Download or read book American Literary Cultures written by Senior Lecturer of America Literature Elizabeth J Dell and published by . This book was released on 2020-07-15 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American Literary Cultures highlights literature written by regional authors--particularly those of Texas and the Southwest--and includes readings representative of a broad array of American social and ethnic groups from first contact to early twentieth-century Modernism. Tracing the diverse heritages and global impulses that shaped America, this reader engages undergraduate students by offering a unique collection of texts that comprise American literary cultures. The selections showcase a culturally rich and heterogeneous tradition--indigenous, Latino, European, and African. The narratives and counternarratives offered here introduce students to a diversity of voices--near and far, familiar and foreign, present and historical. Through ballads, lyrical poems, tall tales, short stories, speeches, sermons, memoirs, and discourses on language and literature, students encounter diverse and often challenging works of American literary culture. The texts within and the vast panoply of worldviews and personalities they reflect challenge students to critical, contextual, creative, and empathetic engagement with the past. Through such engagement, students will better appreciate the present as they prepare to become citizens of an increasingly globalized world.
Download or read book American Literature American Culture written by Gordon Hutner and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 1999 with total page 612 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American Literature, American Culture is the first comprehensive anthology of American literary criticism to appear in many years and the first collection to bring together the tradition of American literary criticism as cultural critique. This unique anthology assembles reviews of early works, major critical essays, excerpts from landmark studies, and the most influential examples of the criticism practiced today. The selections address the dominant questions in the American literary tradition: What are the cultural responsibilities of the American writer? What are the characteristics of a national literature? Is a national literature even possible? How do gender and race affect the way we understand literature? What role does literature play in a democratic society? Organized chronologically, the four sections of the volume gather the most vital and enduring arguments in American literary and cultural politics in each era, covering such prominent issues as American exceptionalism, the racial divide, gender, and class identity. The book pays particular attention to the historical background of contemporary debates about multiculturalism. American Literature, American Culture is ideal for undergraduate and graduate courses in American literature, criticism, and American Studies. It also serves as a useful supplementary text in upper-level courses in criticism. Its range proves that at every juncture of the nation's intellectual history, criticism has provided an indispensable way of determining America's most fundamental meanings.
Download or read book American Literature and the Culture of Reprinting 1834 1853 written by Meredith L. McGill and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A major study of Jacksonian print culture that should be required reading."--"American Studies"
Download or read book Arab American Literary Fictions Cultures and Politics written by S. Salaita and published by Springer. This book was released on 2006-12-25 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: N.B. this is a 'Palgrave to Order' title. Stock of this book requires shipment from overseas. It will be delivered to you within 12 weeks. Using literary and social analysis, this book examines a range of modern Arab American literary fiction and illustrates how socio-political phenomena have affected the development of the Arab American novel.
Download or read book Gender in American Literature and Culture written by Jean M. Lutes and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-04-15 with total page 645 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gender in American Literature and Culture introduces readers to key developments in gender studies and American literary criticism. It offers nuanced readings of literary conventions and genres from early American writings to the present and moves beyond inflexible categories of masculinity and femininity that have reinforced misleading assumptions about public and private spaces, domesticity, individualism, and community. The book also demonstrates how rigid inscriptions of gender have perpetuated a legacy of violence and exclusion in the United States. Responding to a sense of 21st century cultural and political crisis, it illuminates the literary histories and cultural imaginaries that have set the stage for urgent contemporary debates.
Download or read book Zora Neale Hurston American Literary Culture written by Margaret Genevieve West and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Genevieve West examines the cultural history of Zora Neale Hurston’s writing and the reception of her work, in an attempt to explain why Hurston died in obscure poverty only to be reclaimed as an important Harlem Renaissance writer decades after her death. Unlike other books on Hurston, this study focuses on how Hurston was marketed and reviewed during her career and how literary scholars reappraised her after her death. While her publisher's approach to marketing Hurston as an African American fiction writer and folklorist increased her popularity among the general reading public, her fellow Harlem Renaissance authors often excoriated her as an exploiter of African American culture and a propagator of black stereotypes. Eventually, the criticism outweighed the popularity, and her writing fell out of fashion. It was only after critics reconsidered her work in the 1960s and 1970s that she eventually regained her status as one of the best writers of her generation. No other book has focused on this aspect of Hurston's career, nor has any book so systematically used marketing materials and reviews to track Hurston's literary reputation. As a result, West's study will provide a new perspective on Hurston and on the ways that the politics of race, class, and gender impact canon formation in American literary culture. This study is based on numerous interviews, short fiction previously undocumented in Hurston scholarship, an innovative analysis of advertisements and dust jackets, examinations of letters by and about Hurston, and the examination of historical/literary contexts, including the Harlem Renaissance, the protest movement, the assimilationist movement, the Black Arts movement, and the rise of black feminist thought.
Download or read book A Companion to American Literature and Culture written by Paul Lauter and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2010-02-12 with total page 708 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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
Download or read book In the Company of Books written by Sarah Wadsworth and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2006-01-01 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tracing the segmentation of the literary marketplace in 19th century America, this book analyses the implications of the subdivided literary field for readers, writers, and literature itself.
Download or read book American Literature and the Culture Wars written by Gregory S. Jay and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-05 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gregory S. Jay boldly challenges the future of American literary studies. Why pursue the study and teaching of a distinctly American literature? What is the appropriate purpose and scope of such pursuits? Is the notion of a traditional canon of great books out of date? Where does American literature leave off and Mexican or Caribbean or Canadian or postcolonial literature begin? Are today's campus conflicts fueled more by economics or ideology? Jay addresses these questions and others relating to American literary studies to explain why this once arcane academic discipline found itself so often in the news during the culture wars of the 1990s. While asking some skeptical questions about new directions and practices, Jay argues forcefully in favor of opening the borders of American literary and cultural analysis. He relates the struggle for representation in literary theory to a larger cultural clash over the meaning and justice of representation, then shows how this struggle might expand both the contents and the teaching of American literature. In an account of the vexed legacy of the Declaration of Independence, he provides a historical context for the current quarrels over literature and politics. Prominent among these debates are those over multiculturalism, which Jay takes up in an essay on the impasses of identity politics. In closing, he considers how the field of comparative American cultural studies might be constructed.
Download or read book Facing the Abyss written by George Hutchinson and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-23 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mythologized as the era of the “good war” and the “Greatest Generation,” the 1940s are frequently understood as a more heroic, uncomplicated time in American history. Yet just below the surface, a sense of dread, alienation, and the haunting specter of radical evil permeated American art and literature. Writers returned home from World War II and gave form to their disorienting experiences of violence and cruelty. They probed the darkness that the war opened up and confronted bigotry, existential guilt, ecological concerns, and fear about the nature and survival of the human race. In Facing the Abyss, George Hutchinson offers readings of individual works and the larger intellectual and cultural scene to reveal the 1940s as a period of profound and influential accomplishment. Facing the Abyss examines the relation of aesthetics to politics, the idea of universalism, and the connections among authors across racial, ethnic, and gender divisions. Modernist and avant-garde styles were absorbed into popular culture as writers and artists turned away from social realism to emphasize the process of artistic creation. Hutchinson explores a range of important writers, from Saul Bellow and Mary McCarthy to Richard Wright and James Baldwin. African American and Jewish novelists critiqued racism and anti-Semitism, women writers pushed back on the misogyny unleashed during the war, and authors such as Gore Vidal and Tennessee Williams reflected a new openness in the depiction of homosexuality. The decade also witnessed an awakening of American environmental and ecological consciousness. Hutchinson argues that despite the individualized experiences depicted in these works, a common belief in art’s ability to communicate the universal in particulars united the most important works of literature and art during the 1940s. Hutchinson’s capacious view of American literary and cultural history masterfully weaves together a wide range of creative and intellectual expression into a sweeping new narrative of this pivotal decade.
Download or read book Imagining the Nation written by David Leiwei Li and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book identifies the forces behind the explosive growth in Asian American literature. It charts its emergence and explores both the unique place of Asian Americans in American culture and what that place says about the way Americanness is defined.
Download or read book Ethnic American Literature written by Dean J. Franco and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers a comparative approach to ethnic literature that begins by accounting for the intrinsic historical, geographical, and political contingencies of different American cultures. This work looks at a range of writing, from novels to literature.
Download or read book A Companion to Latin American Literature and Culture written by Sara Castro-Klaren and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-06-04 with total page 723 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A COMPANION TO LATIN AMERICAN LITERATURE AND CULTURE “The work contains a wealth of information that must surely provide the basic material for a number of study modules. It should find a place on the library shelves of all institutions where Latin American studies form part of the curriculum.” Reference Review “In short, this is a fascinating panoply that goes from a reevaluation of pre-Columbian America to an intriguing consideration of recent developments in the debate on the modem and postmodern. Summing Up: Recommended.” CHOICE A Companion to Latin American Literature and Culture reflects the changes that have taken place in cultural theory and literary criticism since the latter part of the twentieth century. Written by more than thirty experts in cultural theory, literary history, and literary criticism, this authoritative and up-to-date reference places major authors in the complex cultural and historical contexts that have compelled their distinctive fiction, essays, and poetry. This allows the reader to more accurately interpret the esteemed but demanding literature of authors such as Jorge Luis Borges, Mario Vargas Llosa, Octavio Paz, and Diamela Eltit. Key authors whose work has defined a period, or defied borders, as in the cases of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, César Vallejo, and Gabriel García Márquez, are also discussed in historical and theoretical context. Additional essays engage the reader with in-depth discussions of forms and genres, and discussions of architecture, music, and film This text provides the historical background to help the reader understand the people and culture that have defined Latin American literature and its reception. Each chapter also includes short selected bibliographic guides and recommendations for further reading.
Download or read book Race in American Literature and Culture written by John Ernest and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-06-16 with total page 467 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book shows how American racial history and culture have shaped, and been shaped in turn by, American literature.
Download or read book The Rise and Fall of Early American Magazine Culture written by Jared Gardner and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2012-05-15 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Countering assumptions about early American print culture and challenging our scholarly fixation on the novel, Jared Gardner reimagines the early American magazine as a rich literary culture that operated as a model for nation-building by celebrating editorship over authorship and serving as a virtual salon in which citizens were invited to share their different perspectives. The Rise and Fall of Early American Magazine Culture reexamines early magazines and their reach to show how magazine culture was multivocal and presented a porous distinction between author and reader, as opposed to novel culture, which imposed a one-sided authorial voice and restricted the agency of the reader.
Download or read book Culture Genre and Literary Vocation written by Michael Davitt Bell and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Culture, Genre, and Literary Vocation, Michael Davitt Bell charts the important and often overlooked connection between literary culture and authors' careers. Bell's influential essays on nineteenth-century American writers—originally written for such landmark projects as The Columbia Literary History of the United States and The Cambridge History of American Literature—are gathered here with a major new essay on Richard Wright. Throughout, Bell revisits issues of genre with an eye toward the unexpected details of authors' lives, and invites us to reconsider the hidden functions that terms such as "romanticism" and "realism" served for authors and their critics. Whether tracing the demands of the market or the expectations of readers, Bell examines the intimate relationship between literary production and culture; each essay closely links the milieu in which American writers worked with the trajectory of their storied careers.
Download or read book Writing Out of Place written by Judith Fetterley and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In a series of sketches, regionalist writers such as Alice Cary, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Sarah Orne Jewett, Grace King, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Sui Sin Far, and Mary Austin critique the approach to regional subjects characteristic of local color and present narrators who serve as cultural interpreters for persons often considered "out of place" by urban readers. In their approach to these writers, Fetterley and Pryse offer contemporary readers an alternative vantage point from which to consider questions of regions and regionalism in the global economy of our own time."--Jacket.