Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000 Books

Book SynopsisTrade ReviewA readable collection on one of the 20th century's greatest writers, this will be enjoyed by Nabokov fans and students of 20th century literature. Library Journal Boyd's graceful style and passionate advocacy achieves the goal of the best literary criticism: it compels us to pick up Nabokov and read, or read again, the work of a master. Publishers Weekly In Stalking Nabokov Boyd attempts something fairly ambitious: he takes the titanic Nabokov and seeks to revise him upwards. As Boyd sees it, he is not only the greatest novelist of the century; he is also a considerable poet, an important scientist, a controversially original translator, a fearless and liberating critic, a learned psychologist... Vera [Nabokov] soon came to value him and to trust him; and we should follow her lead... Professor Boyd, as the author of books on evolution and cognition, is well equipped to give us a real sense of Nabokov's scientific weight... The long and fervent essay in Stalking Nabokov [on the poem] "Pale Fire," compel us to reexamine the poem as an autonomous whole. And the exercise is epiphanic. "Pale Fire" glows with fresh pathos and vibrancy-and so does Pale Fire. For the first time we see the poem in all its innocence, and register the vandalism of Kinbote's desperate travesty. // So at last the true dimensions of Pale Fire are more clearly revealed to us... On the timbre of Nabokov's artistic spirit Boyd is fundamentally right-headed. -- Martin Amis Times Literary Supplement Advances a consistent and intriguing reading of [Nabokov's] work... a powerful corrective to a prevailing view of Nabokov. -- Larry Hardesty Boston Globe Essential for everyone interested in the Russian master. Booklist Boyd's deft analysis of the novels is superb... genuinely exhilarating... Brian Boyd is not only Nabokov's biographer but also his pre-eminent critic. This is a valuable and delightful collection of essays on one of the twentieth century's most significant novelists. -- Paul Morgan Australian Book Review There is plenty of sensible and revealing stuff here. New Yorker Absolutely fascinating... Uniquely compelling... This is Boyd at his best. -- Eric Naiman San Francisco Chronicle There is much here that will inform, enliven, and enlighten the work of one of the greatest novelists of his century. New York Times Book Review Required reading for serious students of Nabokov. Choice Boyd is always a pleasure to read...and this collection does not disappoint. -- Stephen H. Blackwell Slavic Review Ambitious... Fervent... Epiphanic. -- Martin Amis Times Literary Supplement Substantial... Impressive... Enlightening... Best of all, his enthusiasm for Nabokov's verbal pyrotechnics, for his comically deluded heroes pursuing elusive objects of desire, for the ability to depict life itself, joyously 'swarming with inexhaustible diversity and delight,' sends you back to read the books... of one of literature's great masters. -- David Eggleton The Listener Boyd's sophisticated use of texts and contexts, close readings informed by archival materials and decades of experience, and wonderful writing style mean that all Nabokov scholars and fans will enjoy. -- Jason Merrill The Russian Review Boyd is, without a doubt, an incredibly exacting and rigorous scholar - his tireless research and collection of a vast array of materials is something which coming generations of academics will continue to be grateful for. -- U.H. Dematagoda Slavonic and East European ReviewTable of ContentsAcknowledgments List of Abbreviations Introduction Nabokov: The Writer's Life and the Life Writer 1. A Centennial Toast 2. A Biographer's Life 3. Who Is "My Nabokov"? Nabokov's Manuscripts and Books 4. The Nabokov Biography and the Nabokov Archive 5. From the Nabokov Archive: Nabokov's Literary Legacy Nabokov's Metaphysics 6. Retrospects and Prospect/s 7. Nabokov's Afterlife Nabokov's Butterflies 8. Nabokov, Literature, Lepidoptera 9. Netting Nabokov: Review of Dieter E. Zimmer, A Guide to Nabokov's Butterflies and Moths Nabokov as Psychologist 10. The Psychological Work of Fictional Play Nabokov and the Origins and Ends of Stories 11. Stacks of Stories, Stories of Stacks Nabokov as Writer 12. Nabokov's Humor 13. Nabokov as Storyteller 14. Nabokov's Transition from Russian to English: Repudiation or Evolution? Nabokov and Others 15. Nabokov, Pushkin, Shakespeare: Genius, Generosity, and Gratitude in The Gift and Pale Fire 16. Nabokov as Verse Translator: Introduction to Verses and Versions 17. Tolstoy and Nabokov 18. Nabokov and Machado de Assis Nabokov Works 19. Speak, Memory : The Life and the Art 20. Speak, Memory : Nabokov, Mother, and Lovers: The Weave of the Magic Carpet (1999) 21. Lolita : Scene and Unseen 22. Even Homais Nods: Nabokov's Fallibility; Or, How to Revise Lolita 23. Literature, Pattern, Lolita; Or, Art, Literature, Science 24. "Pale Fire": Poem and Pattern 25. Ada : The Bog and the Garden; Or, Straw, Fluff, and Peat: Sources and Places in Ada 26. A Book Burner Recants: The Original of Laura Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisDigital and electronic technologies that act as extensions of our bodies and minds are changing how we live, think, act, and write. Some welcome these developments as bringing humans closer to unified consciousness and eternal life. Others worry that invasive globalized technologies threaten to destroy the self and the world. Whether feared or desired, these innovations provoke emotions that have long fueled the religious imagination, suggesting the presence of a latent spirituality in an era mistakenly deemed secular and posthuman. William Gaddis, Richard Powers, Mark Danielewski, and Don DeLillo are American authors who explore this phenomenon thoroughly in their work. Engaging the works of each in conversation, Mark C. Taylor discusses their sophisticated representations of new media, communications, information, and virtual technologies and their transformative effects on the self and society. He focuses on Gaddis's The Recognitions, Powers's Plowing the Dark, Danielewski's House Trade ReviewThis book exemplifies what an entire area within religious studies-'religion and literature'-should be yet has never quite become: a genuinely interdisciplinary, existentially attuned, and constructively ambitious enterprise engaged with our most timely social and cultural questions. -- Thomas Carlson, University of California, Santa Barbara Provocative, engaging, significant... -- N. Katherine Hayles Los Angeles Review of Books Rewiring the Real is a collection of wide-ranging and incisive conversations about contemporary fiction and useful... primer to Taylor's thought... Taylor is a gifted explainer with a remarkably direct and personable style... College LiteratureTable of ContentsList of Illustrations neXus 1. Counterfeiting Counterfeit Religion: William Gaddis, The Recognitions 2. Mosaics: Richard Powers, Plowing the Dark 3. Figuring Nothing: Mark Danielewski, House of Leaves 4. "Holy Shit!": Don DeLillo, Underworld 5. Concluding Unscientific Postscript: Two Styles of the Philosophy of Religion Acknowledgments Notes Index

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Book SynopsisRanging from the self-consciously avant-garde to the pornographic, web-based writing has introduced innovative forms, themes, and practices into Chinese literature and its aesthetic traditions.Trade ReviewAs a well-known figure in the field of modern Chinese literature, Hockx is well positioned to bridge the gap between literary studies and internet culture. His book will become a standard citation in Chinese internet studies. -- Guobin Yang, author of The Power of the Internet in China: Citizen Activism Online A pioneering effort that will set a milestone in the research of online literature and will be a reference work for students and researchers for years to come. -- Daria Berg, University of St. Gallen Internet Literature in China is one of the first books to survey the field of electronic literature in China, and Hockx's analyses show the complex interrelations between literary production, internet technologies, and social contexts in postsocialist China. His conclusions challenge and extend received wisdom about how digital technologies affect literary productions in Western contexts. For example, he argues that innovative effects do not require and are not limited to nonlinearity in literary texts. This excellent book should be read by every serious scholar of digital literature, especially those who have based their ideas solely on Western contexts. -- N. Katherine Hayles, author of How We Think: Digital Media and Contemporary Technogenesis Michel Hockx provides a rare look at the processes of social transformation that have touched the intimate lives of people and communities through web portals, apps, microblogs and other online media. His refreshing ethnography captures a precarious moment of postsocialist literary innovation, transgression, and aberrations in its full complexity. This book is the best introduction available in English to the psychic landscape of contemporary Chinese netizens who know how to play with censors to articulate their personal desires, fantasies, phobias, and exhibitionism. -- Lydia H. Liu, author of The Freudian Robot: Digital Media and the Future of the Unconscious This important account of the other China is timely and incisive. It reveals a virtual People's Republic that is furtive, creative, and resilient. Hockx speaks insightfully of China's post-socialist past and guides us toward its gravid and disruptive future. -- Geremie R Barme, creator of The China Story (www.thechinastory.org) Hockx has documented a fascinating moment in time. -- Ross Perlin Times Literary Supplement [Internet Literature in China] provides engaging representative snapshots of this digital literary and subliterary universe... Essential. Choice Internet Literature in China is a fantastic and novel contribution to the study of literary production in the digital age, and one that is bound to appeal far beyond the field of Chinese literature. -- Casey Brienza LSE Review of Books Michel Hockx's book is the first Western study to provide a global introduction to online literature in China... In sum, this is an important contribution, not only to Chinese studies but also to the study of digital literature elsewhere in the world. -- Shuang Xu China Perspectives Hockx enables readers to get a vivid and interesting glimpse into the ingenuity, fluidity, interactivity, and transgressiveness of postsocialist China's important cultural phenomenon. -- Chu Shen The China Review Michel Hockx's Internet Literature in China constitutes a path-breaking study on this huge phenomenon and makes a crucial contribution to the mapping of the country's complex and varied system of online literary communities... Essential reading not only for literary and Internet scholars within the field of Chinese studies, but also for anyone interested in contemporary Chinese culture and society... Students and non-specialist readers will equally be grateful to Michel Hockx for writing such an easily accessible, informative and engrossing book. -- Giorgio Strafella China Information Essential reading for any researcher interested in Chinese Internet literature and Internet culture. -- Elisabeth Schleep Asien: The German Journal on Contemporary Asia Hockx's meticulous documentation of China's Internet culture is an invaluable contribution for anyone interested in this largely overlooked and essential aspect of postsocialist Chinese society, and constitutes an indispensable resource to the study of globalizing Chinese media culture. Journal of Asian StudiesTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Note on Online Sources Introduction 1. Internet Literature in China: History, Technology, and Conventions 2. Linear Innovations: Chen Cun and Other Chroniclers 3. The Bottom Line: Online Fiction and Postsocialist Publishing 4. Online Poetry in and out of China, in Chinese, or with Chinese Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisGeorge 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 connections across racial, ethnic, and gender divisions.Trade ReviewBringing together art, literature, philosophy, and music, Hutchinson has created a kind of critical mosaic that produces insights that open up the 1940s as a cultural field, grounded in the ungrounded processes of art as incalculable experience. The juxtapositions of unconnected figures induce in the reader a new vision of the era and new dimensions of the authors and works discussed. It is a work of exceptionally deft intellectual choreography, conducted with enviable precision and concision. -- Ross Posnock, Columbia UniversityTable of ContentsList of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. When Literature Mattered2. Popular Culture and the Avant-Garde3. Labor, Politics, and the Arts4. The War5. America! America! A Jewish Renaissance?6. A Rising Wind: “Literature of the Negro” and Civil Rights7. Queer Horizons8. Women and Power9. Culture and EcologyEpilogue: One WorldNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisJesse Matz considers its two legacies—positive and negative—to explain impressionism’s true contemporary significance.Trade ReviewLasting Impressions shrewdly explores a fascinating, strikingly under-researched topic, namely that impressionism remains a powerful cultural presence in ways that have tended to elude definition. Examining a variety of areas such as advertising, painting, music, and postcolonial and contemporary fiction, Jesse Matz argues that impressionism's seminal configuration of the project of modern representation has continued to shape cultural discourses and practices long after modernism. An extremely interesting and important work. -- Max Saunders, King's College London Lasting Impressions revitalizes our understanding of impressionism by showing just how strong its legacies are. Ranging widely across painting, music, narrative, and film, Matz argues in eloquent readings that in opening a gap between the authority of our perceptions and the stories we construct from them, impressionism leads to the most vibrant and intractable aesthetic problems we inherit today. This book will be invaluable to anyone interested in the unstable divide between art and its co-optation, high culture and kitsch, real experience and artistic fraud. -- Tamar Katz, author of Impressionist Subjects: Gender, Interiority, and Modernist Fiction in England Brilliant and original in its arguments, impressive in its range and command of reference, and written in an invigorating style, Lasting Impressions will be essential reading for anyone interested in impressionism, the modernist movement in the arts, and the wider question of how modern culture has imagined and reimagined the status of art and the aesthetic. Every chapter is full of rewarding insights and provocative, challenging ideas. -- Adam Parkes, University of Georgia Written with the same elegance that characterizes its enduring subject, Lasting Impressions moves nimbly across time to uncover the indomitable energy with which impressionism informs new critical and transmedial configurations. By revealing how the perceptual problem of the impression continues to inspire charismatic narratives of cultural and aesthetic emergence, Jesse Matz deftly shows that impressionism remains a living mode of reflection on the very possibilities of contemporary art and literature. -- David James, Queen Mary, University of London and author of Modernist Futures Lasting Impressions poses two elemental questions: what makes art relevant, and how do we know things? Matz answers these questions in this landmark study, which traces the cultural contradictions surrounding impressionism from its origins in the nineteenth century to its manifestations in the twenty-first century. Matz's capacious aesthetic history, his second study of impressionism, will be essential for scholars seeking to understand modernism's multiple legacies. -- Urmila Seshagiri, author of Race and the Modernist ImaginationTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction 1. First and Lasting: Histories for the Tache 2. The Impressionist Advertisement 3. Photogenie from Renoir to Gance to Renoir 4. The "Image of Africa" from Conrad to Achebe to Adichie 5. Impressionist Fraud: Klein, Saito, Frey 6. Contemporary Impressions and Kitsch Aesthetics: Kinkade/Doig 7. The Pseudo-Impressionist Novel: Sebald, Toibin, Cunningham 8. Thinking Medium: The Rhetoric of Popular Cognition Conclusion Notes Index

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Book SynopsisThe epic narratives of modern Chinese fiction feature graphic depictions of sex and violence and dark, raunchy comedy, and these novels deeply reflect China’s turbulent recent historyTrade ReviewA lucid, thought-provoking, and substantial study of several of China's most important creative writers: one that poses crucial questions about the links between fiction, history, and politics in the contemporary People's Republic. -- Julia Lovell, University of London Kinkley's study offers a refreshing comparative perspective on recent works of Chinese historical fiction by classifying them as global dystopian novels with 'Chinese characteristics.' -- Robin Visser, University of North Carolina From his masterful literary biography of Shen Congwen to more recent studies of Chinese political fiction and legal fiction, the interrelation between history and literature has always been an important subtext of Jeffery Kinkley's work. With Visions of Dystopia in China's New Historical Novels, Kinkley dives directly into the complex and sometimes murky intersection between history and literature in contemporary China. Along the way, we are introduced to the leading voices in Chinese literature today, including Mo Yan, Su Tong, Yu Hua, and Wang Anyi, and offered nuanced readings of the dystopian undercurrent in their major works. For those interested in delving deeper into the most important Chinese novels of the past quarter century, this is where to start. -- Michael Berry, author of History of Pain and Speaking in Images Following on from his path-breaking studies of contemporary Chinese legal fiction and political novels, Jeffrey Kinkley in his new book. Visions of Dystopia once again displays impressive mastery of a body of Chinese writing that provides us with a unique perspective on the country's turbulent recent history. Engaging with dystopian traditions in literature from South America and elsewhere, Kinkley expertly brings out the uniqueness of the Chinese authors' handling of the past to comment on the present and the future. Identifying himself as a historian, Kinkley at the same time has been and continues to be one of the world's leading scholars of Chinese literataure. -- Michel Hockx, SOAS, University of London In yet another impressive work with impeccable research, Kinkley displays his nuanced understanding of modern and contemporary China through highly readable prose and broad reference to similar works in world literature. A must-read! -- Sylvia Lin, author of Representing Atrocity in Taiwan Jeffrey C. Kinkley has done magnificent work in rethinking the meaning and function of historical dynamics and spatial imaginary in the context of dystopia. He looks into sources drawn from PRC fiction since the New Era, identifies generic and conceptual contestations, and teases out the radical elements in the debate about civil society. Both historically engaged and theoretically provocative, Kinkley's book is a most important source for anyone interested in Chinese and comparative literature and cultural studies. -- David Der-wei Wang, Harvard University This is the best treatment yet of the contemporary PRC historical novel... Highly recommended. Choice An original and penetrating book... [Visions of Dystopia in China's New Historical Novels] is an excellent resource for both students and advanced scholars of modern Chinese literature and history. -- Nathaniel Isaacson H-Asia [Visions of Dystopia in China's New Historical Novels] is an articulate, thought-provoking, and important contribution to the study of contemporary PRC literature, useful for research and classroom teaching. -- Christopher N. Payne The China Quarterly This is a masterful study of a major genre in recent Chinese literature; it is erudite but readable, strongly comparative, and with both historical and literary perspective. -- Richard King Pacific Affairs By virtue of his knowledge, keen comparative insights, and detailed close readings, Kinkley delivers more than his modest title promises... China scholars in other disciplines will find much of value in this far-reaching magnum opus. Scholars of contemporary Chinese literature will find it indispensable. -- Sabina Knight The China JournalTable of ContentsPreface 1. Introduction: Chinese Visions of History and Dystopia 2. Discomforts of Temporal Anomie 3. Projections of Historical Repetition 4. Alienation from the Group 5. Anarchy: Social, Moral, and Cosmic 6. Conclusion: The End of History, Dystopia, and "New" Historical Novels? List of Chinese Characters Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewIn this superb volume of criticism... Andrews, the English translator of ten of Bolano's books, deftly analyzes the complex themes and narrative layers of Bolano's fictional universe...An indispensable guide to navigating the rich world of Bolano's fiction. Publishers Weekly Profusely documented and with a thorough bibliography, this full-length critical monograph is a great start to what will, one hopes, be a parade of analytical examinations of Bolano's works. Library Journal Written in a clear and engaging style, Robert Bolano's Fiction offers an invaluable understanding of one of the most important authors of the last thirty years. Biblioklept [An] elegantly written literary analysis. -- Lisa Locascio Salon A sharp and accessible guide to the literary style and narrative skills of this amazing novelist. Sacramento News and Review Andrews is not only the leading translator of Bolano's work into English but also one of the leading scholars of Bolano's fiction. CHOICE Andrews's book... is an ambitious and insightful take on what is sure to be an exciting area of study in the coming years. Rain Taxi [Andrews] examines Bolano's 'fiction-making system' and ethical patterns with graceful, accessible erudition. The analysis of Bolano's techniques helps us not only to understand our experience of reading him but also to fathom the writers he resonates with. -- Lorna Scott Fox Times Literary Supplement Chris Andrews writes very fine prose... This book isn't just a translator's homage to his author (Andrews's affection for Bolano is obvious but does not interfere with his analysis) but an exceptional work of scholarship. The Australian The most important contribution to this field of scholarship. The singularity of Andrews's book lies in its sophisticated and subtle reading of Bolano's opus as a whole... Superbly written and meticulously researched. Australian Book ReviewTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction List of Abbreviations Note on Translations 1. The Anomalous Case of Roberto Bolano 2. Bolano's Fiction-Making System 3. Something Is Going to Happen: Narrative Tension 4. Aimlessness 5. Duels and Brawls: Borges and Bolano 6. Evil Agencies 7. A Sense of What Matters Appendix: Victims in "The Part About the Crimes" (2666) and Huesos en el desierto Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisThrough a comparative analysis of the novels of Roberto Bolaño and the fictional work of César Aira, Mario Bellatin, Diamela Eltit, Chico Buarque, Alberto Fuguet, and Fernando Vallejo, among other contemporaries, Héctor Hoyos defines new trends in how we read and write in a globalized era.Trade ReviewAn outstanding example of scholarly writing and critical thinking. Beyond Bolano challenges conventional ways of talking about and teaching Latin American literature, while at the same time resisting a facile globalization whereby Latin American literature becomes a companion to the presumed centers of world literature. -- David William Foster, Arizona State University A must-read for anyone interested in the ongoing discussion on world literature, this book uses the work of Roberto Bolano to explore what contemporary Latin American literature can tell us about ideologies of the global. -- Theo D'haen, author of The Routledge Concise History of World Literature Hector Hoyos makes a strong argument for reading the novels of the Chilean author as an epochal shift from the national narrative to novels whose characters and events are situated within a global scenario. He argues convincingly that in contemporary fiction, settings such as the supermarket, the art world, and the narco territories constitute such alephs. Focusing on the novels of Cesar Aira, Chico Buarque, Diamela Eltit, Fernando Vallejo, and Mario Bellatin, Beyond Bolano offers a stimulating discussion of this contemporary turn. -- Jean Franco, professor emerita, Columbia University Hector Hoyos offers a fascinating analysis of what "the globe" looks like from Latin America. An ambitious and necessary reframing of the world literature debates, Beyond Bolano is also an exemplary illustration of what textured literary analysis can tell us about the the geopolitics of cultural prestige. -- David Kurnick, Rutgers University Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty. Choice Hoyos provides fresh insights into the relationship between contemporary Latin American literature and globalization. His study should be of interest to specialists in Latin American fiction, but it also has a broader appeal which is relevant to the disciplines of world literature and American studies. -- Helen Oakley Journal of American Studies [A]n impressive book. The claim that there cannot be a true consideration of the global novel without including authors of a Latin America that goes beyond Bolano is most convincing. -- Randolph D. Pope Recherche Litteraire / Literary Research Hoyos' book is an excellent guide for casual readers of Latin American literature wondering what lies beyond the traditional canon of Borges, Garcia Marquez, Vargas Llosa and even of the more recent Bolano. By tying the narrative of the continent to its history, it will also interest readers curious about trends in contemporary Latin American culture. Finally, to specialists it will be of special interest as it develops new angles from which to think of the local and the global as it pertains to Latin American literature. -- Manuel Azuaje-Alamo ReVista An important contribution to both studies of the contemporary (post 1989) Latin American novel and studies of World Literature. A Contra CorrienteTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: Globalization as Form 1. Nazi Tales from the Americas at the Turn of the Twenty-first Century 2. The Cosmopolitics of South-South Escapism 3. All the World's a Supermarket (and All the Men and Women Merely Shoppers) 4. Iconocracy and Political Theology of Narconovelas 5. On Duchamp and Beuys as Latin American Writers Conclusion: The Promise of Multipolarism Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisThrough a comparative analysis of the novels of Roberto Bolaño and the fictional work of César Aira, Mario Bellatin, Diamela Eltit, Chico Buarque, Alberto Fuguet, and Fernando Vallejo, among other contemporaries, Héctor Hoyos defines new trends in how we read and write in a globalized era.Trade ReviewAn outstanding example of scholarly writing and critical thinking. Beyond Bolano challenges conventional ways of talking about and teaching Latin American literature, while at the same time resisting a facile globalization whereby Latin American literature becomes a companion to the presumed centers of world literature. -- David William Foster, Arizona State University A must-read for anyone interested in the ongoing discussion on world literature, this book uses the work of Roberto Bolano to explore what contemporary Latin American literature can tell us about ideologies of the global. -- Theo D'haen, author of The Routledge Concise History of World Literature Hector Hoyos makes a strong argument for reading the novels of the Chilean author as an epochal shift from the national narrative to novels whose characters and events are situated within a global scenario. He argues convincingly that in contemporary fiction, settings such as the supermarket, the art world, and the narco territories constitute such alephs. Focusing on the novels of Cesar Aira, Chico Buarque, Diamela Eltit, Fernando Vallejo, and Mario Bellatin, Beyond Bolano offers a stimulating discussion of this contemporary turn. -- Jean Franco, professor emerita, Columbia University Hector Hoyos offers a fascinating analysis of what "the globe" looks like from Latin America. An ambitious and necessary reframing of the world literature debates, Beyond Bolano is also an exemplary illustration of what textured literary analysis can tell us about the the geopolitics of cultural prestige. -- David Kurnick, Rutgers University Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty. Choice Hoyos provides fresh insights into the relationship between contemporary Latin American literature and globalization. His study should be of interest to specialists in Latin American fiction, but it also has a broader appeal which is relevant to the disciplines of world literature and American studies. -- Helen Oakley Journal of American Studies [A]n impressive book. The claim that there cannot be a true consideration of the global novel without including authors of a Latin America that goes beyond Bolano is most convincing. -- Randolph D. Pope Recherche Litteraire / Literary Research Hoyos' book is an excellent guide for casual readers of Latin American literature wondering what lies beyond the traditional canon of Borges, Garcia Marquez, Vargas Llosa and even of the more recent Bolano. By tying the narrative of the continent to its history, it will also interest readers curious about trends in contemporary Latin American culture. Finally, to specialists it will be of special interest as it develops new angles from which to think of the local and the global as it pertains to Latin American literature. -- Manuel Azuaje-Alamo ReVista An important contribution to both studies of the contemporary (post 1989) Latin American novel and studies of World Literature. A Contra CorrienteTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: Globalization as Form 1. Nazi Tales from the Americas at the Turn of the Twenty-first Century 2. The Cosmopolitics of South-South Escapism 3. All the World's a Supermarket (and All the Men and Women Merely Shoppers) 4. Iconocracy and Political Theology of Narconovelas 5. On Duchamp and Beuys as Latin American Writers Conclusion: The Promise of Multipolarism Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisThe Columbia Companion to Modern Chinese Literature features more than fifty short essays on specific writers and literary trends from the Qing period (1895–1911) to the present. Both a teaching tool and a go-to research companion, this volume is a one-of-a-kind resource for mastering modern literature in the Chinese-speaking world.Trade ReviewThe Columbia Companion to Modern Chinese Literature addresses a range of issues crucial to our understanding of modern Chinese literary culture, from the birth of new fiction to the advent of Internet writing and from the vitality of cultural production to the vigor of political intervention. In this volume, Chinese literature appears to be a most powerful institution that inscribes, and sometimes even prescribes, the history of modern China. -- David Der-wei Wang, Harvard University The Columbia Companion to Modern Chinese Literature is a dynamite collection of short, smart essays written by many of the leading scholars in the field. It is not only a useful source but also a good read that brings alive the cultural complexity behind the many passionate debates surrounding modern literature in China. -- Wendy Larson, University of Oregon The Columbia Companion to Modern Chinese Literature is as close to an all-purpose work as we are likely to have. A broad-based introduction to the literary offerings and studies of modern Chinese literature for newcomers; a reference work for specialists; and a showcase for the best veteran and young scholars in the field. An indispensable tool. -- Howard Goldblatt, coeditor of The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Literature The field of modern Chinese literature has grown immensely in recent decades. Only collaboration among many scholars can encompass it. The Columbia Companion to Modern Chinese Literature does this, but it is much more than a reference book. It is a kaleidoscope of deft and charming essays that provide insight as well as background for students at all levels. The book will be invaluable in teaching. -- Perry Link, University of California, Riverside The Columbia Companion is a very stimulating guide to modern Chinese literature. More than that, it is a landmark work... No other single volume has presented this range of literature and this level of critical introduction. Whether as teachers or as research scholars, we should not overlook this contribution to our field. -- Edward Mansfield Gunn Modern Chinese Literature and CultureTable of ContentsPreface and Acknowledgments Chronology of Major Historical Events Part I. Thematic Essays 1. Historical Overview, by Kirk A. Denton 2. Modern Chinese Literature as an Institution: Canon and Literary History, by Yingjin Zhang 3. Language and Literary Form, by Charles Laughlin 4. Literary Communities and the Production of Literature, by Michel Hockx 5. Between Tradition and Modernity: Contested Classical Poetry, by Shengqing Wu 6. Diaspora in Modern Chinese Literature, by Shuyu Kong 7. Sinophone Literature, by Brian Bernards 8. Chinese Literature and Film Adaptation, by Hsiu-Chuang Deppman Part II. Authors, Works, Schools 9. The Late Qing Poetry Revolution: Liang Qichao, Huang Zunxian, and Chinese Literary Modernity", by Jianhua Chen 10. The Uses of Fiction: Liang Qichao and His Contemporaries, by Alexander DesForges 11. Late Qing Fiction, by Ying Hu 12. Zhou Shoujuan's Love Stories and Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies Fiction, by Jianhua Chen 13. Form and Reform: New Poetry and the Crescent Moon Society, by John Crespi 14. Reconsidering the Origins of Modern Chinese Women's Writing, by Amy D. Dooling 15. The Madman That Was Ah Q: Tradition and Modernity in Lu Xun's Fiction, by Ann Huss 16. Romantic Sentiment and the Problem of the Subject: Yu Dafu, by Kirk A. Denton 17. Feminism and Revolution: The Work and Life of Ding Ling, by Jingyuan Zhang 18. The Debate on Revolutionary Literature, by Charles Laughlin 19. Mao Dun, the Modern Novel, and the Representation of Women, by Hilary Chung 20. Ba Jin's Family: Fiction, Representation, and Relevance, by Nicholas A. Kaldis 21. Chinese Modernism: The New Sensationists, by Steven L. Riep 22. Shen Congwen and Imagined Native Communities, by Jeffrey Kinkley 23. Xiao Hong's Field of Life and Death, by Amy D. Dooling 24. Performing the Nation: Chinese Drama and Theater, by Xiaomei Chen 25. Cao Yu and Thunderstorm, by Jonathan Noble 26. The Reluctant Nihilism of Lao She's Rickshaw, by Thomas Moran 27. Eileen Chang and Narratives of Cities and Worlds, by Nicole Huang 28. Literature and Politics: Mao Zedong's "Yan'an Talks" and Party Rectification, by Kirk A. Denton 29. Qian Zhongshu and Yang Jiang: A Literary Marriage, by Christopher Rea 30. Revolutionary Realism and Revolutionary Romanticism: Song of Youth, by Ban Wang 31. The Hundred Flowers: Qin Zhaoyang, Wang Meng, and Liu Binyan, by Richard King 32. Cold War Fiction from Taiwan and the Modernists, by Christopher Lupke 33. Nativism and Localism in Taiwanese Literature, by Christopher Lupke 34. The Cultural Revolution Model Theater, by Di Bai 35. Martial-Arts Fiction and Jin Yong, by John Christopher Hamm 36. Taiwanese Romance: Qiong Yao and San Mao, by Miriam Lang 37. Misty Poetry, by Michelle Yeh 38. Scar Literature and the Memory of Trauma, by Sabina Knight 39. Culture Against Politics: Roots-Seeking Literature, by Mark Leenhouts 40. Mo Yan, by Yomi Braester 41. Avant-Garde Fiction in Post-Mao China, by Andrew F. Jones 42. Contemporary Experimental Theaters in the PRC, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, by Rossella Ferrari 43. Modern Poetry of Taiwan, by Michelle Yeh 44. Homoeroticism in Modern Chinese Literature, by Thomas Moran 45. Contemporary Urban Fiction: Rewriting the City, by Robin Visser and Jie Lu 46. Xi Xi and Tales of Hong Kong, by Daisy S.Y. Ng 47. Writing Taiwan's Fin-de-Siecle Splendor: Zhu Tianwen and Zhu Tianxin, by Lingchei Letty Chen 48. Wang Anyi, by Lingzhen Wang 49. Wang Shuo, by Jonathan Noble 50. Commercialization of Literature in the Post-Mao Era: Yu Hua, Beauty Writers, and Youth Writers, by Zhen Zhang 51. Popular Genre Fiction: Science Fiction and Fantasy, by Mingwei Song 52. Word and Image: Gao Xingjian, by Mabel Lee 53. Hong Kong Voices: Literature from the Late Twentieth Century to the New Millennium, by Esther M.K. Cheung 54. Avant-Garde Poetry in China Since the 1980s, by Maghiel van Crevel 55. Taiwan Literature in the Post-Martial Law Era, by Michael Berry 56. Speaking from the Margins: Yan Lianke, by Carlos Rojas 57. Internet Literature: From YY to MOOC, by Heather Inwood

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Book SynopsisThe Columbia Companion to Modern Chinese Literature features more than fifty short essays on specific writers and literary trends from the Qing period (1895–1911) to the present. Both a teaching tool and a go-to research companion, this volume is a one-of-a-kind resource for mastering modern literature in the Chinese-speaking world.Trade ReviewThe Columbia Companion to Modern Chinese Literature addresses a range of issues crucial to our understanding of modern Chinese literary culture, from the birth of new fiction to the advent of Internet writing and from the vitality of cultural production to the vigor of political intervention. In this volume, Chinese literature appears to be a most powerful institution that inscribes, and sometimes even prescribes, the history of modern China. -- David Der-wei Wang, Harvard University The Columbia Companion to Modern Chinese Literature is a dynamite collection of short, smart essays written by many of the leading scholars in the field. It is not only a useful source but also a good read that brings alive the cultural complexity behind the many passionate debates surrounding modern literature in China. -- Wendy Larson, University of Oregon The Columbia Companion to Modern Chinese Literature is as close to an all-purpose work as we are likely to have. A broad-based introduction to the literary offerings and studies of modern Chinese literature for newcomers; a reference work for specialists; and a showcase for the best veteran and young scholars in the field. An indispensable tool. -- Howard Goldblatt, coeditor of The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Literature The field of modern Chinese literature has grown immensely in recent decades. Only collaboration among many scholars can encompass it. The Columbia Companion to Modern Chinese Literature does this, but it is much more than a reference book. It is a kaleidoscope of deft and charming essays that provide insight as well as background for students at all levels. The book will be invaluable in teaching. -- Perry Link, University of California, Riverside The Columbia Companion is a very stimulating guide to modern Chinese literature. More than that, it is a landmark work... No other single volume has presented this range of literature and this level of critical introduction. Whether as teachers or as research scholars, we should not overlook this contribution to our field. -- Edward Mansfield Gunn Modern Chinese Literature and CultureTable of ContentsPreface and Acknowledgments Chronology of Major Historical Events Part I. Thematic Essays 1. Historical Overview, by Kirk A. Denton 2. Modern Chinese Literature as an Institution: Canon and Literary History, by Yingjin Zhang 3. Language and Literary Form, by Charles Laughlin 4. Literary Communities and the Production of Literature, by Michel Hockx 5. Between Tradition and Modernity: Contested Classical Poetry, by Shengqing Wu 6. Diaspora in Modern Chinese Literature, by Shuyu Kong 7. Sinophone Literature, by Brian Bernards 8. Chinese Literature and Film Adaptation, by Hsiu-Chuang Deppman Part II. Authors, Works, Schools 9. The Late Qing Poetry Revolution: Liang Qichao, Huang Zunxian, and Chinese Literary Modernity", by Jianhua Chen 10. The Uses of Fiction: Liang Qichao and His Contemporaries, by Alexander DesForges 11. Late Qing Fiction, by Ying Hu 12. Zhou Shoujuan's Love Stories and Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies Fiction, by Jianhua Chen 13. Form and Reform: New Poetry and the Crescent Moon Society, by John Crespi 14. Reconsidering the Origins of Modern Chinese Women's Writing, by Amy D. Dooling 15. The Madman That Was Ah Q: Tradition and Modernity in Lu Xun's Fiction, by Ann Huss 16. Romantic Sentiment and the Problem of the Subject: Yu Dafu, by Kirk A. Denton 17. Feminism and Revolution: The Work and Life of Ding Ling, by Jingyuan Zhang 18. The Debate on Revolutionary Literature, by Charles Laughlin 19. Mao Dun, the Modern Novel, and the Representation of Women, by Hilary Chung 20. Ba Jin's Family: Fiction, Representation, and Relevance, by Nicholas A. Kaldis 21. Chinese Modernism: The New Sensationists, by Steven L. Riep 22. Shen Congwen and Imagined Native Communities, by Jeffrey Kinkley 23. Xiao Hong's Field of Life and Death, by Amy D. Dooling 24. Performing the Nation: Chinese Drama and Theater, by Xiaomei Chen 25. Cao Yu and Thunderstorm, by Jonathan Noble 26. The Reluctant Nihilism of Lao She's Rickshaw, by Thomas Moran 27. Eileen Chang and Narratives of Cities and Worlds, by Nicole Huang 28. Literature and Politics: Mao Zedong's "Yan'an Talks" and Party Rectification, by Kirk A. Denton 29. Qian Zhongshu and Yang Jiang: A Literary Marriage, by Christopher Rea 30. Revolutionary Realism and Revolutionary Romanticism: Song of Youth, by Ban Wang 31. The Hundred Flowers: Qin Zhaoyang, Wang Meng, and Liu Binyan, by Richard King 32. Cold War Fiction from Taiwan and the Modernists, by Christopher Lupke 33. Nativism and Localism in Taiwanese Literature, by Christopher Lupke 34. The Cultural Revolution Model Theater, by Di Bai 35. Martial-Arts Fiction and Jin Yong, by John Christopher Hamm 36. Taiwanese Romance: Qiong Yao and San Mao, by Miriam Lang 37. Misty Poetry, by Michelle Yeh 38. Scar Literature and the Memory of Trauma, by Sabina Knight 39. Culture Against Politics: Roots-Seeking Literature, by Mark Leenhouts 40. Mo Yan, by Yomi Braester 41. Avant-Garde Fiction in Post-Mao China, by Andrew F. Jones 42. Contemporary Experimental Theaters in the PRC, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, by Rossella Ferrari 43. Modern Poetry of Taiwan, by Michelle Yeh 44. Homoeroticism in Modern Chinese Literature, by Thomas Moran 45. Contemporary Urban Fiction: Rewriting the City, by Robin Visser and Jie Lu 46. Xi Xi and Tales of Hong Kong, by Daisy S.Y. Ng 47. Writing Taiwan's Fin-de-Siecle Splendor: Zhu Tianwen and Zhu Tianxin, by Lingchei Letty Chen 48. Wang Anyi, by Lingzhen Wang 49. Wang Shuo, by Jonathan Noble 50. Commercialization of Literature in the Post-Mao Era: Yu Hua, Beauty Writers, and Youth Writers, by Zhen Zhang 51. Popular Genre Fiction: Science Fiction and Fantasy, by Mingwei Song 52. Word and Image: Gao Xingjian, by Mabel Lee 53. Hong Kong Voices: Literature from the Late Twentieth Century to the New Millennium, by Esther M.K. Cheung 54. Avant-Garde Poetry in China Since the 1980s, by Maghiel van Crevel 55. Taiwan Literature in the Post-Martial Law Era, by Michael Berry 56. Speaking from the Margins: Yan Lianke, by Carlos Rojas 57. Internet Literature: From YY to MOOC, by Heather Inwood

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Book SynopsisThe Ethnic Avant-Garde remaps global modernism and interwar literary, political, and art history along minority and Soviet-centered lines. Steven S. Lee details an absorbing collage of writers and artists who cohered around experimental techniques of montage, fragment, and interruption, advancing the avant-garde project of seeing the world anew.Trade ReviewA prodigiously researched, insightful, and lucid book, Lee's work offers fresh perspective on the links between avant-garde aesthetics and vanguard politics. His scholarship is nothing short of transformative for those seeking new ways of configuring the relationships between ethnicity and cultural production between the wars. -- Kate Baldwin, Northwestern University Beautifully written, deeply researched, and constantly engaging, The Ethnic Avant-Garde restores the allure of Moscow as the beacon of political and perceptual revolution in the early Soviet period. The aspiration to conjoin the socialist vanguard and the cultural avant-garde in an international alliance was engraved in the border-crossing works of activist intellectuals who sought to link indigenous roots to vertiginous upheaval. Steven S. Lee truly understands the pathos and promise of this global experiment. -- Dale E. Peterson, Amherst College A dazzlingly original, ambitious book that challenges us to reconsider the relationship between politics and artistic experimentation during a complex, contradictory, and intriguing period in the history of the United States and the Soviet Union. Lee draws astute and surprising insights into literature, art, modernism, revolution, and the fraught, never-ending struggle to counter racism around the globe. -- Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Stanford University Lee's brilliant book not only redefines 'ethnic literature' but also fundamentally alters our sense of the political promises and aesthetic possibilities of 'the avant-garde.' It is essential reading for students and scholars of twentieth-century literature and culture. -- Jonathan Flatley, Wayne State University A highly engaging exploration. The Russian Review Provocative and wide-ranging. Slavic Review Ambitious, prodigiously researched, and often dazzling. Melus This book is of obvious interest to those studying interactions between Soviet and American culture. Slavists generally can gain much from its international focus, which helps illustrate the enduring relevance of Soviet and Russian culture to the world at large. Indeed, for those hoping to engage a wider variety of students, Lee's framework, rooted not only in American culture but also in contemporary social issues, will be an invaluable resource. -- Emily Wang Slavic and East European Journal The Ethnic Avant-Garde is an unusually imaginative work of cultural history. But its inventiveness is fostered by nose-to-the-grindstone feats of archive digging and cross-cultural translation. -- William J. Maxwell African American ReviewTable of ContentsList of Illustrations A Note on Transliteration Introduction 1. Translating the Ethnic Avant-Garde 2. The Avant-Garde's Asia: Factography and Roar China 3. From Avant-Garde to Authentic: Revisiting Langston Hughes's "Moscow Movie" 4. Cold War Pluralism: The New York Intellectuals Respond to Soviet Anti-Semitism Afterword: Chinese Communism, Cultural Revolution, and American Multiculturalism Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Credits and Permissions Index

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Book SynopsisThe Ethnic Avant-Garde remaps global modernism and interwar literary, political, and art history along minority and Soviet-centered lines. Steven S. Lee details an absorbing collage of writers and artists who cohered around experimental techniques of montage, fragment, and interruption, advancing the avant-garde project of seeing the world anew.Trade ReviewA prodigiously researched, insightful, and lucid book, Lee's work offers fresh perspective on the links between avant-garde aesthetics and vanguard politics. His scholarship is nothing short of transformative for those seeking new ways of configuring the relationships between ethnicity and cultural production between the wars. -- Kate Baldwin, Northwestern University Beautifully written, deeply researched, and constantly engaging, The Ethnic Avant-Garde restores the allure of Moscow as the beacon of political and perceptual revolution in the early Soviet period. The aspiration to conjoin the socialist vanguard and the cultural avant-garde in an international alliance was engraved in the border-crossing works of activist intellectuals who sought to link indigenous roots to vertiginous upheaval. Steven S. Lee truly understands the pathos and promise of this global experiment. -- Dale E. Peterson, Amherst College A dazzlingly original, ambitious book that challenges us to reconsider the relationship between politics and artistic experimentation during a complex, contradictory, and intriguing period in the history of the United States and the Soviet Union. Lee draws astute and surprising insights into literature, art, modernism, revolution, and the fraught, never-ending struggle to counter racism around the globe. -- Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Stanford University Lee's brilliant book not only redefines 'ethnic literature' but also fundamentally alters our sense of the political promises and aesthetic possibilities of 'the avant-garde.' It is essential reading for students and scholars of twentieth-century literature and culture. -- Jonathan Flatley, Wayne State University A highly engaging exploration. The Russian Review Provocative and wide-ranging. Slavic Review Ambitious, prodigiously researched, and often dazzling. MelusTable of ContentsList of IllustrationsA Note on TransliterationIntroduction1. Translating the Ethnic Avant-Garde2. The Avant-Garde's Asia: Factography and Roar China3. From Avant-Garde to Authentic: Revisiting Langston Hughes's "Moscow Movie"4. Cold War Pluralism: The New York Intellectuals Respond to Soviet Anti-SemitismAfterword: Chinese Communism, Cultural Revolution, and American MulticulturalismAcknowledgmentsNotesBibliographyCredits and PermissionsIndex

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Book SynopsisFrom Egyptian cyberpunk to dubbed versions of Shrek in Iran, this book examines the emergence of new forms of culture in circulation and their geopolitical implications.Trade ReviewAfter the American Century offers a fascinating tour of the appropriation and deployment of American popular culture in a globalized, restless Middle East. From cinema and novels to hip-hop and comic books, this wonderfully written and richly observed book presents novel and exciting readings of familiar cultural forms in new political environments. -- Marc Lynch, author of The Arab Uprising: The Unfinished Revolutions of the New Middle East After the American Century is a book of exquisite audacity. Bold in its detailed precision and daring in its imaginative topography of topics, Brian T. Edwards's writing cuts through much noise and nuisance to lay bare what lies ahead. Its arguments do not just dismantle the imperial fantasy of an 'American century,' but point to the uncharted worlds far beyond its captured imagination. -- Hamid Dabashi, Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature, Columbia University This book is a rich account of what happens when cultural objects, literary texts, and films circulate between the Middle East and the United States: how they are interpreted and reinvented, in the process engendering new publics and counterpublics. A nuanced analysis of cultural politics that extends our understanding of the forms and limits of Western domination of the Middle East. -- Saba Mahmood, author of Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject In After the American Century, Edwards has devised subtle, ethnographically informed reading methodologies to explain how anomalous logics of transnational circulation have radically undermined plans for a 'new American century.' The book will fast become indispensable to an understanding of the genealogy of transnational American studies. -- Donald E. Pease, Ted and Helen Geisel Third Century Professor in the Humanities and founding director of the Futures of American Studies Institute at Dartmouth College Edwards plunges into the cultural lives of Cairo, Casablanca, and Tehran to illustrate the demise of one aspect of "the American century": the outsize influence that U.S. popular culture exercised in the Middle East. -- John Waterbury Foreign Affairs Edwards' background and considerable expertise shine... making the book a worthwhile read for anyone interested in the region. Middle East Journal Now that American power is receding across the globe it is a good time to ask how... methodologies might adapt to these new circumstances, and what we might name such an academic adaptation. Brian T. Edwards' important new book... provides us with a possible answer to this arguably urgent question. Post45 Ambitious, wide-ranging, and highly valuable. European Journal of American Culture Edwards challenges traditional narratives of US cultural imperialism... Highly recommended. CHOICE Edwards is to be commended for his ethnographic methods, his command of local languages, and the originality of his archive. International Journal of Middle East Studies A genuinely important contribution to our understanding of how American literary studies circulates internationally in the twenty-first century. American Literature A welcome work, valuable for its rich readings of unfamiliar yet important Middle Eastern artists and for its stimulating arguments about the transnational circulation of American culture in our global, digital age. Journal of American HistoryTable of ContentsPreface 1. After the American Century: Ends of Circulation 2. Jumping Publics: Egyptian Fictions of the Digital Age 3. "Argo Fuck Yourself": Iranian Cinema and the Curious Logics of Circulation 4. Coming Out in Casablanca: Shrek, Sex, and the Teen Pic in Contemporary Morocco Epilogue: Embracing Orientalism in the Homeland Acknowledgments Notes Index

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Book SynopsisThe first major study of representations of Jewishness in Caribbean literature bridges the gap between postcolonial and Jewish studies and enriches cross-cultural investigations of Caribbean creolization.Trade ReviewA rich, consequential, powerful work that will make a difference in Jewish and postcolonial studies alike. -- Jonathan Freedman, author of Klezmer America: Jewishness, Ethnicity, Modernity An engaging and rather unusual study of diaspora Jewry in the West Indies... [that shines a] bright, exalting light... on the Caribbean and its many different peoples. -- Ian Thomson Times Literary Supplement Throughout Calypso Jews, Casteel makes a case for how hidden Sephardism has captured the imagination of culturally diverse authors post-slavery. The fullness and novelty of her research opens a fascinating dialogue on the intersections of black and Jewish relationships as revealed through Caribbean literature. -- Sharon Elswit Jewish Book Council A path-breaking study... By bringing a fresh approach to a much-neglected area of scholarship, Casteel has made a major contribution to our understanding of the Caribbean writer's commitment to bearing witness to the traumas of modernity. -- Patrick Taylor H-Caribbean Casteel's richly informative study...shows us that the peoples of the world do not merely trade and compete with, love and harm one another; they also watch each other in history, become compelled by one another's stories. ALH Online Review Series XTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction Part 1: 1492 1. Sephardism in Caribbean Literature: Derek Walcott's Pissarro 2. Marranism and Creolization: Myriam Chancy and Michelle Cliff 3. Port Jews in Slavery Fiction: Maryse Conde and David Dabydeen 4. Plantation Jews in Slavery Fiction: Cynthia McLeod's Jodensavanne Part 2: Holocausts 5. Calypso Jews: John Hearne and Jamaica Kincaid 6. Between Camps: M. NourbeSe Philip and Michele Maillet 7. Writing Under the Sign of Anne Frank: Michelle Cliff and Caryl Phillips Conclusion Notes Works Cited Index

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Book SynopsisLiterature, film, and television have become obsessed with the intersection of survival and choice. Jane Elliott analyzes this new and distinctive aesthetic phenomenon, which she calls the microeconomic mode, through close readings that show how an aesthetics of choice has reshaped contemporary understanding of what it means to be human.Trade ReviewThe Microeconomic Mode is a searing investigation of the dominant imagination of life stealthily unfolding across genres of contemporary literature and popular media. With great finesse and rigor, Jane Elliott details the new subjective protocols that aim to reconcile us to a world where life can only exist at the expense of other lives, offering us indispensable critical terms for understanding the perniciousness of this emergent mode of being human. A precise, illuminating, damning reading of our times. -- Neferti X. M. Tadiar, author of Things Fall Away: Philippine Historical Experience and the Makings of GlobalizationThis book offers a bold new paradigm that grasps what is so ungraspable about the contemporary moment. Novels in “the microeconomic mode” reduce experience to an operative model that requires individuals to perform cold-blooded cost-benefit analyses and choose between two equally horrific options. The pervasiveness of fiction that hews to this model provides the basis for Elliott’s groundbreaking claim—namely, that the intense suffering accompanying these decisions relocates the liberal individual within a zero sum game where we find ourselves calculating our life interest in relation to the cost of someone else’s life. -- Nancy Armstrong, Duke UniversityWhat if the stark “bare life” plots and post-apocalyptic narratives proliferating in contemporary U.S. fiction were less reflections of post-humanist thought than of microeconomics—representations in which worlds become reduced to models and individuals to cost/benefit decisions rendered inseparable from the issue of survival? In this provocative book, Jane Elliott brings her incisiveness and originality as a feminist theorist of the contemporary to shed light on why this at once radically abstract and visceral aesthetic and the image of “suffering agency” it implies has become so portable across political perspectives. The Microeconomic Mode is an outstanding work of literary and cultural theory. -- Sianne Ngai, University of ChicagoThe Microeconomic Mode identifies a distinct political and aesthetic formation that is currently playing out across a range of popular literary, cinematic, and televisual works in the late-twentieth and early-twenty-first century Anglophone West. It traces the emergence of that formation from its origins in eighteenth-century liberal political theory to the contemporary neoliberal context, and describes its many iterations. Elliott's analysis of this terrifying aesthetic mode promises nothing less than a new understanding of our political present. -- Timothy Bewes, Brown UniversityPolitical philosophers and cultural theorists with Continental leanings will find Elliott's book eye-opening. Its scholarship is impeccable. * Choice *What makes The Microeconomic Mode truly impressive is its explanatory power. After reading the book, I saw its framework everywhere. . . . Sophisticated and timely. * Clio: A Journal of Literature, History, and the Philosophy of History *An exciting and much-needed corrective account of contemporary political personhood. * Novel: A Forum on Fiction *Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroductionPart I. Political Subjectivity1. Live Models2. Life-InterestPart II. Sovereignty3. Survival Games4. Sovereign CapturePart III. Thriving5. Partial Fictions6. Binary LifeNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisMediamorphosis compiles articles by some of today’s leading forces in the scholarship of Kafka as well as film studies to provide a thorough investigation of the reciprocal relations between Kafka’s work and the cinematic medium.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Notes on Contributors Introduction, by Ido Lewit and Shai Biderman Part I. The Cinematic Kafka Kafka, Rumour, Early Cinema: Archaic Moving Pictures, by Paul North Sebald Goes to the Movies: Reading Kafka as Cinematography, by Nimrod Matan The Ghost Is Clear: The POV of the Daydreamer, by Laurence A. Rickels Moving Pictures-Visual Pleasures: Kafka's Cinematic Writing, by Peter Beicken To Move as the Image Moves: The Rule of Rhythmic Presence and Absence in Kafka's The Man Who Disappeared, by Tobias Kuehne Noises Off: Cinematic Sound in Kafka's 'The Burrow', by Kata Gellen Gesture, Wardrobe, Backdrop and Prop in Franz Kafka's The Man Who Disappeared and Peter Weir's The Truman Show, by Idit Alphandary The Possibility of the Cinematic in 'The Metamorphosis' and 'The Burrow', by Kevin W. Sweeney Part II. The Kafkaesque Cinema 'The Essential Is Sufficient': The Kafka Adaptations of Orson Welles, Straub-Huillet and Michael Haneke, by Martin Brady and Helen Hughes K., the Tramp, and the Cinematic Vision: The Kafkaesque Chaplin, by Shai Biderman 'The Medium Is the Message': Cronenberg 'Outkafkas' Kafka, by Iris Bruce The Absurdity of Human Existence: 'The Metamorphosis' and The Fly, by William J. Devlin and Angel M. Cooper 'This Is Not Nothing': Viewing the Coen Brothers Through the Lens of Kafka, by Ido Lewit The Face: K. and Keaton, by Omri Ben-Yehuda Translating Kafka into Italian: Kafkaesque Themes in Eilo Petri's Films, by Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns and Leonardo Acosta Lando Epilogue: A Personal Quest Into the Cinematic Kafkaesque Magic, Mystery and Miracle: Re-spiralling Marker and Kafka, by Dan Geva Transcribing Kafka Into Film: A Tortuous Love-Story, by Henry Sussman Index

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Book SynopsisIn original readings of all of Wallace’s fiction, from The Broom of the System and Infinite Jest to his story collections and The Pale King, Severs reveals Wallace to be a thoroughly political writer whose works provide an often surreal history of financial crises and economic policies.Trade ReviewSince its inception, David Foster Wallace studies has focused on a relatively small set of themes-irony, sincerity, addiction, and the mass media-often centered on Wallace's own descriptions of his literary project in interviews and essays. Severs's insightful new study builds on and challenges this critical orthodoxy, revealing how Wallace was a careful economic, political, and historical thinker. Wallace's writing, as Severs shows in a series of original and bracing chapters that cover the author's whole career, engaged provocatively with the New Deal, the social-welfare state, the monetary system, and the history of neoliberalism. Severs uncovers a new domain of questions that will dominate debates about Wallace's legacy and the meaning of his important art for decades to come. -- Lee Konstantinou, author of Cool Characters: Irony and American Fiction From this study, David Foster Wallace emerges as a 'rebellious economic thinker,' as well as a literary innovator and cultural critic. Severs has mastered Wallace's fiction and examines it through neoliberal policies to show seams of value-moral and economic-running throughout. Attentive to history and language, Severs demonstrates how Wallace represents work as a form of grace, weight as a means of uplift, and balance as an elusive aim. -- Heather Houser, author of Ecosickness in Contemporary U.S. Fiction: Environment and Affect Jeffrey Severs has an archivist's nose for the 'good stuff' from David Foster Wallace's papers at the Ransom Center; he has an eagle eye for motifs that circulate from one Wallace book to another; and he is uncannily skillful in making apposite connections between Wallace and his precursors, contemporaries, and successors. Only someone as widely and deeply read in late-twentieth and early-twenty-first century literature as Severs could have pulled this off. -- Brian McHale, Distinguished Arts and Humanities Professor, Ohio State UniversityTable of ContentsNote on the Texts Acknowledgments Introduction: A Living Transaction: Value, Ground, and Balancing Books 1. Come to Work: Capitalist Fantasies and the Quest for Balance in The Broom of the System 2. New Deals: (The) Depression and Devaluation in the Early Stories 3. Dei Gratia: Work Ethic, Grace, and Giving in Infinite Jest 4. Other Math: Human Costs, Fractional Selves, and Neoliberal Crisis in Brief Interviews with Hideous Men 5. His Capital Flush: Despairing Over Work and Value in Oblivion 6. E Pluribus Unum: Ritual, Currency, and the Embodied Values of The Pale King Conclusion: In Line for the Cash Register with Wallace Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisGloria Fisk traces the terms of Orhan Pamuk's engagement with a literary market dominated by the tastes of its Anglophone publics and the instrumental use of literature as a source of crosscultural understanding. She proposes a new way to think about the uneven processes of translation that carry contemporary literature to its readers.Trade ReviewGloria Fisk has written an important and challenging book. Using the work and career of Orhan Pamuk, she has set out to understand the complex and not always benign forces that go into the making of a worldwide literary superstar. Not for or against Pamuk, this book is with him in his attempt to enter the gates of the Western canon without at the same time losing his soul. -- Keith Gessen, cofounding editor of n + 1Taking Orhan Pamuk as her central case study, Gloria Fisk probes the uses and abuses of world authors in American literary studies, as foreign writers become enlisted for domestic agendas. Her nuanced account will provoke self-reflection and debate among postcolonialists, comparatists, and world literary scholars alike. -- David Damrosch, Harvard UniversityOrhan Pamuk and the Good of World Literature unrelentingly probes what it means to think of the literary as a vehicle of political good, to assume that reading a novel about far-off places promotes empathy, and to valorize select writers as translators of alien worlds, even as their works circulate only in English in the West. Showing what it means to read a writer like Orhan Pamuk as a bridge between East and West, Fisk highlights the risks of transporting a U.S. multicultural logic to the globe, insisting that the Anglo-American academy is complicit in the very hegemony it seeks to critique. -- Yogita Goyal, University of California, Los AngelesIn this forcefully argued book, Gloria Fisk defends Orhan Pamuk—and other writers of world literature—from nationalists who brand them as traitors and academics who cling to reading in the original. It is a book that tackles the question of literature in our time. -- Martin Puchner, Harvard UniversityA provocative and necessary contribution to the field of contemporary world literature. -- Audrey J. Golden * College Literature *One of Fisk’s ancillary achievements lies in modeling a single-author monograph that is expansive rather than parochial, progressive and not fuddy-duddy ... If, by the end of Orhan Pamuk and the Good of World Literature, literature’s good has not been rebuilt exactly, Fisk does suggest the path towards a more modest literary criticism—a future that looks bright so long as we have scholars amongst us like Fisk who write with not only intellectual honesty but moral clarity. -- Jesse Bordwin * Studies in the Novel *Moving deftly from text to context, from the literary to the extra-literary, from the internal dynamics of the work of art to the institutions the work inhabits, Fisk displays a rare methodological versatility and performs these analyses with a sophistication that is rarer still. The strength of Fisk’s argument rests on her reorientation of the debate over world literature, reading it as a product of its institutional location, rather than the terms it sets for itself. -- Janice Ho * Novel: A Forum on Fiction *Across this work Gloria Fisk examines the Orhan Pamuk case and delivers a compelling account of the state of non-Western authors and the good they are expected to do in the world with their literature.... Her stance provides her a sensitive lens through which to observe the abundant and complicated social and political aspects interwoven in Turkey’s fabric. -- Busra Copuroglu * C21 Literature: Journal of 21st-Century Writings *Gloria Fisk’s Orhan Pamuk and the Good of World Literature is a timely book, not only because it contributes to the continuing debate on world literature that has occupied literary academic circles since the 1990s but also because it sets out to uncover the immense impact of neoliberalism on academia in the United States. -- Meltem Gürle * Twentieth-Century Literature *Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Slippery Words: Orhan Pamuk, Good, and World Literature1. A Novel Can Teach You About Other People 2. A Novel Can Teach You About Other People’s History3. Orhan Pamuk as Political Gadfly: “The Armenian Issue”4. Orhan Pamuk as Exile: Pamuk and Auerbach in Istanbul5. Orhan Pamuk Wins the Nobel Prize: The Cases of Orhan Pamuk and Mo Yan6. World Literature as an Artifact of the University in the United States: The Part About the CriticsCoda: Now, What?NotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisMinou Arjomand draws on a rich archive of postwar German and American performances to reveal theater as a place for forms of judgment that are inadmissible in a courtroom but indispensable for public life. Staged weaves together theater history and political philosophy into a powerful case for the importance of theaters as democratic institutions.Trade ReviewThis is a brilliant work that gives us both a social history and critical theory of postwar theatre. One thinks about the show trial as a terrible miscarriage of justice, but Arjomand gives trial theatre another function: public deliberation and judgment on responsibility and political justice. Whereas much attention has been given to the theatricality of legal trials, Arjomand asks us to value the public function of theatre in enacting debates on justice and establishing a public practice of considered judgment. The history of postwar German theatre offered here engaged in critical theory and aesthetics in a new and engaging argument about aesthetics and politics and the public functions of art in a democracy. -- Judith Butler, Maxine Elliot Professor of Comparative Literature, University of California, BerkeleyTheatricality is pervasive in courtroom scenes. So is the question about the relationship between ethical judgment and the law. Political theater has always exploited this conjunction. The show trial exemplifies the ambivalence between law and theatricality, while the trial play offers a counterpoint. This is the constellation Minou Arjomand brilliantly explores, focusing on productions of trial plays, films, and TV courtroom series from Brecht and Piscator to Anna Deavere Smith, with Hannah Arendt’s political philosophy as a touchstone of the argument. A major intervention into the aesthetics of political theater. -- Andreas Huyssen, Columbia UniversityIn crystal-clear prose, Staged examines the unique relation between political thought and theater in German and German-American theater from the 1920s to the 1970s, one born from the historical experience of Nazism, the Holocaust, and their aftermath. I was struck by how much we can learn from this painful period of German and German-American theater and political thought. The book is very timely indeed. -- Martin Puchner, Byron and Anita Wien Professor of Drama and of English and Comparative Literature, Harvard UniversityA thoughtful and intelligent book on the ways in which political theater, or more precisely courtroom dramas, create a space in which aesthetic, ethical, and political judgments bleed into one another. -- G. Grieve-Carlson, Lebanon Valley College * Choice *Staged marks an exciting moment for scholarship at the intersection of law and theater... emerge[ing] from the long-established insight that law and performance are mutually constitutive. -- Rebecca Kastleman, University of Virginia * The English Association *For its ambitious articulation of fundamental questions of aesthetics and politics, and for the study’s under-appreciated subjects, Staged should be read not just by those interested in post-war Germany but by anyone interested in how theatre can benefit judgement and justice. -- Matt Cornish, Ohio University * Modern Drama *An exciting moment for scholarship at the intersection of law and theater...Arjomand’s analysis offers a powerful defense of theater as a public institution. * The Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory *An important contribution to scholarship on political theater...[and] a strong argument for the continued political relevance of theater. -- Michael Swellander, University of Iowa * The Germanic Review *This book is full of small anecdotes...that add humanizing touches to its subject of study, giving readers a glimpse of the real personal and political stakes that these theatre artists encountered...highly accessible. -- Evleen Nasir, Louisiana State University * Theatre History Studies *A highly original book that confidently speaks to different audiences. * Contemporary Political Theory *Table of ContentsList of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Show Trials and Political Theater1. Hannah Arendt: Judging in Dark Times2. Bertolt Brecht: Poetic Justice3. Erwin Piscator: Theater After Auschwitz4. Trials in NurembergConclusion: Archives, Law, and Theater TodayNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisNovel Sounds shows how Southern writers turned to rock music and its technologies—tape, radio, vinyl—to develop the “rock novel.” Florence Dore considers the work of writers like William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, and William Styron alongside Bessie Smith, Lead Belly, and Bob Dylan to uncover deep historical links between rock and literature.Trade ReviewThis is an original and subtle book, with punk-rock ricochets. -- Greil MarcusEvery chapter of Novel Sounds works at a high and steady pitch of intelligence and cogency. Florence Dore's work teems with rich archival unearthings and interpretive ingenuity. Dore’s intricate connections, juxtapositions, and analyses of multimedia interanimation are never less than absorbing and are often eye-opening both at the level of textual forms and in the larger terms of cultural understanding in which they were embedded. -- Eric Lott, author of Black Mirror: The Cultural Contradictions of American RacismIn Florence Dore's electrifying, genre-busting tour de force, the mid-twentieth-century inventors of literary formalism, tracing poetic tradition to the ballad form, inadvertently open literature's floodgates to encompass the bold 'novel sounds' of rock 'n' roll. Southern fiction, no less than American culture, would never be the same. -- Jennifer Fleissner, Indiana University-BloomingtonNovel Sounds is a brilliantly literary account of rock and roll and American culture. From Lead Belly at the MLA to Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize, Dore demonstrates how profoundly and unexpectedly entwined our literary histories are with their sonic media. She ensures we’ll never listen to a ballad or read a novel from the era in the same way again. -- Kate Marshall, University of Notre DameIn Novel Sounds, Dore is interested in how a mass cultural phenomenon like rock 'n' roll can help illuminate realities about institutionalized high culture. Beginning with the case of Lead Belly, she traces the low and high cultural currents that the folk singer helped set in motion, specifically the mass popularization of Southern black music as 'rock 'n' roll' and the intellectual enthusiasm for folk ballads. -- Max McKenna * PopMatters *A stimulating addition to the literature on southern American fiction. * Choice *A pleasing option for readers who enjoy celebrated music writers like [Greil] Marcus or Peter Guralnick. * Chapter 16 *Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction. Minstrel Realism at the Birth of Rock1. Fugitives and Futility: Agrarian Ballad Novels in Bob Dylan’s Moment2. New Critical Noise in Music City: Thomas Pynchon’s William Faulkner3. The Ballad’s Gender: Femininity and Information in Georgia4. The Lead Belly Thing: William Styron’s RecordsCoda. Nobel Sounds: Bob Dylan’s Novel PrizeNotesBibliographyDiscographyFilmographyIndex

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Book SynopsisViral Modernism reveals the literary and cultural impact of one of the deadliest plagues in history, the influenza pandemic of 1918–1919, bringing to light how it shaped canonical works of fiction and poetry. Elizabeth Outka shows how and why the contours of modernism shift when we account for the pandemic’s hidden but widespread presence.Trade ReviewIn her timely, revelatory book, Viral Modernism, Elizabeth Outka argues that the wide-ranging, frightening effects of the pandemic described in these vivid letters to Eliot’s mother also shaped The Waste Land in ways that have been neglected. -- Mena Mitrano * Time Present *Highly recommended. * Choice *Viral Modernism is an infectious study that will warrant many returns. -- Sean Weidman * English Studies *[An] absorbing, scrupulously historicized account of modernist literature in the context of the 1918–19 influenza pandemic. -- David James, University of Birmingham * Novel: A Forum on Fiction *Viral Modernism might have been published just before the spread of COVID-19, but the viral atmosphere that Outka so skillfully examines captures, too, the present state of a world arrested by contagion. Thus, the book not only challenges what we talk about when we talk about modernism but also, perhaps most importantly, clues readers into how literary culture makes legible the logics and legacies of global catastrophic events, reminding us that even an outbreak on the scale of COVID-19 “can be hidden,” as Outka warns, “unless we learn to read for its presence." -- James Fitz Gerald * Modern Fiction Studies *Elizabeth Outka answers a question that has hardly been asked, let alone answered: where is the flu in modernism? It is one of those books whose importance is written into its DNA. Adjusting our eyes so that we can see the shadowy presence of the pandemic, Outka gives us a new vision of modernism, vulnerable and embodied. Steeped in a rich and riveting archive, Viral Modernism offers transformative insights into the motivation and meaning of modernist texts, attuning us to the troubling ways illness can disappear from our cultural memory. -- Sarah Cole, author of Inventing Tomorrow: H. G. Wells and the Twentieth CenturyHow and why, asks Elizabeth Outka, have we missed “the viral tragedy within iconic modernist texts”? And what do we learn when we listen for it? Viral Modernism resuscitates the buried stories of the 1918–1919 influenza pandemic in relation to modernist literary form. The voices that surface through the exquisite readings of this well-researched, well-argued study offer insight not only into the tragic experience of this devastating disease but also into how those affected use literary and cultural forms to make sense of that experience, hence into the nature of storytelling itself. -- Priscilla Wald, author of Contagious: Cultures, Carriers, and the Outbreak NarrativeViral Modernism is an elegantly written, penetrating study of how the influenza pandemic of 1918–1919 shaped modernist literature and society, most notably in Clarissa’s illnesses in Mrs. Dalloway; the burning thirst and drowning in The Waste Land; and the influence of Yeats’s stricken, pregnant wife as he wrote “The Second Coming.” -- Stephen Kern, author of The Culture of Time and Space, 1880-1918Viral Modernism navigates deftly between history and literature and presents transformative readings of some of the most canonical high modernist works. Along the way, Elizabeth Outka offers a moving and harrowing account of the challenges the influenza pandemic posed to those who lived through it. Readers will talk about this book with friends and family, and the field will never be able to ignore the pandemic again. An extraordinary achievement. -- Celia Marshik, author of At the Mercy of Their Clothes: Modernism, the Middlebrow, and British Garment CultureExpertly-crafted and well-researched. Outka asks important questions informed by serious scholarship that would be helpful even without the context of recent global events; with them, Viral Modernism becomes essential reading. * Recherche Littéraire Literary Research *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments1. Introducing the PandemicPart I. Pandemic Realism: Making an Atmosphere Visible2. Untangling War and Plague: Willa Cather and Katherine Anne Porter3. Domestic Pandemic: Thomas Wolfe and William MaxwellPart II. Pandemic Modernism4. On Seeing Illness: Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway5. A Wasteland of Influenza: T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land6. Apocalyptic Pandemic: W. B. Yeats’s “The Second Coming”Part III. Pandemic Cultures7. Spiritualism, Zombies, and the Return of the DeadCoda: The Structure of Illness, the Shape of LossNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisViral Modernism reveals the literary and cultural impact of one of the deadliest plagues in history, the influenza pandemic of 19181919, bringing to light how it shaped canonical works of fiction and poetry. Elizabeth Outka shows how and why the contours of modernism shift when we account for the pandemic's hidden but widespread presence.Trade ReviewIn her timely, revelatory book, Viral Modernism, Elizabeth Outka argues that the wide-ranging, frightening effects of the pandemic described in these vivid letters to Eliot’s mother also shaped The Waste Land in ways that have been neglected. -- Mena Mitrano * Time Present *Highly recommended. * Choice *Viral Modernism is an infectious study that will warrant many returns. -- Sean Weidman * English Studies *[An] absorbing, scrupulously historicized account of modernist literature in the context of the 1918–19 influenza pandemic. -- David James, University of Birmingham * Novel: A Forum on Fiction *Viral Modernism might have been published just before the spread of COVID-19, but the viral atmosphere that Outka so skillfully examines captures, too, the present state of a world arrested by contagion. Thus, the book not only challenges what we talk about when we talk about modernism but also, perhaps most importantly, clues readers into how literary culture makes legible the logics and legacies of global catastrophic events, reminding us that even an outbreak on the scale of COVID-19 “can be hidden,” as Outka warns, “unless we learn to read for its presence." -- James Fitz Gerald * Modern Fiction Studies *Elizabeth Outka answers a question that has hardly been asked, let alone answered: where is the flu in modernism? It is one of those books whose importance is written into its DNA. Adjusting our eyes so that we can see the shadowy presence of the pandemic, Outka gives us a new vision of modernism, vulnerable and embodied. Steeped in a rich and riveting archive, Viral Modernism offers transformative insights into the motivation and meaning of modernist texts, attuning us to the troubling ways illness can disappear from our cultural memory. -- Sarah Cole, author of Inventing Tomorrow: H. G. Wells and the Twentieth CenturyHow and why, asks Elizabeth Outka, have we missed “the viral tragedy within iconic modernist texts”? And what do we learn when we listen for it? Viral Modernism resuscitates the buried stories of the 1918–1919 influenza pandemic in relation to modernist literary form. The voices that surface through the exquisite readings of this well-researched, well-argued study offer insight not only into the tragic experience of this devastating disease but also into how those affected use literary and cultural forms to make sense of that experience, hence into the nature of storytelling itself. -- Priscilla Wald, author of Contagious: Cultures, Carriers, and the Outbreak NarrativeViral Modernism is an elegantly written, penetrating study of how the influenza pandemic of 1918–1919 shaped modernist literature and society, most notably in Clarissa’s illnesses in Mrs. Dalloway; the burning thirst and drowning in The Waste Land; and the influence of Yeats’s stricken, pregnant wife as he wrote “The Second Coming.” -- Stephen Kern, author of The Culture of Time and Space, 1880-1918Viral Modernism navigates deftly between history and literature and presents transformative readings of some of the most canonical high modernist works. Along the way, Elizabeth Outka offers a moving and harrowing account of the challenges the influenza pandemic posed to those who lived through it. Readers will talk about this book with friends and family, and the field will never be able to ignore the pandemic again. An extraordinary achievement. -- Celia Marshik, author of At the Mercy of Their Clothes: Modernism, the Middlebrow, and British Garment CultureExpertly-crafted and well-researched. Outka asks important questions informed by serious scholarship that would be helpful even without the context of recent global events; with them, Viral Modernism becomes essential reading. * Recherche Littéraire Literary Research *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments1. Introducing the PandemicPart I. Pandemic Realism: Making an Atmosphere Visible2. Untangling War and Plague: Willa Cather and Katherine Anne Porter3. Domestic Pandemic: Thomas Wolfe and William MaxwellPart II. Pandemic Modernism4. On Seeing Illness: Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway5. A Wasteland of Influenza: T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land6. Apocalyptic Pandemic: W. B. Yeats’s “The Second Coming”Part III. Pandemic Cultures7. Spiritualism, Zombies, and the Return of the DeadCoda: The Structure of Illness, the Shape of LossNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisHannah Roche reinterprets three major modern lesbian writers, showing how literary and affective romance played a crucial yet overlooked role in the works of Gertrude Stein, Radclyffe Hall, and Djuna Barnes. The Outside Thing is a significant rethinking of the interconnections between queer writing, lesbian living, and literary modernism.Trade ReviewThis theoretically sophisticated reading of three lesbian writers—Stein, Hall, and Barnes—is at once playful and serious. Roche’s insistence on the queerness of desire, romance, and love between women takes feminist modernist studies in an exciting new direction. -- Laura Doan, author of Disturbing Practices: History, Sexuality, and Women's Experience of Modern WarIn its lively endorsement of lesbian modernism, The Outside Thing extols the possibilities and pleasures three canonical writers find as they playfully occupy, exploit, and expand conventions of romance and marriage in their intimate lives and iconic writing. Affectionately championing Stein, Hall, and Barnes as liberating the romance plot from its heteronormative constraints, Hannah Roche also aims to rescue these writers from timeworn scholarly assumptions that have held them hostage. -- Jodie Medd, author of Lesbian Scandal and the Culture of ModernismHannah Roche’s The Outside Thing is a valuable contribution to current debates about modernism, sexuality, and women’s writing. Roche’s provocation—that the term lesbian is a critically and theoretically necessary one—is borne out convincingly in her lively and thorough readings of romance in the lives, writing, and writing-lives of Gertrude Stein, Radclyffe Hall, and Djuna Barnes. This is a book that subsequent scholars will learn from. -- Alex Goody, Oxford Brookes UniversityEmploying extensive archival research and a groundbreaking theoretical approach, Roche cogently argues that modernists such as Stein, Radclyffe, and Barnes crafted heterosexual narratives (romances) that develop lesbian themes. Highly recommended. * Choice *Hannah Roche’s study of three major lesbian writers of the Modernist period—Gertrude Stein, Radclyffe Hall and Djuna Barnes—presents a finely framed discussion of how these writers both embodied the innovations of modernist literary practice while integrating the narrative frames of Victorian romance novels into their texts. . . Roche’s book offers a compelling examination of these writers and is well worth study. * Review of English Studies *It seems an apt time to be considering the ways the pre-sexological narrative forms of depicting intimacy between women filter into the modern moment. Roche provides us with a resource for doing just that. * Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature *Table of ContentsList of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Locating the Lesbian Writer, or “We Inside Us Do Not Change”Part I: Gertrude Stein1. “The Outside Thing” and Things As They Are: Gertrude Stein’s Lesbian Romance2. “No There There”: Inside the Marriage PlotPart II: Radclyffe Hall3. Strange Soil and Novel Ground: Radclyffe Hall’s Romance Plots4. Romantic Emblems and “The Real Thing”: Writing the Souline AffairPart III: Djuna Barnes5. From Lesbian Reading to Bisexual Writing: Switching Tracks with Djuna Barnes6. The Trapeze Effect: Djuna Barnes’s Bisexual RomanceCoda: A Happy Ending?NotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisLaura T. Murphy argues that the slave narrative has reemerged as a twenty-first-century genre that has gained new currency in the context of the memoir boom, post-9/11 anti-Islamic sentiment, and conservative family-values politics. The New Slave Narrative reveals an emergent survivor-centered counterdiscourse of collaboration and systemic change.Trade ReviewIn The New Slave Narrative, Laura T. Murphy, a literary scholar and antislavery activist, provides a timely and rigorous examination of the current narratives of contemporary slavery. Through meticulous readings of these recent volumes, Murphy reveals the profound influence of nineteenth-century slave narratives on these stories, examining how antebellum conventions impact the representations of those who have been recently enslaved. Brilliantly unraveling the political and social milieu in which twenty-first-century slave narratives are produced and published, Murphy makes a convincing argument for a “collegial literary critical approach” in order to “deepen our understanding of slavery and freedom.” The New Slave Narrative is a critically important consideration of human rights discourse. -- Henry Louis Gates Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor at Harvard UniversityThe New Slave Narrative is an important, foundational text—a book that unstops our ears and opens our minds. -- Kevin Bales, author of Blood and Earth: Modern Slavery, Ecocide, and the Secret to Saving the WorldThe New Slave Narrative highlights the centrality of first-person testimony to twenty-first-century efforts to abolish global slavery. By centering autobiographical accounts written by survivors of slavery, Laura T. Murphy attends to how testimonial appeals to distant audiences can reshape human rights discourse and reinvigorate antislavery activism, even as they cannot evade old forms of cooptation. Murphy deftly returns the leadership of antislavery agendas to those who have survived it. -- Leigh Gilmore, author of Tainted Witness: Why We Doubt What Women Say About Their LivesLaura T. Murphy's The New Slave Narrative will become the foundational text for a wave of scholars working to understand what these stories mean—for society, for scholarship, and for survivors themselves. -- Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick, author of What Slaveholders Think: How Contemporary Perpetrators Rationalize What They DoTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsA Note on LanguagePrefaceIntroduction: The Reemergence of the Slave Narrative in the Twenty-First Century1. Making Slavery Legible2. The Not-Yet-Freedom Narrative3. Blackface Abolition4. Sex Problems and Antislavery’s Cognitive Dissonance5. What the Genre Creates, It Destroys: The Rise and Fall of Somaly MamConclusion: Collegial ReadingAppendix: List of New Slave NarrativesNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisIn this reconsideration of Freedom (2010), L. Gibson explores the difficulty of coming to terms with Jonathan Franzen. Wide-ranging and stylistically ambitious, Freedom Reread delivers an assured, artful inquiry into Franzen’s novelistic technique and public persona.Trade ReviewWhat can reading Franzen tell us about fiction and what we want from it, and don't, and how that changes? Gibson pushes past both eyerolling dismissals of Franzen and the uncritical accolades of Oprah and Time magazine and takes the novels seriously as complex, if flawed, works of fiction that inspire and reward immersive and close reading. -- Briallen Hopper, author of Hard to Love: Essays and ConfessionsFranzen fanatics of the world, rejoice! L. Gibson gifts us not only an excellent study of Franzen’s Freedom—but also a brilliantly ambivalent autofictional self-portrait that teaches us what it feels like to be trapped inside the event horizon of the literary singularity known as Jonathan Franzen. -- Lee Konstantinou, author of The Last Samurai RereadA passionate, scholarly attempt to sort out one of American literature’s most divisive figures. * Kirkus Reviews *Table of Contents1. Coming Down on Franzen2. “Ah, but Underneath”3. Agnostic Omniscience4. “Everyone’s a Moralist”5. Exiled in Guyville6. The More He Fought About It, the Angrier He Got7. Coming Down on Franzen (2)AcknowledgmentsNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisIn this reconsideration of Freedom (2010), L. Gibson explores the difficulty of coming to terms with Jonathan Franzen. Wide-ranging and stylistically ambitious, Freedom Reread delivers an assured, artful inquiry into Franzen's novelistic technique and public persona.Trade ReviewWhat can reading Franzen tell us about fiction and what we want from it, and don't, and how that changes? Gibson pushes past both eyerolling dismissals of Franzen and the uncritical accolades of Oprah and Time magazine and takes the novels seriously as complex, if flawed, works of fiction that inspire and reward immersive and close reading. -- Briallen Hopper, author of Hard to Love: Essays and ConfessionsFranzen fanatics of the world, rejoice! L. Gibson gifts us not only an excellent study of Franzen’s Freedom—but also a brilliantly ambivalent autofictional self-portrait that teaches us what it feels like to be trapped inside the event horizon of the literary singularity known as Jonathan Franzen. -- Lee Konstantinou, author of The Last Samurai RereadA passionate, scholarly attempt to sort out one of American literature’s most divisive figures. * Kirkus Reviews *Table of Contents1. Coming Down on Franzen2. “Ah, but Underneath”3. Agnostic Omniscience4. “Everyone’s a Moralist”5. Exiled in Guyville6. The More He Fought About It, the Angrier He Got7. Coming Down on Franzen (2)AcknowledgmentsNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisJacob Edmond examines the turn toward repetition in poetry, using the explosion of copying to offer a deeply inventive account of modern and contemporary literature. Make It the Same explores how poetry is increasingly made from other texts through sampling, appropriation, and other forms of repetition.Trade ReviewMake It the Same rebuts the notion that formal word-games are a decadent first-world hobby. It is an empirically broad, thoughtfully constructed, well-written, timely book about an important subject: a technical "mode of production" prominent in contemporary poetry, with its effects on content and reception. -- Haun Saussy, author of The Ethnography of Rhythm: Orality and Its TechnologiesMake It the Same offers a global perspective on cultural iteration, triangulating English-language poetry with Russian and Chinese practices. Edmond immediately underscores the unintended irony with which those in the United States speak of "the poetry world" to mean precisely the opposite of the global: a micro, naval-gazing echo chamber. Given how parochial literary communities around a genre can be, this is an especially important contribution to literary studies. -- Craig Dworkin, author of No MediumWith its revisionist echoes of Pound’s ‘make it new,’ Make It the Same is theoretically generative for thinking about modernist, contemporary, and world literature. Edmond powerfully demonstrates how the new media of repetition have generated a poetics of the same, a ‘copy poetry’ that remixes prior poetries in global trajectories outside Eurocentric, center/periphery literary studies. A path-breaking book for post-1950s literature! -- Susan Stanford Friedman, University of Wisconsin-MadisonA radical contribution to poetry studies. . . . Make It the Same should be celebrated not only for what the book does well—its subtle analyses of poems, its detailed knowledge of technology, its easy movement between English, Chinese, and Russian—but also for what it makes possible for scholars of poetry to do next. -- Walt Hunter * Los Angeles Review of Books *The flexibility of [Edmond’s] approach, his uncanny ability to extend the meanings of writing and reading, and his willingness to participate in the numerous digital frontier forms that poets in recent decades have sought to explore bear rich fruit. . . . Only a supremely creative and passionate scholarly approach could have yielded such a timely vision. -- Martin Dyar * Times Higher Education *Make It the Same is lucidly written and meticulously researched....[and] establishes the terms for a vital reappraisal of cultural production in our present age. As such, it will be of close interest to scholars of contemporary literature and cultural studies, comparative and world literature, media studies, and the cultural history of information. * Modernism/Modernity *A breakthrough work of analysis, drawing from a range of critical fields to substantiate its case for the copy as a dominant global cultural form. It is a measure of Edmond’s contribution that Make It the Same will be required reading across the fields of modernist studies, contemporary historical poetics, and world literature, and a salient model for future transnational literary studies. * Review of English Studies *An important, fascinating and timely discussion of poetry of the iterative turn. * Landfall *A fascinating look at what poetry is becoming in the 21st century: it is subversive and regenerating like the tendrils of an octopus, always alive and seeking more ideas. * Choice *Make It the Same shows the author’s globe-spanning grasp of emergent and established poetries, understanding of a combination of theoretical persuasions, and persuasive deployment of a range of interpretive methods. * Cha *Edmond’s Make It the Same offers a significant rewriting of world literature in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, raising a series of important questions about language, form, circulation, and comparativity that will no doubt prove enabling for future scholarship. -- Sarah Dowling * Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory *Edmond’s engaging and exciting book merits a wide readership by scholarsand students across literary and cultural studies. Innovative, thoroughly researched,and well-argued, this book is a remarkable study. * Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews *Students and scholars of literary conceptualism, experimental translation, cross-cultural collaboration, multilingualism, performance writing, visual poetry, artistic plagiarism, and digital poetics among other nonnormative modes of poiesis are bound to benefit from Edmond’s rich contextualizations and his method of what we might call “comparative iterature.” * Contemporary Literature *Edmond makes a compelling case for the contemporary avant-garde as a counterweight to more mainstream codex-based poetics that often privilege notions of original authorship. * Journal of Modern Periodical Studies *A new moment in poetry criticism, one in which studies of form refigure the archive, undoing longstanding divisions between experimentation and expression. * American Literary History *Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: The Copy as Global Master Trope1. Postcolonial Media: Kamau Brathwaite’s Reel Revolution2. The Art of Samizdat: Dmitri Prigov, Moscow Conceptualism, and the Carbon-Copy Origins of New Media Poetics3. Making Waves in World Literature: Yang Lian and John Cayley’s Networked Collaboration4. Shibboleth: The Border Crossings of Caroline Bergvall, Performance Writing, and Iterative Poetics5. Copy Rights: Conceptual Writing, the Mongrel Coalition, and the Racial Politics of Digital Media6. Chinese Rooms: The Work of Poetry in an Age of Global Languages, Machine Translation, and Automatic EstrangementRecapitulations: Repetition and Revolution in World PoetryNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisJacob Edmond examines the turn toward repetition in poetry, using the explosion of copying to offer a deeply inventive account of modern and contemporary literature. Make It the Same explores how poetry is increasingly made from other texts through sampling, appropriation, and other forms of repetition.Trade ReviewMake It the Same rebuts the notion that formal word-games are a decadent first-world hobby. It is an empirically broad, thoughtfully constructed, well-written, timely book about an important subject: a technical "mode of production" prominent in contemporary poetry, with its effects on content and reception. -- Haun Saussy, author of The Ethnography of Rhythm: Orality and Its TechnologiesMake It the Same offers a global perspective on cultural iteration, triangulating English-language poetry with Russian and Chinese practices. Edmond immediately underscores the unintended irony with which those in the United States speak of "the poetry world" to mean precisely the opposite of the global: a micro, naval-gazing echo chamber. Given how parochial literary communities around a genre can be, this is an especially important contribution to literary studies. -- Craig Dworkin, author of No MediumWith its revisionist echoes of Pound’s ‘make it new,’ Make It the Same is theoretically generative for thinking about modernist, contemporary, and world literature. Edmond powerfully demonstrates how the new media of repetition have generated a poetics of the same, a ‘copy poetry’ that remixes prior poetries in global trajectories outside Eurocentric, center/periphery literary studies. A path-breaking book for post-1950s literature! -- Susan Stanford Friedman, University of Wisconsin-MadisonA radical contribution to poetry studies. . . . Make It the Same should be celebrated not only for what the book does well—its subtle analyses of poems, its detailed knowledge of technology, its easy movement between English, Chinese, and Russian—but also for what it makes possible for scholars of poetry to do next. -- Walt Hunter * Los Angeles Review of Books *The flexibility of [Edmond’s] approach, his uncanny ability to extend the meanings of writing and reading, and his willingness to participate in the numerous digital frontier forms that poets in recent decades have sought to explore bear rich fruit. . . . Only a supremely creative and passionate scholarly approach could have yielded such a timely vision. -- Martin Dyar * Times Higher Education *Make It the Same is lucidly written and meticulously researched....[and] establishes the terms for a vital reappraisal of cultural production in our present age. As such, it will be of close interest to scholars of contemporary literature and cultural studies, comparative and world literature, media studies, and the cultural history of information. * Modernism/Modernity *A breakthrough work of analysis, drawing from a range of critical fields to substantiate its case for the copy as a dominant global cultural form. It is a measure of Edmond’s contribution that Make It the Same will be required reading across the fields of modernist studies, contemporary historical poetics, and world literature, and a salient model for future transnational literary studies. * Review of English Studies *An important, fascinating and timely discussion of poetry of the iterative turn. * Landfall *A fascinating look at what poetry is becoming in the 21st century: it is subversive and regenerating like the tendrils of an octopus, always alive and seeking more ideas. * Choice *Make It the Same shows the author’s globe-spanning grasp of emergent and established poetries, understanding of a combination of theoretical persuasions, and persuasive deployment of a range of interpretive methods. * Cha *Edmond’s Make It the Same offers a significant rewriting of world literature in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, raising a series of important questions about language, form, circulation, and comparativity that will no doubt prove enabling for future scholarship. -- Sarah Dowling * Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory *Edmond’s engaging and exciting book merits a wide readership by scholarsand students across literary and cultural studies. Innovative, thoroughly researched,and well-argued, this book is a remarkable study. * Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews *Students and scholars of literary conceptualism, experimental translation, cross-cultural collaboration, multilingualism, performance writing, visual poetry, artistic plagiarism, and digital poetics among other nonnormative modes of poiesis are bound to benefit from Edmond’s rich contextualizations and his method of what we might call “comparative iterature.” * Contemporary Literature *Edmond makes a compelling case for the contemporary avant-garde as a counterweight to more mainstream codex-based poetics that often privilege notions of original authorship. * Journal of Modern Periodical Studies *A new moment in poetry criticism, one in which studies of form refigure the archive, undoing longstanding divisions between experimentation and expression. * American Literary History *Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: The Copy as Global Master Trope1. Postcolonial Media: Kamau Brathwaite’s Reel Revolution2. The Art of Samizdat: Dmitri Prigov, Moscow Conceptualism, and the Carbon-Copy Origins of New Media Poetics3. Making Waves in World Literature: Yang Lian and John Cayley’s Networked Collaboration4. Shibboleth: The Border Crossings of Caroline Bergvall, Performance Writing, and Iterative Poetics5. Copy Rights: Conceptual Writing, the Mongrel Coalition, and the Racial Politics of Digital Media6. Chinese Rooms: The Work of Poetry in an Age of Global Languages, Machine Translation, and Automatic EstrangementRecapitulations: Repetition and Revolution in World PoetryNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisXiang Kairan, who wrote under the pen name The Unworthy Scholar from Pingjiang, is remembered as the father of modern Chinese martial arts fiction. In this book, John Christopher Hamm shows how Xiang Kairan's work and career offer a new lens on the transformations of fiction and popular culture in early twentieth-century China.Trade ReviewRecommended. * Choice *The Unworthy Scholar from Pingjiang offers an impressively well researched, stunningly thorough and balanced study of the most important author of Republican-era martial arts fiction, his life and oeuvre. -- Roland Altenburger * Modern Chinese Literature and Culture *The Unworthy Scholar from Pianjiang Republican-era martial arts fiction is a critical step in the right direction. -- Tom Ue * Rescue and Recovery *In The Unworthy Scholar from Pingjiang, Hamm traces the life and work of Xiang Kairan, one of the most important martial arts novelists of the Republican period. Hamm broadly situates Xiang Kairan into the larger cultural and political landscape of Republican China and investigates the intricacies of the martial arts fiction genre. Hamm is one of the most important literary critics studying martial arts fiction, and this book is a most "worthy" contribution to our understanding of this understudied corner of the modern Chinese literary world. -- Michael Berry, University of California, Los AngelesAn exquisite literary biography, The Unworthy Scholar from Pingjiang is also a definitive study of genre. Hamm demonstrates that Republican-period martial arts fiction was as much part of Chinese modernity as were the highbrow oeuvres of the New Culture movement. His masterful study changes our perception of contemporary Chinese culture. -- Meir Shahar, Tel Aviv UniversityHamm has written a fascinating study of Xiang Kairan, one of the most influential practitioners of the Chinese martial arts (wuxia) novel. In addition to being an exemplary literary biography, The Unworthy Scholar from Pingjiang is a meticulous history of the modern development of the wuxia genre and an insightful reconsideration of the capacious literary category of xiaoshuo (“fiction”). -- Christopher Rea, author of The Age of Irreverence: A New History of Laughter in ChinaHamm’s illuminating book paints a vivid picture of the complex literary world of early Republican China, beyond the well-known narratives of New Literature. Like its subject, it bridges traditional and modern Chinese fiction, exploring the literary, economic, and political values mediated by the periodical press and the dominant discourses of the era. An engaging, fresh approach. -- Margaret Wan, University of UtahHamm’s book spells out the significance of a writer who had a lasting effect on his chosen genre, but whose works remain little known outside China. * Times Literary Supplement *By digging deep into the historical background and illustrating details of Xiang Kairan's writings, this book implied that as insignificant as the destiny of an individual may seem to be, it is tightly related with the progression of the society and might potentially help drive it further. * Publishing Research Quarterly *Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsNotes on ConventionsIntroduction1. The Writer’s Life2. Xiang Kairan’s Monkeys: Xiaoshuo as a Literary Genre3. Thematic Subgenre: Martial Arts Fiction4. Form and Medium: The Serialized Linked-Chapter Novel and Beyond5. Marvelous Gallants of the Rivers and Lakes6. Chivalric Heroes of Modern TimesConclusion: The Unworthy Scholar from PingjiangNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisFranz Prichard offers a pathbreaking analysis of the works wrought from Japan's intensive urbanization in the 1960s and 1970s. He maps the ways in which Japanese filmmakers, writers, photographers, and other artists came to grips with the entwined ecologies of a drastic transformation.Trade ReviewAn important and necessary book that even beyond the discussion of its immediate objects will help further thedebate on the status of the city in cultural discourse, then and today. * Journal of Asian Studies *This book will command attention from a wide range of scholars and other critically minded readers to urgent consideration of these registers, as well as of the urban space they formed and transformed. * Japanese Language and Literature *An engaging and challenging work that will attain a secure position among studies of 1960s/1970s visual and textual culture, and, one hopes, stimulate future scholarly work in these areas. * The Journal of Japanese Studies *Franz Prichard's Residual Futures is a thrilling exploration of the literary and visual remaking of the urban landscape of Cold War Japan. It offers us radically new ways to think about the interrelationship of urban ecologies, media forms, aesthetics, and politics--not only in Japan of the 1960s and ’70s, but here and now. -- Marilyn Ivy, Columbia UniversityResidual Futures traces connections between the rapidly changing cityscape of Tokyo in the 1960s and 1970s and transformations of the mediascape of literature, cinema, and photography. Prichard adroitly shows how the new mediascape strove to inhabit a strange new set of linkages inadvertently afforded by the concerted efforts to remake both city and country. Residual Futures calls attention to the unforeseen possibilities emerging from the tangled infrastructural skein of mediascape and cityscape. -- Thomas Lamarre, McGill UniversityThis original, provocative, and timely study expands the horizon of Japan studies, as well as literary and visual cultural studies, onto a complex urban terrain that is at once cosmopolitan and dystopic. Residual Futures renders a future-present that is formed in the atomic residues of the postwar planet, but also along a fault line that opens onto a future that has already come and gone. -- Akira Mizuta Lippit, University of Southern CaliforniaThis book provides a deeply fascinating view into a crucial trajectory that has not received enough attention in the study of media or visual arts in general, much less of Japan. The transition of media culture from the 1960s to the 1980s is deeply consequential for our situation today, and Prichard lays it out in surprising and lucid ways, always keeping an eye on the possibilities it contained. Immensely informative, this book will make a tremendous contribution to work on visual arts and to the study of the contexts of Japan. -- Alexander Zahlten, Harvard UniversityAdvancing existing work on 1960s and ’70s Japan significantly, Prichard treats photographers like Nakahira as full-fledged intellectuals making a direct and meaningful contribution to contemporaneous discourse on the fundamental characteristics of modern urban life, further unsettling notions of the position of the artist in society as a mirror held up to certain kinds of social problems. -- Steven Ridgely, University of WisconsinHis book draws attention to a corpus of works from one of Japan's most formative eras and is an excellent addition to the current literature. * Urban History *Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. Prelude to the Traffic War: Infrastructural Aesthetics of the Cold War2. Disappearance: Topological Visuality in Abe Kōbō’s Urban Literature3. Landscape Vocabularies: For a Language to Comeand the Geopolitics of Reading4. An Illustrated Dictionary of Urban Overflows5. Photography as Threshold and Pathway After Reversion6. Residual FuturesNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisFor nearly half of the twentieth century, reformers waged war on the Chinese script. In Chinese Grammatology, Yurou Zhong traces the origins, transmutations, and containment of this script revolution to provide a groundbreaking account of its formative effects on Chinese literature and culture and lasting implications.Trade ReviewOne of the most innovative, exemplary, and deeply researched monographs in modern Chinese literary studies I have seen for quite some time. -- Andrew F. Jones, University of California, BerkeleyOffering a valuable history of the Chinese encounter with the Roman-Latin alphabetic writing system, Chinese Grammatology provides a compelling account of the rise and containment of phonocentrism as a global literary, linguistic, and political force with profound implications for the development of modern “national” literatures during the twentieth century. -- Nergis Ertürk, Pennsylvania State UniversityThis long overdue study of competing twentieth-century efforts to modernize Chinese writing goes far beyond the origins of pinyin to include a series of compelling stories about all-but-forgotten movements that will fascinate anyone interested in linguistics, Chinese literature, and the history of modernity. Deeply researched and carefully presented, Chinese Grammatology is a page-turner for culture nerds, which makes a persuasive case for the influence of the ideologies of script reform on the evolution of modern Chinese literature. A must-read for anyone interested in cultural China. -- Timothy Billings, Middlebury CollegeYurou Zhong ably chronicles the tumultuous twentieth century of the millennia-old Chinese writing system. We encounter strong personalities, overwhelming historical trends, and alert linguistic analysis. The concluding appeal to a ‘nonidentitarian coexistence’ of diverse writing systems within and around Chinese echoes ideals from the era of China’s greatest cosmopolitan influence. -- Haun Saussy, University of ChicagoSaussure's Cours de linguistique générale (1916) and Derrida's De la grammatologie (1967) are two milestones that have far-reaching implications for 20th-century scholarship in the humanities. Under the influence of these two works, phonetics and logocentrism gradually became one of the concerns for scholars of humanities. However, how do we deal with the perceived voicelessness in nonphonetic scripts? How do we rediscover and understand the rich and tense historical processes that sought to reform and even eliminate the Chinese script for the past century? These substantial questions form the backbone of Chinese Grammatology. It builds on theoretical exploration, historical research, and case studies covering classical philology, the influence of romanization, the latinization movement in modern China, and more. Solid research, broad vision, and sharp observations enliven the whole book. -- Wang Hui, Tsinghua UniversityTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsNote on RomanizationIntroduction: Voiceless China and Its Phonocentric TurnPart I: Provenance1. The Beginning and the End of Alphabetic UniversalismPart II: Transmutations2. Phonocentric Antinomies3. Can Subaltern Workers Write?4. Reinventing ChildrenPart III: Containment5. Toward a Chinese GrammatologyEpilogue: The Last CustodianNotesSelected BibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisDan Sinykin explores how changes in the publishing industry have affected fiction, literary form, and what it means to be an author.Trade ReviewA "Most Anticipated" Book of 2023 * The Millions *Revelatory . . . Book lovers curious about how the proverbial sausage gets made will want to check this out. * Publishers Weekly *Sinykin’s Big Fiction is a book of major ambition and many satisfactions. Come for the comprehensive reframing of a key phase in U.S. literary history, stay for the parade of interesting people, the fascinating backstories of bestsellers, the electrically entertaining prose. The story of literary publishing in the postwar period has never been told with such verve. -- Mark McGurl, author of Everything and Less: The Novel in the Age of AmazonBig Fiction tackles a big subject with deep research, great ambition, and broad mindedness. Sinykin pulls together stories of famous authors and obscure yet central behind-the-scenes players to tell the complex and compelling history of modern publishing. This is essential reading for anyone interested in the too-often-overlooked forces that shape what is published, what is written, and what the future of books might hold. -- Lincoln Michel, author of The Body ScoutTen years from now, Publishing Studies will be central to English departments, and Big Fiction will be a foundational text. Sinykin is precisely the critic I have been waiting for, with the intellectual range to bring rigor to the everyday processes by which publishing shapes how we write, read, and think. -- Martin Riker, author of The Guest LectureIn Big Fiction, Dan Sinykin tells the messy, sprawling story of American publishing in the postwar era through the voices and memories of many of its major figures—editors, agents, executives, authors—creating a rich cultural history any observer of the current literary scene will learn from. Through careful and incisive reading, he insists that books like Ragtime, Beloved, and Infinite Jest have much to tell us about the conditions under which they were published. Following through on Bakhtin’s famous phrase—novels are the genre that represents “the zone of maximum content with the present”—Sinykin wants us to think of novels themselves as conglomerations, shaped by many influences, and in some cases by many hands. Big Fiction is provocative, smart, and disturbing; it deserves a big audience. -- Jess Row, author of The New Earth and White Flights: Race, Fiction, and the American ImaginationThis is the book we’ve all been waiting for. Now more than ever, it’s important to grasp how the books that come to shape our imaginations and our understanding of the world are made. Sinykin’s elegant prose and careful analysis pull the curtain back, allowing us new perspectives on book making, book selling, and book promoting. It turns out that everything we thought we knew is a big fiction. -- Dana A. Williams, Howard UniversityThe two most remarkable things about Dan Sinykin's history of how corporate conglomeration in publishing has changed the course of literature are 1) it's never been written before and 2) there was a time, not so long ago, when the merging and acquisition of publishing houses was unthinkable. Sinykin teaches how to read "through a colophon," and that "our outsize attention to the author alone is a trick of history." Sinykin's fascinating history is underlineable on every page. -- Spencer Ruchti * Third Place Books (Seattle, WA) *Big Fiction provides a fascinating overview of American publishing over the past sixty or so years, with many interesting titbits about a large number of significant players and many notable publishing deals. -- M.A. Orthofer * The Complete Review *Big Fiction is a very ambitious book, and the story it tells is sweeping and persuasive. . . . It’s the rare book of literary scholarship that may appeal to readers outside the academy. -- Lee Konstantinou * The Chronicle of Higher Education *This book offers a rich, detailed background explicating the everyday reader’s experience of why books published by big commercial presses seem so much like … books big commercial presses would publish. . . . Any student of publishing would benefit from reading this book. In its pages, publishing seems fascinating and action-packed, but myths that readers might harbor about the industry’s glamor, its sincerity, or the purity of its relationship to art will probably get dispelled. -- Hilary Plum * Los Angeles Review of Books *Sinykin writes with verve and narrative flair as he documents the consolidation of the major publishing houses — and, along the way, overturns the myth of “the romantic author,” that lone genius unfettered by social circumstances or material constraints. . . . The result is a fascinating and informative account of the convulsions roiling the American publishing industry for the past half-century — and a devastating reckoning with the ways in which conglomeration has altered American fiction. -- Becca Rothfeld * Washington Post *For some people, thrill rides are found at Disneyland. For certain types of readers, a thrill ride can be found in Big Fiction: How Conglomeration Changed the Publishing Industry and American Literature, Dan Sinykin's scintillating take on the David and Goliath battle, in which free-spirited publishers fought to hold their own against corporate giants. -- Nell Beram * Shelf Awareness *Full of cogent analysis, ambitious argument, juicy quotes from insiders and a demonstration of the central role of Catholics in American publishing. -- Nick Ripatrazone * America Magazine: The Jesuit Review of Faith & Culture *An excellent history of U.S. trade publishing. -- Tyler Cowen * Marginal Revolution *Big Fiction is sharply written and sharply argued, part of a wave of cutting-edge works of literary history put out by Columbia University Press. -- Scott W. Stern * The New Republic *A fascinating combination of business history and academic literary analysis. -- Morley Walker * Winnipeg Free Press *[A] lively, personality-driven, and original study. -- Greg Barnhisel * Books & Review *Big Fiction’s ambitious project and keen analysis will make it a classic in criticism of contemporary US fiction . . . The grand effect of this grand study is to halt any theorization of contemporary fiction that doesn’t first consider the publishing landscape at that point in time. -- Omid Bagherli * ASAP/Journal *Big Fiction takes the notoriously exclusive and counterintuitive industry of U.S. book publishing and gives its recent history a lucid and unsparing treatment . . . [The book] makes for a demystifying and ultimately empowering read—one of particular value for anyone who feels shut out of the publishing milieu—and will help facilitate our understanding of the culture we have. That understanding is critical as we fight for the culture we want. -- Emmerich Anklam * Protean Magazine *This is the best kind of criticism: a book that told me things I didn’t know . . . illuminated things I thought I knew . . . and made me want to argue back against some of its claims and descriptions. -- Anthony Domestico * Commonweal's Best Books of 2023 *Its unexpected novelty is what gives Sinykin’s project its unique insights, making it a real contribution to our understanding of recent American literary history. -- Adam Fleming Petty * The Bulwark *Big Fiction feels like a major contribution: to our understanding of contemporary literature and literary publishing as an industry, definitely; to literary criticism as a whole, probably; and maybe to our conception of how culture, in general, is made. It is a thoroughly researched, engagingly written, and clear-sighted cultural materialist analysis of the sort that feels almost verboten within the formal and professional fields of artistic production. -- J. Arthur Boyle * Cleveland Review of Books *Dear Reader, you should read Big Fiction. It’s the best treatment of why fiction is the way it is that I’ve ever read. And the stories too! -- Clayton Childress * Public Books *[Big Fiction] teaches us to see contemporary fiction as a field riven by contradiction: conglomeration is poisonous and generative, conservative and democratizing, a force of both austerity and abundance. And while it presents obstacles for nearly all writers, many—especially our best—have found unexpected sources of energy within it. -- Mitch Therieau * Bookforum *Recommended. * Choice Reviews *Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. Mass Market (I): How Mass-Market Books Changed Publishing2. Mass Market (II): How the Mass Market Won the World, Lost Its Soul—Then Lost the World3. Trade (I): How Women Resisted Sexism and Reinvented the Novel 4. Trade (II): How Literary Writers Embraced Genre5. Nonprofits: How Rebels Found Funding and Rejected New York6. Independents: How W. W. Norton Stayed Free and Housed the MisfitsConclusionGlossary of Publishing FiguresNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisInventing Tomorrow provides a definitive account of H. G. Wells's work and ideas. Sarah Cole illuminates his distinctive style as well as his interventions into social and political thought, arguing that he embodies twentieth-century literature at its most expansive and engaged.Trade ReviewSarah Cole transforms our view of H. G. Wells, not only seeing him as a pivotal figure in his own world but also, with subtlety and conviction, connecting him with his modernist contemporaries. Wells emerges in this detailed, cogent, and incisive study as a complex and fascinating thinker filled with contradictions, combining moral force with artistic restlessness. He was headstrong, engaged, combative, innovative, industrious, fearless, and prophetic. Inventing Tomorrow does justice to his vast range of work while emphasizing how Wells must be placed at the core of any consideration of intellectual life in the early twentieth century. -- Colm Tóibín, author of Brooklyn: A NovelWhat if modernism met up with antimodernism, like matter and antimatter? In Sarah Cole’s fascinating and ambitious new study, she argues that H. G. Wells’s work was at once modernist and itself a critique of modernism, an explosive mix whose significance was missed both by his contemporaries and by literary critics who have taken his rivals at their word and mistaken their jealousy at his popularity for judgment of his merit. -- Jill Lepore, author of These Truths: A History of the United StatesFrom the prehistoric to the posthuman, from the microcosmic to the cosmic, Wells wrote about everything under the twentieth-century sun. To see why he was the indispensable writer of the last century, we need a guide as skilled and authoritative as Sarah Cole, who gives to readers an eloquent vindication of modernism’s forgotten man. -- Jed Esty, author of Unseasonable Youth: Modernism, Colonialism, and the Fiction of DevelopmentSarah Cole restores a colossus to size, recovering the enormous importance of H. G. Wells in the literary and cultural history of a century that seems, until now, to have left him behind. No longer. Written with synoptic power and narrative flair, synthesizing an extensive archive of print and film, Inventing Tomorrow splendidly establishes Wells not just as a figure of primary importance, but as an attractive, indeed fascinating, imaginative personality. -- Vincent Sherry, Howard Nemerov Professor in the Humanities, Washington University in St. LouisFull of illuminating argument, fresh perception, and lively polemic, Inventing Tomorrow makes an overwhelming case for the twenty-first century rediscovery of H. G. Wells. -- Patrick Parrinder, University of ReadingSarah Cole’s fascinating literary investigation Inventing Tomorrow shows how H. G. Wells’s work is relevant and meaningful today. . . . The book’s scholarship combines literary criticism with biographical elements, explaining how Wells mixed details of his own life and his modernist philosophy into his work. * Foreword Reviews (starred review) *Cole documents a thorough and thoughtful appreciation of Well's accomplishments and skills as a writer to argue for a revised estimate of his body of work. * Library Journal *Cole adroitly captures Wells, from his mould-breaking books (such as the 1895 science-fiction classic The Time Machine and 1920 Outline of History) to his unlikely intellectual kinship with subtle modernists such as Virginia Woolf. * Nature *[H.G. Wells] emerges from this wide-ranging account as a passionate and persistent advocate of social change, and of literature’s capacity to shape it. * The Economist *An important new evaluation of H.G. Wells. -- Maya Jasanoff * Wall Street Journal *Inclusive, capacious, infectiously energetic work...Inventing Tomorrow is an invitation well worth taking up. * Politics / Letters *While never ignoring untenable views about race and eugenics, [Cole] sees the point of him, saluting his humor and his relation to the world that formed him. Any subsequent work on Wells will have to take her as its starting point. -- D. J. Taylor * Wall Street Journal *Cole’s dense, erudite and wide-ranging account demonstrates the grand sweep of his interests and ambitions. * Times Higher Education *[Cole's] ingenious recasting of Wells as a dissident modernist seems likely to prove influential. * Times Literary Supplement *A sympathetic and informative exploration of Wells as a writer and thinker. * Spiked *In a landmark new study of Wells, Sarah Cole...reveals a writer whose twin obsessions with biology and history saturated his sense of humankind and its future prospects. Inventing Tomorrow restores Wells to his erstwhile centrality in the intellectual culture of the early twentieth century and unspools a “mix of attractive and repellent” ideas that resonate in an ambitious, anxious twenty-first. * New York Review of Books *[A] substantial, well-written study. * Choice *A magisterial book...beautifully written and persuasive throughout. * Marx and Philosophy Review of Books *Is a deeply researched and compellingly argued defense of the author as a neglected modernist master whose work was in continuous, productive conversation with that of Woolf, Joyce, and other writers who are now more widely celebrated in the academy. * Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts *Impressively comprehensive. * English Studies *Cole has offered a portrait of Wells that at least acknowledges many of his shortcomings, including racism and a geopolitical vision tainted by imperialism, though these acknowledgments do not detract from her largely positive assessment ofhis work * Twentieth Century Literature *Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. Voice2. Civilian3. Time4. BiologyConclusion: The WorldNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisInventing Tomorrow provides a definitive account of H. G. Wells’s work and ideas. Sarah Cole illuminates his distinctive style as well as his interventions into social and political thought, arguing that he embodies twentieth-century literature at its most expansive and engaged.Trade ReviewSarah Cole transforms our view of H. G. Wells, not only seeing him as a pivotal figure in his own world but also, with subtlety and conviction, connecting him with his modernist contemporaries. Wells emerges in this detailed, cogent, and incisive study as a complex and fascinating thinker filled with contradictions, combining moral force with artistic restlessness. He was headstrong, engaged, combative, innovative, industrious, fearless, and prophetic. Inventing Tomorrow does justice to his vast range of work while emphasizing how Wells must be placed at the core of any consideration of intellectual life in the early twentieth century. -- Colm Tóibín, author of Brooklyn: A NovelWhat if modernism met up with antimodernism, like matter and antimatter? In Sarah Cole’s fascinating and ambitious new study, she argues that H. G. Wells’s work was at once modernist and itself a critique of modernism, an explosive mix whose significance was missed both by his contemporaries and by literary critics who have taken his rivals at their word and mistaken their jealousy at his popularity for judgment of his merit. -- Jill Lepore, author of These Truths: A History of the United StatesFrom the prehistoric to the posthuman, from the microcosmic to the cosmic, Wells wrote about everything under the twentieth-century sun. To see why he was the indispensable writer of the last century, we need a guide as skilled and authoritative as Sarah Cole, who gives to readers an eloquent vindication of modernism’s forgotten man. -- Jed Esty, author of Unseasonable Youth: Modernism, Colonialism, and the Fiction of DevelopmentSarah Cole restores a colossus to size, recovering the enormous importance of H. G. Wells in the literary and cultural history of a century that seems, until now, to have left him behind. No longer. Written with synoptic power and narrative flair, synthesizing an extensive archive of print and film, Inventing Tomorrow splendidly establishes Wells not just as a figure of primary importance, but as an attractive, indeed fascinating, imaginative personality. -- Vincent Sherry, Howard Nemerov Professor in the Humanities, Washington University in St. LouisFull of illuminating argument, fresh perception, and lively polemic, Inventing Tomorrow makes an overwhelming case for the twenty-first century rediscovery of H. G. Wells. -- Patrick Parrinder, University of ReadingSarah Cole’s fascinating literary investigation Inventing Tomorrow shows how H. G. Wells’s work is relevant and meaningful today. . . . The book’s scholarship combines literary criticism with biographical elements, explaining how Wells mixed details of his own life and his modernist philosophy into his work. * Foreword Reviews (starred review) *Cole documents a thorough and thoughtful appreciation of Well's accomplishments and skills as a writer to argue for a revised estimate of his body of work. * Library Journal *Cole adroitly captures Wells, from his mould-breaking books (such as the 1895 science-fiction classic The Time Machine and 1920 Outline of History) to his unlikely intellectual kinship with subtle modernists such as Virginia Woolf. * Nature *[H.G. Wells] emerges from this wide-ranging account as a passionate and persistent advocate of social change, and of literature’s capacity to shape it. * The Economist *An important new evaluation of H.G. Wells. -- Maya Jasanoff * Wall Street Journal *Inclusive, capacious, infectiously energetic work...Inventing Tomorrow is an invitation well worth taking up. * Politics / Letters *While never ignoring untenable views about race and eugenics, [Cole] sees the point of him, saluting his humor and his relation to the world that formed him. Any subsequent work on Wells will have to take her as its starting point. -- D. J. Taylor * Wall Street Journal *Cole’s dense, erudite and wide-ranging account demonstrates the grand sweep of his interests and ambitions. * Times Higher Education *[Cole's] ingenious recasting of Wells as a dissident modernist seems likely to prove influential. * Times Literary Supplement *A sympathetic and informative exploration of Wells as a writer and thinker. * Spiked *In a landmark new study of Wells, Sarah Cole...reveals a writer whose twin obsessions with biology and history saturated his sense of humankind and its future prospects. Inventing Tomorrow restores Wells to his erstwhile centrality in the intellectual culture of the early twentieth century and unspools a “mix of attractive and repellent” ideas that resonate in an ambitious, anxious twenty-first. * New York Review of Books *[A] substantial, well-written study. * Choice *A magisterial book...beautifully written and persuasive throughout. * Marx and Philosophy Review of Books *Is a deeply researched and compellingly argued defense of the author as a neglected modernist master whose work was in continuous, productive conversation with that of Woolf, Joyce, and other writers who are now more widely celebrated in the academy. * Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts *Impressively comprehensive. * English Studies *Cole has offered a portrait of Wells that at least acknowledges many of his shortcomings, including racism and a geopolitical vision tainted by imperialism, though these acknowledgments do not detract from her largely positive assessment ofhis work * Twentieth Century Literature *Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. Voice2. Civilian3. Time4. BiologyConclusion: The WorldNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisSanjay Krishnan rereads V. S. Naipaul’s work to offer new perspectives on his achievements, shortcomings, trajectory, and complicated legacy. While recognizing the flaws and prejudices that shaped and limited Naipaul’s life and art, this book challenges the binaries that have restricted discussions of his writing.Trade ReviewIn V. S. Naipaul's Journeys, Sanjay Krishnan argues that Naipaul should be understood not as a reactionary critic of postcolonial cultures, but as someone who reported on them from the inside. Krishnan’s conclusions will be debated for a while to come, but his rigorous engagement with Naipaul’s oeuvre will reanimate the author for the next generation of critics. -- Suvir Kaul, author of Of Gardens and Graves: Kashmir, Poetry, PoliticsKrishnan deftly navigates the ideological maelstrom that swirls around Naipaul’s reputation to deliver a fully grounded reappraisal of the relationship between the author’s work, his biography, and his political moment. This study sets new parameters for evaluating Naipaul's literary legacy. -- Rhonda Cobham-Sander, author of I and I: Epitaphs for the Self in the Work of V. S. Naipaul, Kamau Brathwaite, and Derek WalcottDrawing heavily on archival materials made available only recently, V. S. Naipaul's Journeys: From Periphery to Center offers a defense and rereading of Naipaul by substantially reframing the objectives of his writing. Naipaul's work is unlike that of other postcolonial writers, contends Krishnan, in avoiding both easy position taking and the consolations of identity. Accessing Naipaul’s “ways of seeing,” Krishnan gives us a new, self-subverting Naipaul for the twenty-first century. -- Timothy Bewes, author of The Event of Postcolonial ShameV. S. Naipaul's Journeys is an immensely valuable contribution. It is one of the best synthetic treatments of Naipaul's work available. It deftly blends a discussion of Naipaul's various journeys with Naipaul's own journey as a writer. It refocuses our attention on Naipaul's texts in order to reveal the development of his thinking. -- Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Ashoka UniversityKrishnan’s jargon-free study will prove invaluable to serious readers and Naipaul scholars alike. * Publishers Weekly *Krishnan suggests that Naipaul’s ambiguous ironies mean he can never be read as simply for or against the colonized. What is uniquely insightful about Naipaul’s work is, this book argues, intimately connected to what is most problematic about it. * Times Literary Supplement *A bold and comprehensive reading of the controversial writer...highly recommended. * Choice *Krishnan argues persuasively that the way Naipaul used his own life story and experiences, including his interactions with the people he met on his travels, enabled him to create 'an original form of postcolonial writing'…the importance of his nuanced approach to Naipaul’s life and work cannot be overstated. -- Gillian Dooley * Transnational Literature *In demonstrating how Naipaul’s work attends to multiple viewpoints and undoes the search for a master narrative about the postcolonial Caribbean, V. S. Naipaul's Journeys contributes a comprehensive, meticulously researched, and insightful new study of a life and a literary corpus. -- Sarah Jilani, University of London * Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry *In Sanjay Krishnan’s excellent study...we follow two parallel but counter-directional trajectories: that of the writer’s life—‘from periphery to centre’, as the book’s subtitle has it—and that of the work—which took the writer back from the imperial centre of the world to the peripheral societies that he was perpetually drawn to. -- Vineet Gill * Literary Activism *Table of ContentsAbbreviationsIntroductionI. Early Writings: 1955–19611. Memories of Underdevelopment: Miguel Street; The Middle Passage2. Self and Society: The Suffrage of Elvira; A House for Mr BiswasII. The Middle Period: 1962–19803. Historical Identities: The Middle Passage; An Area of Darkness 4. Fantasy and Derangement: The Loss of El Dorado; India: A Wounded Civilization; “Michael X and the Killings in Trinidad”5. Ambiguous Freedom: “In a Free State” 6. Truth and Lie: A Bend in the RiverIII. Late Works: 1981–20107. Productive Deformation: The Enigma of Arrival8. Landscapes of the Mind: India: A Million Mutinies Now 9. Conversations with the Faithful: Among the Believers; Beyond Belief10. Concluding Reflections: Half a Life; Magic Seeds; The Masque of AfricaAcknowledgmentsNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisIn The Ferrante Letters, four critics create a series of epistolary readings of the Neapolitan Quartet that also develops new ways of reading and thinking together. In a series of intertwined, original, and daring readings of Elena Ferrante’s work and her fictional world, they strike a tone that falls between the seminar and the book club.Trade ReviewWith fiery insight and feminist spirit, they have written a fitting companion to Ferrante’s books. * Booklist (starred review) *The intimate tone lends a beguiling humanity to the book, inducing a pleasure more often associated with novels: the pleasure of character. * New Yorker *A truly innovative approach to understanding the author-reader connection made all the more compelling for having one of the 20th century's greatest literary works at its core. * Library Journal *The combination of intellectual rigor and personal reaction makes this fascinating reading for Ferrante fans. * Publishers Weekly *If The Ferrante Letters is meant to be an experiment in what would happen if boundaries, forms, and the shape of literary criticism were to dissolve and the opinions of critics blurred into one another, it is one that the authors recognize as both an exciting and frightening possibility. * New Republic *The Ferrante Letters gives us a unique opportunity to read—or reread—the Neapolitan novels with four distinct guides beside us, both literary and personal, posing questions and offering insights, analysis, and discussion that enrich and deepen our experience of the books. -- Ann Goldstein, translator of Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novelsThe Ferrante Letters is a smart, beautiful, often moving meditation on the experience of reading the Neapolitan Quartet. This collection of letters and essays deftly manages that tricky balance of the creative, the critical, and the personal. A magnificent accomplishment. -- Namwali Serpell, author of The Old Drift: A NovelThese four smart feminist critics reflect on the Neapolitan novels' exploration of women's friendship, intellectual labor, and personal lives. Reading The Ferrante Letters feels like you have stumbled upon your favorite reading group talking about your favorite author. It captures the way critical thinking should work, not in isolation but in conversation. -- Pamela Thurschwell, University of SussexIn The Ferrante Letters, expertise and passion dovetail to great effect. This absorptive, idiosyncratic book is a work of collective criticism that offers a set of rigorous, convivial, and stylish readings of its primary texts, staging the critical act as also a creative one. This book reveals that the form literary criticism takes is as important as its content. -- Sarah Blackwood, author of The Portrait's Subject: Inventing Inner Life in the Nineteenth-Century United StatesWhile it is primarily Ferrante devotees who will find this book most intriguing, those interested in alternative modes of critical inquiry should take a look as well. A sharp and lively book for fans and scholars. * Kirkus Reviews *This book is a must-read for anyone who loves Elena Ferrante and for anyone who wants to think about new directions in literary criticism. * Bookriot *If you are new at the Ferrante's world this one will be a great introduction...Highly recommended. * Il Feminile *The Ferrante Letters is a bold, often inspiring attempt to rethink literary criticism and teaching practices on a collective basis, bridging the personal, critical and pleasurable. * Times Higher Education *I would heartily recommend The Ferrante Letters to fellow Ferrante fans, to feminist scholars, to readers interested in collective critical experiments. * Times Literary Supplement *What Chihaya, Emre, Hill, and Richards have created might cater more to the cultivated reader of Ferrante than the scholar, yet academics stand to learn much from as daring and novel a form of criticism as this one. * World Literature Today *The Ferrante Letters is extremely absorbing. It’s rare to come across university-nurtured criticism, informed by theory, that is jargon-free and studded with insight. * Virginia Quarterly Review *I was thoroughly compelled by the rigor and candor with which Chihaya, Emre, Hill, and Richards explore the intimacies that readers create through and with novels—and by their readiness in The Ferrante Letters to put their own reading lives under the microscope while they do so. I want to continue to read with these four critics, jointly and severally. They certainly should be your companions as well, dear readers, the next time all of us, severally or jointly, read Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet. -- Deidre Lynch * Novel: A Forum on Fiction *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Collective CriticismI. Letters (2015)My Brilliant FriendThe Story of a New NameThose Who Leave and Those Who StayThe Story of the Lost ChildII. Essays (2018)Unform, by Sarah ChihayaThe Story of a Fiction, by Katherine HillThe Queer Counterfactual, by Jill RichardsThe Cage of Authorship, by Merve EmreAfterwordAppendix: Guest Letters, by Sara Marcus, Marissa Brostoff, Lili Loofbourow, Cecily Swanson, and Amy SchillerAcknowledgmentsNotesBibliography

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Book SynopsisDeparting from the conventional association of modernism with the city, this book reveals the beach as a surprisingly generative setting for twentieth-century literature and art. Interweaving environmental humanities, queer and feminist theory, and cultural history, Hannah Freed-Thall offers new ways of understanding modernism.Trade ReviewField-changing books are ones that offer a new mode of thinking, way of seeing, or practice of reading—a clearly original or powerfully reimagined method. Modernism at the Beach does just that, shifting the ground of our critical assumptions and perspectives by encouraging us to encounter the modernist beach much like William Blake might: "To see a world in a grain of sand." -- Diana Fuss, author of Dying Modern: A Meditation on ElegyHannah Freed-Thall has written an exquisite book about the modernist beach, a liminal space where queer ecology guides literary history. An itinerary featuring Virginia Woolf, Rachel Carson, Claude McKay, and Samuel Beckett recreates on a structural level the “offbeat intimacies” and wayward encounters that each of Freed-Thall’s close readings so vividly illuminates. You’ll feel the ocean breeze, but you won’t think of beach-reading the same way again. -- Aarthi Vadde, author of Chimeras of Form: Modernist Internationalism Beyond Europe, 1914-2014By spotlighting a common yet neglected setting of twentieth-century literature, this revelatory book lights up modernism anew. The seashore, Freed-Thall shows us, is at once a cultural fantasy of commodified leisure, an emblem of ecological violence, and an experimental site of nonnormative modes of being. To the country and the city we must now add the beach. -- Dora Zhang, author of Strange Likeness: Description and the Modernist NovelModernism at the Beach offers a marvelous, tenacious, imaginative, revelatory discussion of the place of the beach in modern culture. In its energetic, all-encompassing writing, its wide erudition, its advocacy and sensitivity, the book is gorgeous to read. It changes how the shoreline is felt and known. -- Emma Wilson, author of Love, Mortality, and the Moving ImageNeither home nor away, land nor water, city nor countryside, war-torn nor peaceful, private nor public, the beach is a territory where a different kind of sunlight falls on social, corporeal, and emotional realities. Freed-Thall shows us how and why modernists were drawn to the in-between realm of the beach, a place where they could, perhaps more than anywhere else, fully interrogate and reimagine the world in all its aspects. -- Barry McCrea, author of Languages of the Night: Minor Languages and the Literary Imagination in Twentieth-Century Ireland and EuropeModernism at the Beach is an outstanding book. Freed-Thall covers expansive ground - and coast - yet chooses her critical texts carefully and concisely, weaving a range of literature, art, culture, and critical theory together effortlessly. Timely and original, creative and profound, Modernism at the Beach is essential reading for modernists and ecocritics alike. -- Annie Williams * The British Society for Literature and Science *This exceptionally lucid, elegantly written book elaborates an innovative argument about the role of the beach in modernist literary and artistic works. Drawing on and interrelating queer studies, ecocriticism, aesthetic theory, and modernist criticism, Freed-Thall’s luminous and incisive readings move gracefully across scales and between aesthetic objects to produce a kaleidoscopic, shifting portrait of shores and beaches. -- Margaret Ronda, author of Remainders: American Poetry at Nature's End Welding queer theory to ecological philosophy, and drawing on a unique archive of modernist art and literature . . . Freed-Thall argues convincingly for a timely reconceptualization of the modernist beach as a multitudinous ‘stage’ for reimagining non-hierarchical social structures, for inventing new modes of sexuality and gender identity, and for attuning oneself to more-than-human and multi-scalar environmental forces. -- James Reath * Modernist Cultures *This gorgeously written book, interspersed with arresting photographs, has much to offer those interested in modernism, oceanic studies, queer studies, and ecocriticism. -- Sari Edelstein * H-Environment, H-Net Reviews *These works provide a timely reminder that we all remain at the mercy of the riptide currents rising inexorably around us. -- Ian Ellison * Times Literary Supplement *Modernism at the Beach creates important inroads between modernist studies and environmental humanities. It offers a rich archive that documents beaches’ many, often contradictory faces and histories. Perhaps its greatest strength lies in the difficult, sometimes unresolved questions it raises about queer ecologies and environmental commons; such questions are a gift to scholars seeking new ground in these blossoming fields. -- Austin Lillywhite * ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment *Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: The Beach Effect1. Proust’s Leap 2. Intertidal Woolf3. Carson’s Quiet Bower4. McKay’s Dream Port5. Tidewrack, Beckett to SundeNotesWorks CitedIndex

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Book SynopsisElena Fratto examines the relationship between literature and medicine at the turn of the twentieth century. She traces how writers including Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Bulgakov responded to medical and public health prescriptions, arguing that they provide alternative ways of thinking about the limits and possibilities of human agency and free will.Trade ReviewA significant contribution to the growing field of medical humanities and its applications to Russian literary and cultural studies, Fratto’s book makes striking connections between narratives written a century ago and the most pressing concerns in today’s medical ethics. Engaging, informative, and inspired. -- Julia Vaingurt, coeditor of The Human Reimagined: Posthumanism in RussiaMoving fluidly between modern medicine and Russian literature, Fratto explores a vital question: Who authors medical narratives? Focused on questions of plot and agency, her subtle analyses reveal how physicians develop their ideas about disease, entrepreneurs market meanings of health, and patients assert their voices to narrate their own medical storylines. -- David S. Jones, author of Broken Hearts: The Tangled History of Cardiac CareThis elegant book stages nothing less than a Slavic studies intervention in medical humanities—and vice versa. In the process, Fratto draws myriad revelatory connections between the writings of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Bulgakov, among others, and such present-day concerns as medical ethics, disability, posthumanism, and the Covid-19 pandemic. In short, Medical Storyworlds is a triumph. -- José Alaniz, author of Death, Disability, and the Superhero: The Silver Age and BeyondAn original and thought-provoking study . . . Fratto’s lively book provides compelling new interpretations of canonical works of Russian literature, and it manages to put the discipline of Slavic Studies into a productive dialogue with contemporary Medical Humanities. * Journal of Medical Humanities *[A] fascinating, very well-written, and timely book. * Modern Language Review *[A] nuanced and richly interdisciplinary study. * The Russian Review *Fratto’s expansive source base, including Russian, French, and Italian texts, along with her command of the theoretical literature, gives us a new platform from which the medical humanities can continue to develop. * Modern Language Quarterly *Fratto’s absorbing, timely study will be invaluable for scholars, the general reader, and anyone who is interested not only in Russian and European literatures, but also, in the nuanced ways medical narratives shape human lives, and vice versa. * Slavic Review *This book will be useful to anyone interested in medical discourse, as well as to students of the medical humanities, a field that reaffirms the need to pay attention to patient narratives, as well as to sickness-related fiction as a whole. * H-Sci-Med-Tech *Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. The Grand Finale: Death as the Revelatory Ending2. End of Story: Temporality and the Prospect of the Ending in Ivan Ilych, Anna Karenina, and (Potential) Cancer Patients3. Medical Enlightenment in the Early 1920s: Rhetoric and Diffused Authorship in Jules Romains’s Knock and Soviet Public-Health Campaigns4. Time, Agency, and Bodily Glands: Metabolic Storytelling in Italo Svevo and Mikhail BulgakovAfterwordNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisElena Fratto examines the relationship between literature and medicine at the turn of the twentieth century. She traces how writers including Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Bulgakov responded to medical and public health prescriptions, arguing that they provide alternative ways of thinking about the limits and possibilities of human agency and free will.Trade ReviewA significant contribution to the growing field of medical humanities and its applications to Russian literary and cultural studies, Fratto’s book makes striking connections between narratives written a century ago and the most pressing concerns in today’s medical ethics. Engaging, informative, and inspired. -- Julia Vaingurt, coeditor of The Human Reimagined: Posthumanism in RussiaMoving fluidly between modern medicine and Russian literature, Fratto explores a vital question: Who authors medical narratives? Focused on questions of plot and agency, her subtle analyses reveal how physicians develop their ideas about disease, entrepreneurs market meanings of health, and patients assert their voices to narrate their own medical storylines. -- David S. Jones, author of Broken Hearts: The Tangled History of Cardiac CareThis elegant book stages nothing less than a Slavic studies intervention in medical humanities—and vice versa. In the process, Fratto draws myriad revelatory connections between the writings of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Bulgakov, among others, and such present-day concerns as medical ethics, disability, posthumanism, and the Covid-19 pandemic. In short, Medical Storyworlds is a triumph. -- José Alaniz, author of Death, Disability, and the Superhero: The Silver Age and BeyondAn original and thought-provoking study . . . Fratto’s lively book provides compelling new interpretations of canonical works of Russian literature, and it manages to put the discipline of Slavic Studies into a productive dialogue with contemporary Medical Humanities. * Journal of Medical Humanities *[A] fascinating, very well-written, and timely book. * Modern Language Review *[A] nuanced and richly interdisciplinary study. * The Russian Review *Fratto’s expansive source base, including Russian, French, and Italian texts, along with her command of the theoretical literature, gives us a new platform from which the medical humanities can continue to develop. * Modern Language Quarterly *Fratto’s absorbing, timely study will be invaluable for scholars, the general reader, and anyone who is interested not only in Russian and European literatures, but also, in the nuanced ways medical narratives shape human lives, and vice versa. * Slavic Review *This book will be useful to anyone interested in medical discourse, as well as to students of the medical humanities, a field that reaffirms the need to pay attention to patient narratives, as well as to sickness-related fiction as a whole. * H-Sci-Med-Tech *Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. The Grand Finale: Death as the Revelatory Ending2. End of Story: Temporality and the Prospect of the Ending in Ivan Ilych, Anna Karenina, and (Potential) Cancer Patients3. Medical Enlightenment in the Early 1920s: Rhetoric and Diffused Authorship in Jules Romains’s Knock and Soviet Public-Health Campaigns4. Time, Agency, and Bodily Glands: Metabolic Storytelling in Italo Svevo and Mikhail BulgakovAfterwordNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisMalaysian Chinese (Mahua) literature is marginalized on several fronts. Cheow Thia Chan demonstrates that Mahua authors’ grasp of their marginality in the world-Chinese literary space has been the impetus for—rather than a barrier to—aesthetic inventiveness.Trade ReviewCheow Thia Chan’s rich and illuminating book explores how the multiple marginalizations of Malaysian Chinese literature have driven rather than delimited its inventiveness. Arguing compellingly against borders and territoriality, Chan shows how fiction consistently unrewarded on the global stage actually possesses the power to remap the contours of world literature. -- Margaret Hillenbrand, author of Literature, Modernity, and the Practice of Resistance: Japanese and Taiwanese Fiction, 1960-1990Malaysian Crossings makes a compelling, historically informed case for a multiscalar retheorizing of modern Chinese literature attentive to place. Chan deftly reassembles Malaysian Chinese literature as a linguistically and nationally fungible body of texts and authors whose intercultural insights and transregional framings creatively upscale locational marginality to produce world literature. -- Brian Bernards, author of Writing the South Seas: Imagining the Nanyang in Chinese and Southeast Asian Postcolonial LiteratureThis beautifully written book reexamines Sinophone Malaysia as a site of multidirectional literary production that has facilitated a rethinking of modern Chinese literature as world literature. It will be extremely useful to scholars and students in Sinophone studies, modern Chinese literary studies, Southeast Asian studies, and comparative and world literature. -- E. K. Tan, author of Rethinking Chineseness: Translational Sinophone Identities in the Nanyang Literary WorldThis refreshing study restores Malaysia to its rightful place in Chinese, Asian, and world literature as a vibrant center of multiple literary crossings. Malaysia’s complex historical, cultural, and linguistic inheritances have always defied conventional frameworks that can’t see past the nation-state, and Malaysian Crossings finally begins to do justice to that complexity. -- Rachel Leow, author of Taming Babel: Language in the Making of MalaysiaThis wide-ranging survey of Malaysian Chinese literature will serve both as an introduction for readers new to writing from the region as well as a thoughtful recontextualization for those already familiar, sparking unexpected connections and broadening the frame of reference. A highly readable account brimming with erudition and a genuine enjoyment of literature. -- Jeremy Tiang, winner of the Singapore Literature Prize for State of Emergency and 2022 Princeton University translator in residenceWith an illuminating epistemological framework and erudite textual analysis, Malaysian Crossings will inspire conversations in the fields of world literature, Sinophone studies, and Southeast Asian studies, as we continue to see exciting developments of contemporary Mahua literature. -- Li Wen Jessica Tan * Asian Studies Review *[Malaysian Crossings] should be required reading for graduate students working in Asian studies . . . [it] makes a compelling case for the expansive potential of global Chinese cultural studies by pointing out productive ways of creative engagement beyond the predictable ‘invariably writing back against China.’ -- Angie Chau * H-Asia *Positioning Mahua literature as world literature on account of – not despite – its marginality, the book is useful not only to scholars of sinophone, East, and Southeast Asian literatures but is also an innovative guide for those grappling with the politics of recognition and the place of minor literatures in a globalised world. -- Fiona Lee * Wasafiri Magazine *Chan mines the generative tensions produced by the imbricated conditions and pressures of Chineseness, nativism, nationalism, and diaspora . . . Invoking the concept of global marginality, Malaysian Crossings is a reminder that no condition of centrality or marginality should be treated as a given, encouraging readers to think about the local as not always national and the global as more than transnational. -- Eunice Lim * Southeast Asian Studies *Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsA Note on Romanization, Characters, and TranslationIntroduction: Southern Crossings: The Covert Globality of Mahua Literature1. Doubly Local: Lin Cantian and the Contrapuntal Genesis of Mahua Novelistic Fiction2. Channeling Exemplarity: Han Suyin’s Bifocal Writing Practice in Malaya3. Cosmopolitan Visions of Drift: Wang Anyi and the Relay of Diasporic Literary Imagination4. Off-Center Articulations: Li Yongping’s Transregional Literary ProductionCoda: Always the Internal Other: Mahua Literature and the Recognition of AlterityNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisMalaysian Chinese (Mahua) literature is marginalized on several fronts. Cheow Thia Chan demonstrates that Mahua authors’ grasp of their marginality in the world-Chinese literary space has been the impetus for—rather than a barrier to—aesthetic inventiveness.Trade ReviewCheow Thia Chan’s rich and illuminating book explores how the multiple marginalizations of Malaysian Chinese literature have driven rather than delimited its inventiveness. Arguing compellingly against borders and territoriality, Chan shows how fiction consistently unrewarded on the global stage actually possesses the power to remap the contours of world literature. -- Margaret Hillenbrand, author of Literature, Modernity, and the Practice of Resistance: Japanese and Taiwanese Fiction, 1960-1990Malaysian Crossings makes a compelling, historically informed case for a multiscalar retheorizing of modern Chinese literature attentive to place. Chan deftly reassembles Malaysian Chinese literature as a linguistically and nationally fungible body of texts and authors whose intercultural insights and transregional framings creatively upscale locational marginality to produce world literature. -- Brian Bernards, author of Writing the South Seas: Imagining the Nanyang in Chinese and Southeast Asian Postcolonial LiteratureThis beautifully written book reexamines Sinophone Malaysia as a site of multidirectional literary production that has facilitated a rethinking of modern Chinese literature as world literature. It will be extremely useful to scholars and students in Sinophone studies, modern Chinese literary studies, Southeast Asian studies, and comparative and world literature. -- E. K. Tan, author of Rethinking Chineseness: Translational Sinophone Identities in the Nanyang Literary WorldThis refreshing study restores Malaysia to its rightful place in Chinese, Asian, and world literature as a vibrant center of multiple literary crossings. Malaysia’s complex historical, cultural, and linguistic inheritances have always defied conventional frameworks that can’t see past the nation-state, and Malaysian Crossings finally begins to do justice to that complexity. -- Rachel Leow, author of Taming Babel: Language in the Making of MalaysiaThis wide-ranging survey of Malaysian Chinese literature will serve both as an introduction for readers new to writing from the region as well as a thoughtful recontextualization for those already familiar, sparking unexpected connections and broadening the frame of reference. A highly readable account brimming with erudition and a genuine enjoyment of literature. -- Jeremy Tiang, winner of the Singapore Literature Prize for State of Emergency and 2022 Princeton University translator in residenceWith an illuminating epistemological framework and erudite textual analysis, Malaysian Crossings will inspire conversations in the fields of world literature, Sinophone studies, and Southeast Asian studies, as we continue to see exciting developments of contemporary Mahua literature. -- Li Wen Jessica Tan * Asian Studies Review *[Malaysian Crossings] should be required reading for graduate students working in Asian studies . . . [it] makes a compelling case for the expansive potential of global Chinese cultural studies by pointing out productive ways of creative engagement beyond the predictable ‘invariably writing back against China.’ -- Angie Chau * H-Asia *Positioning Mahua literature as world literature on account of – not despite – its marginality, the book is useful not only to scholars of sinophone, East, and Southeast Asian literatures but is also an innovative guide for those grappling with the politics of recognition and the place of minor literatures in a globalised world. -- Fiona Lee * Wasafiri Magazine *Chan mines the generative tensions produced by the imbricated conditions and pressures of Chineseness, nativism, nationalism, and diaspora . . . Invoking the concept of global marginality, Malaysian Crossings is a reminder that no condition of centrality or marginality should be treated as a given, encouraging readers to think about the local as not always national and the global as more than transnational. -- Eunice Lim * Southeast Asian Studies *Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsA Note on Romanization, Characters, and TranslationIntroduction: Southern Crossings: The Covert Globality of Mahua Literature1. Doubly Local: Lin Cantian and the Contrapuntal Genesis of Mahua Novelistic Fiction2. Channeling Exemplarity: Han Suyin’s Bifocal Writing Practice in Malaya3. Cosmopolitan Visions of Drift: Wang Anyi and the Relay of Diasporic Literary Imagination4. Off-Center Articulations: Li Yongping’s Transregional Literary ProductionCoda: Always the Internal Other: Mahua Literature and the Recognition of AlterityNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisStates of Disconnect examines the breakdown of transnationalism through readings of literary texts that express aversion to pairing ideas of China and India. Adhira Mangalagiri proposes the concept of “disconnect”: a crisis of transnationalism perceptible in moments when a connection is severed, interrupted, or disavowed.Trade ReviewHow does one reckon with the conditions of comparison in the act of comparison? Reading twentieth-century Chinese and Hindi texts side by side or against each other, this book offers a fascinating account of literary relations between China and India with invaluable insights on rupture, repulsion, and crisis of understanding. A bold experiment in method. -- Lydia Liu, Columbia UniversityThis deeply inspiring and important book explores the gray zones of literary relations. States of Disconnect subjects the easy pair of India and China to stringent scrutiny and in the process offers a new vocabulary and critical tools for comparative literature in a world full of tension and strife. -- Francesca Orsini, SOAS, University of LondonStates of Disconnect offers a novel approach by exploring how conditions of war, diplomatic breakdown, and international friction factor non-comparability into cross-cultural interpretation and genres of transnational literacy. Mangalagiri puts the brakes on forms of borderless criticism that homogenize distinct knowledge worlds and globalize literary learning without sufficient attention to the politics of difference. -- Emily Apter, New York UniversityDaring to step into a territory where few humanist scholars of China-India relations have tread, Mangalagiri focuses on the ‘disconnect’ and negativity that characterizes a great deal of this relationship in the modern literary realm. She demonstrates persuasively that the first step in literature is to confront and understand the disconnect and imagine the ethical possibilities of the relationship from this fuller understanding. -- Prasenjit Duara, Duke UniversityIn States of Disconnect, Mangalagiri portrays how China and India encountered each other against the global background of war and peace, imperialism and nationalism, and, above all, transculturation and its disavowal. Working against the grain of conventional modernity studies, States of Disconnect probes the ways in which circulation falls short and connectivity stumbles, as well as the options of alternative modernities arising therefrom. -- David Der-wei Wang, Harvard UniversityStates of Disconnect is a pioneering work of scholarship. It shifts the gaze to cultural production and emphasizes the ways in which the acts of writing and reading in both countries, and the views each developed of the other in these cultural practices, did not necessarily follow the prevailing political vicissitudes of the transnational relationship. -- Laura Brueck, author of Writing Resistance: The Rhetorical Imagination of Hindi Dalit LiteratureStates of Disconnect aims at no less than reshaping the paradigm of comparison and supplying a critical vocabulary for a new ethics of transnational relation. * MCLC Resource Center *Deeply serious in its disciplinary-cum-ethical commitments and confident in the possibilities afforded by critical reading [. . .], States of Disconnect is ultimately as inspiring as it is generative. * Critical Inquiry *Table of ContentsNote on Transliteration and TranslationIntroduction1. Anatomy of Antagonism: The Indian Policeman in Chinese Literature2. Revolution Redux: Agyeya’s China Stories3. Dialogue and Its Discontents: 1950s Cultural Diplomacy Untold4. Word and World in Crisis: Hindi Texts of 19625. On Correspondence: Lu Xun and PremchandConclusion: A Comparatist’s Guide to DisconnectAcknowledgmentsNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisShameem Black travels into unexpected realms of popular culture in English from India, its diaspora, and the West to explore and critique yoga as an exercise in cultural power.Trade ReviewShameem Black’s Flexible India provides an important new perspective on the complex politics of yoga in contemporary India. In a style that is lucid, incisive, and critically insightful, her analysis sheds light on how the practice of yoga, and claims to authority over its historical representation, are riven with contradictions that reinforce inequities and injustices. At the same time, yoga’s flexible multivocality animates the possibility of practice that transcends entrenched forms of exclusion, exploitation, and alienation. With deep empathy and critical reasoning, Black shows how the rigidity of India’s twenty-first-century modernity can be understood in terms that work out the tensions of nationalism and the contortions of neoliberalism. -- Joseph S. Alter, author of Yoga in Modern IndiaShameem Black invites us to reassess the idea of ‘yoga’ in the popular cultural imaginary. Her timely, thoughtful, and erudite study tackles notions of cultural appropriation, social inequality, and political critique, channeled through a wonderfully blended academic and creative endeavor. -- E. Dawson Varughese, author of author of Reading New India: Post-Millennial Indian Fiction in EnglishBlack’s richly textured analysis takes us on a journey across disciplines, genres, and lenses, highlighting crucial questions surrounding the meaning, value, and practice of yoga, all the while gloriously centering its messy multiplicity and internal contradictions. An ambitious, skillfully written book—and a truly edifying, rewarding read. -- Farah Godrej, author of Freedom Inside? Yoga and Meditation in the Carceral StateFlexible India is a stirringly intimate portrait of both the beauty and the vicissitudes of global yoga. Black expertly unfurls the complex ethical debates of modern yoga without relinquishing its generative possibilities for hope, imagination, and flexibility. A must read. -- Amanda Lucia, author of White Utopias: The Religious Exoticism of Transformational FestivalsFlexible India offers a powerful panorama of the paradoxes and transformative potential of yoga. Never reductive, Shameem Black lays bare painful contradictions in sensitive and compassionate prose. She interrogates power imbalances, cultural appropriation, and the possibility of positive transformation through yoga with integrity and bravery. -- Suzanne Newcombe, author of Yoga in Britain: Stretching Spirituality and Educating YogisTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsNote on TransliterationPrologue: The Bracelet1. Setting Up: Yoga’s Flexible Forms2. Conducting Mass Practice: India’s Vision for Yoga3. Aligning Both Hands: Yoga in Indian Fiction4. Assuming Corpse Pose: Yoga in U.S. Popular Culture5. Bending Over Backward: Yoga’s Precarious Work6. Framing New Parts: Yoga Through Diasporic Critique7. Lying Out: Spectral YogaEpilogue: The MoonNotesBibliographyIndex

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