 1–5)

      Paul Lauter

  3. Part A: Genealogies of American Literary Study

    1. Chapter 1

      The Emergence of the Literatures of the United States (pages 7–25)

      Emory Elliott

    2. Chapter 2

      Politics, Sentiment, and Literature in Nineteenth-Century America (pages 26–39)

      John Carlos Rowe

    3. Chapter 3

      Making It New: Constructions of Modernism (pages 40–56)

      Carla Kaplan

    4. Chapter 4

      Academicizing “American Literature” (pages 57–71)

      Elizabeth Renker

    5. Chapter 5

      Cold War and Culture War (pages 72–95)

      Christopher Newfield

    6. Chapter 6

      Re-Historicizing Literature (pages 96–109)

      T. V. Reed

    7. Chapter 7

      Multiculturalism and Forging New Canons (pages 110–121)

      Shelley Streeby

  4. Part B: Writers and Issues

    1. Chapter 8

      Indigenous Oral Traditions of North America, Then and Now (pages 123–142)

      Lisa Brooks (Abenaki)

    2. Chapter 9

      The New Worlds and the Old: Transatlantic Politics of Conversion (pages 143–159)

      Susan Castillo and Ivy Schweitzer

    3. Chapter 10

      Unspeakable Fears: Politics and Style in the Enlightenment (pages 160–178)

      Frank Shuffelton

    4. Chapter 11

      Slave Narrative and Captivity Narrative: American Genres (pages 179–191)

      Gordon M. Sayre

    5. Chapter 12

      The Early Republic: Forms and Readers (pages 192–205)

      Trish Loughran

    6. Chapter 13

      “Indians” Constructed and Speaking (pages 206–220)

      Scott Richard Lyons

    7. Chapter 14

      Sentiment and Style (pages 221–236)

      Tara Penry

    8. Chapter 15

      Transcendental Politics (pages 237–249)

      Paul Lauter

    9. Chapter 16

      Melville, Whitman, and the Tribulations of Democracy (pages 250–283)

      Betsy Erkkila

    10. Chapter 17

      Emily Dickinson and Her Peers (pages 284–315)

      Paula Bernat Bennett

    11. Chapter 18

      Race and Literary Politics (pages 316–327)

      Frances Smith Foster and Cassandra Jackson

    12. Chapter 19

      American Regionalism (pages 328–338)

      Susan K. Harris

    13. Chapter 20

      Magazines and Fictions (pages 339–353)

      Ellen Gruber Garvey

    14. Chapter 21

      Realism and Victorian Protestantism in African-American Literature (pages 354–363)

      Phillip M. Richards

    15. Chapter 22

      The Maturation of American Fictions (pages 364–376)

      Gary Scharnhorst

    16. Chapter 23

      Making It New: Constructions of Modernisms (pages 377–393)

      Heinz Ickstadt

    17. Chapter 24

      Wests, Westerns, Westerners (pages 394–409)

      Martha Viehmann

    18. Chapter 25

      The Early Modern Writers of the US South (pages 410–426)

      John Lowe

    19. Chapter 26

      Writers on the Left (pages 427–440)

      Alan Wald

    20. Chapter 27

      From Objectivism to the Haight (pages 441–457)

      Charles Molesworth

    21. Chapter 28

      New Aestheticisms: The Artfulness of Art (pages 458–477)

      Stephen Burt

    22. Chapter 29

      Drama in American Culture (pages 478–490)

      Brenda Murphy

  5. Part C: Contemporary Theories and Practices

    1. Chapter 30

      Constructions of “Ethnicity” and “Diasporas” (pages 493–507)

      Aviva Taubenfeld

    2. Chapter 31

      Narrating Terror and Trauma: Racial Formations and “Homeland Security” in Ethnic American Literature (pages 508–527)

      Shirley Geok-lin Lim

    3. Chapter 32

      Feminisms and Literatures (pages 528–562)

      Deborah S. Rosenfelt

    4. Chapter 33

      Blackness/Whiteness (pages 563–575)

      James Smethurst

    5. Chapter 34

      Borderlands: Ethnicity, Multiculturalism, and Hybridity (pages 576–592)

      Ana Maria Manzanas and Jesús Benito Sánchez

    6. Chapter 35

      Literature-and-Environment Studies and the Influence of the Environmental Justice Movement (pages 593–607)

      Joni Adamson

    7. Chapter 36

      Endowed by Their Creator: Queer American Literature (pages 608–621)

      David Bergman

    8. Chapter 37

      Contemporary Native American Fiction as Resistance Literature (pages 622–636)

      Arnold Krupat and Michael A. Elliott

    9. Chapter 38

      From Virgin Land to Ground Zero: Interrogating the Mythological Foundations of the Master Fiction of the Homeland Security State (pages 637–654)

      Donald Pease

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      Afterword (pages 655–656)

      Paul Lauter

    1. You have free access to this content
      Index (pages 657–688)

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