Where is American Literature? E-Book

Caroline F. Levander

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Blackwell Manifestos
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 337

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Where is American Literature? offers a spirited and compelling argument for rethinking the way we view American literature in relation to the nation while powerfully demonstrating why it continues to matter in a global age.

•  A refreshing and accessible investigation into the various locations - linguistic, geographical, virtual, ideological - where American writing is produced and consumed
•  Takes a highly original approach by viewing US literature spatially rather than chronologically or thematically, retuning our understanding of the subject
• The book offers a vital intervention in current debates over the impact of digital technologies on the production and reception of literature, ensuring that the field remains lively and dynamic
• Invites readers to reconsider the subject by questioning current perspectives on, and approaches to, US literature, offering a range of fresh perspectives on familiar texts and topics

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Series page

Title page

Copyright page

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Discovering American Literature

Part I: Places

In the Eye of the Beholder

On the Edge

Part II: Environments

In the Cloud

In the House

Part III: Communities

At the Club

Under Enemy Fire

Conclusion: Home As Found

Suggested Further Reading

Index

Wiley-Blackwell Manifestos

In this new series major critics make timely interventions to address important concepts and subjects, including topics as diverse as, for example: Culture, Race, Religion, History, Society, Geography, Literature, Literary Theory, Shakespeare, Cinema, and Modernism. Written accessibly and with verve and spirit, these books follow no uniform prescription but set out to engage and challenge the broadest range of readers, from undergraduates to postgraduates, university teachers and general readers – all those, in short, interested in ongoing debates and controversies in the humanities and social sciences.

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This edition first published 2013

© 2013 Caroline F. Levander

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Cover image: Underground station, Berlin. Photo © Alan R. Levander

Cover design by Nicki Averill

Acknowledgments

In order to answer the question posed by this book’s title, I went many places and was helped by many people. I particularly thank the following institutions and individuals for inviting me to share the ideas driving this book in lectures, seminars, and, most importantly, conversations: the Swedish Research Council and Uppsala University; Yale University; Harvard University; the University of Southern California; the University of California, Irvine; the John F. Kennedy Institute for North America Studies at the Freie Universität, Berlin; Karlstad University, Sweden; the Humanities Center at University of Buffalo; the Institute for Philosophical Research, Germany; Indiana University; the University of Vermont; the University of South Carolina; the Huntington Library, Pasadena California; the Humanities League and Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan; Brown University; and the University of Illinois, Champagn-Urbana.

To those who kept asking me “where is American literature anyway?” and helped me change my answer from “in my mind,” to “on the page,” and, finally, to “at the press” – I am grateful beyond words. One answer to the book’s driving question has consistently been “in my friends’ inboxes,” and I thank Rachel Adams, Carrie Bramen, Anna Brickhouse, Sid Burrus, Russ Castronovo, Deborah Cohn, Cathy Davidson, Tim Dean, Susan Gillman, Melissa Gniadek, Matthew Guterl, Rodrigo Lazo, Robert Levine, Allen Matusow, Walter Mignolo, Anthony Pinn, John Carlos Rowe, Shirley Samuels, Jeffrey Schnapp, and Nicole Waligora-Davis for reading portions, and in a couple of cases, all of the book and giving great feedback every step of the way. Grateful thanks to Alan Levander for such a great cover image.

For me, one profoundly important answer to the book’s titular question of where American literature can be found has been at my home institution – with the colleagues, students, and faculty visitors who have convened in seminar rooms at Rice to talk about the ideas driving this manuscript. I am grateful to Rice for supporting this venture and to the graduate students who have engaged it with energy and, at times, useful incredulity, particularly Karen Rosenthall, AnaMaria Seglie, and Abby Goode. Finally, I owe hearty thanks to Meredith Allison for her late-inning formatting skills and general proof-reading savvy.

Introduction

Discovering American Literature

There was a time in the not too distant past when it was easy to find American literature. Those entering a Barnes and Noble or Borders could clearly see at a distance “American literature” headers emblazoned on bookstore shelves, often displayed near to “European literature” or even “World literature” sections of the store, as if American literature was something extraterrestrial – distinct from world literature but its perfect complement. For those borrowing rather than buying, American literature was so easily found in the library’s decimal system that enthusiasts often naturally gravitated to the PS part of the stack to begin their browsing and worked their way out from this American literary epicenter to the literature of the rest of the world.

But if we used to know where American literature began and ended because it was clearly marked, bookstores are fewer and farther between these days, and those that remain have blended and reorganized their stock so that new categories now catch the shopper’s eye – categories like “Fiction” or “Literature” that have dispensed altogether with regional designators. For the increasing number of online shoppers, Amazon is less interested in establishing borders than in breaking them down, and to now enter the book section of Amazon’s website is to search a browsable stack created by other shoppers – by the buying habits, inclinations, and idiosyncratic interests of those who bought the book you are looking at, rather than by an organizational structure created by, say, the Library of Congress or bookstore owners or marketing teams.

Given its erasure from bookstore shelves and buying guides, why do we continue to think of some books and authors as collectively constituting an American literature? Why do we hold onto this concept or idea that America has a literature and that certain authors – like William Faulkner or Nathaniel Hawthorne or Emily Dickinson – represent this concept of American literariness more authentically than others? And why do we stubbornly do so in spite of the thorny questions that immediately crop up the minute you start asking yourself where is American literature?