Literary studies: fiction Books

Book SynopsisWhile news reports about Pakistan tend to cover Taliban attacks and bombings, and academics focus on security issues, the environment often takes a backseat in media reportage and scholarship. In particular, Pakistani women’s attachment to their environment and their environmental concerns are almost always ignored. Shazia Rahman traces the ways in which Pakistani women explore alternative, environmental modes of belonging, examines the vitality of place-based identities within Pakistani culture, and thereby contributes to evolving understandings of Pakistani women—in relation to both their environment and to various discourses of nation and patriarchy. Through an astute analysis of such works as Sabiha Sumar’s Khamosh Pani (2003), Mehreen Jabbar’s Ramchand Pakistani (2008), Sorayya Khan’s Noor (2006), Uzma Aslam Khan’s Trespassing (2003), and Kamila Shamsie’s Burnt Shadows (2009),Rahman illumTrade Review"Boldly focusing on eco-cosmopolitanism, vernacular and official landscapes, animalization, and bioregionalism, Rahman highlights the tensions between ecocriticism and feminism that have produced a vulnerable position for ecofeminism. The author's new perspective on postcolonial Pakistani studies is welcome."—M. Roy, Choice"As a welcome infusion of a new and urgent critical voice into Pakistani literary criticism, Place and Postcolonial Ecofeminism makes its most significant contribution to ecocriticism through its focus on the environments of Pakistan."—Cara Cilano, Bloomsbury Pakistan"Place and Postcolonial Ecofeminism fills an important gap in scholarship in not only Pakistani Literatures specifically, but South Asian Studies in general. It also significantly extends the scope of both feminist and ecocritical scholarship, offering an alternative vision of empowerment for women and the subdominant sections of society that eschews two competing, hegemonic, and limiting, frameworks based on religious nationalism and US imperialism. . . . This pioneering approach from an ecofeminist perspective is sure to pave the way for more such explorations."—Chitra Sankaran, ISLE"[Place and Postcolonial Ecofeminism] offers much to think about and discuss, including a greater engagement with social and ecological issues so important to Pakistan's development and climate change."—Muneeza Shamsie, Dawn“Shazia Rahman brings a fine literary critical sensibility to a postcolonial, ecofeminist reading of contemporary Pakistani novels and films. Her ethically charged book offers a fresh . . . engagement with cultural production from Pakistan, an enormously important part of South Asia that is nevertheless often neglected in postcolonial studies.”—Ananya Jahanara Kabir, author of Partition’s Post-Amnesias: 1947, 1971, and Modern South Asia“This is an urgent and consequential book on the deep entanglements between gender politics and environmental justice. Shazia Rahman brings into conversation for the first time an impressive array of ecological thought leaders and Pakistani writers and film makers. Impressive, vital work.”—Rob Nixon, author of Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor“By foregrounding attachments to Pakistan as a place—comprising land, sea, plants, and animals—Place and Postcolonial Ecofeminism probes the important but overlooked relationship between women and the environment through a critical analysis of patriarchal structures of land ownership and social control that underpin the political and moral economy of Pakistan. Reading novels and feature films against the grain from an ecological perspective reveals the myriad ways of environmental belonging experienced by women at key moments in Pakistan’s history. Innovative in its use of methodologies in environmental humanities and postcolonial analysis, Place and Postcolonial Ecofeminism is a welcome intervention to the incipient debate on women and ecological degradation in Pakistan and will enrich understandings of self, place, and belonging beyond the narrow confines of the postcolonial state’s official nationalism.”—Ayesha Jalal, Mary Richardson Professor of History and director of the Center for South Asian and Indian Ocean Studies at Tufts University “This book addresses the silence in the environmental humanities and in the academy regarding Pakistani women’s literary and cinematic fictions. Rahman conducts a nuanced analysis of Pakistani women’s lives, particularly in terms of how they engage with land, animals, ecology, and sense of place. She delves into the ways that Pakistani literature and cinema are revealing alternative, environmental ways of belonging that women create to counter dominant discourses of religious nationalism and global Islam. This book will be required reading not only among ecocritics, but among feminist, postcolonial, ethnic, Pakistani, and American studies scholars as well.”—Joni Adamson, professor of English and director of the Environmental Humanities Initiative at the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability at Arizona State University“Shazia Rahman constructively redirects much current scholarship on Pakistani literature and film. Her focus on women’s narratives, understood broadly, and the environment is not only timely in terms of scholarly trends but also necessary, given the increasingly stark risks Pakistanis and others around the world face due to environmental neglect and degradation.”—Cara Cilano, professor of English at Michigan State UniversityTable of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction: The Place That Is Pakistan 1. Punjab: Eco-cosmopolitan Feminism 2. Thar: Bioregionalism 3. Bengal: Vernacular Landscape 4. Karachi: Pakistani Eco-cosmopolitanism 5. Displacement: Animalization Conclusion: Justice for All Notes References Index

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Book SynopsisWhile news reports about Pakistan tend to cover Taliban attacks and bombings, and academics focus on security issues, the environment often takes a backseat in media reportage and scholarship. In particular, Pakistani women’s attachment to their environment and their environmental concerns are almost always ignored. Shazia Rahman traces the ways in which Pakistani women explore alternative, environmental modes of belonging, examines the vitality of place-based identities within Pakistani culture, and thereby contributes to evolving understandings of Pakistani women—in relation to both their environment and to various discourses of nation and patriarchy. Through an astute analysis of such works as Sabiha Sumar’s Khamosh Pani (2003), Mehreen Jabbar’s Ramchand Pakistani (2008), Sorayya Khan’s Noor (2006), Uzma Aslam Khan’s Trespassing (2003), and Kamila Shamsie’s Burnt Shadows (2009),Rahman illumTrade Review"Boldly focusing on eco-cosmopolitanism, vernacular and official landscapes, animalization, and bioregionalism, Rahman highlights the tensions between ecocriticism and feminism that have produced a vulnerable position for ecofeminism. The author's new perspective on postcolonial Pakistani studies is welcome."—M. Roy, Choice"As a welcome infusion of a new and urgent critical voice into Pakistani literary criticism, Place and Postcolonial Ecofeminism makes its most significant contribution to ecocriticism through its focus on the environments of Pakistan."—Cara Cilano, Bloomsbury Pakistan"Place and Postcolonial Ecofeminism fills an important gap in scholarship in not only Pakistani Literatures specifically, but South Asian Studies in general. It also significantly extends the scope of both feminist and ecocritical scholarship, offering an alternative vision of empowerment for women and the subdominant sections of society that eschews two competing, hegemonic, and limiting, frameworks based on religious nationalism and US imperialism. . . . This pioneering approach from an ecofeminist perspective is sure to pave the way for more such explorations."—Chitra Sankaran, ISLE"[Place and Postcolonial Ecofeminism] offers much to think about and discuss, including a greater engagement with social and ecological issues so important to Pakistan's development and climate change."—Muneeza Shamsie, Dawn“Shazia Rahman brings a fine literary critical sensibility to a postcolonial, ecofeminist reading of contemporary Pakistani novels and films. Her ethically charged book offers a fresh . . . engagement with cultural production from Pakistan, an enormously important part of South Asia that is nevertheless often neglected in postcolonial studies.”—Ananya Jahanara Kabir, author of Partition’s Post-Amnesias: 1947, 1971, and Modern South Asia“This is an urgent and consequential book on the deep entanglements between gender politics and environmental justice. Shazia Rahman brings into conversation for the first time an impressive array of ecological thought leaders and Pakistani writers and film makers. Impressive, vital work.”—Rob Nixon, author of Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor“By foregrounding attachments to Pakistan as a place—comprising land, sea, plants, and animals—Place and Postcolonial Ecofeminism probes the important but overlooked relationship between women and the environment through a critical analysis of patriarchal structures of land ownership and social control that underpin the political and moral economy of Pakistan. Reading novels and feature films against the grain from an ecological perspective reveals the myriad ways of environmental belonging experienced by women at key moments in Pakistan’s history. Innovative in its use of methodologies in environmental humanities and postcolonial analysis, Place and Postcolonial Ecofeminism is a welcome intervention to the incipient debate on women and ecological degradation in Pakistan and will enrich understandings of self, place, and belonging beyond the narrow confines of the postcolonial state’s official nationalism.”—Ayesha Jalal, Mary Richardson Professor of History and director of the Center for South Asian and Indian Ocean Studies at Tufts University “This book addresses the silence in the environmental humanities and in the academy regarding Pakistani women’s literary and cinematic fictions. Rahman conducts a nuanced analysis of Pakistani women’s lives, particularly in terms of how they engage with land, animals, ecology, and sense of place. She delves into the ways that Pakistani literature and cinema are revealing alternative, environmental ways of belonging that women create to counter dominant discourses of religious nationalism and global Islam. This book will be required reading not only among ecocritics, but among feminist, postcolonial, ethnic, Pakistani, and American studies scholars as well.”—Joni Adamson, professor of English and director of the Environmental Humanities Initiative at the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability at Arizona State University“Shazia Rahman constructively redirects much current scholarship on Pakistani literature and film. Her focus on women’s narratives, understood broadly, and the environment is not only timely in terms of scholarly trends but also necessary, given the increasingly stark risks Pakistanis and others around the world face due to environmental neglect and degradation.”—Cara Cilano, professor of English at Michigan State UniversityTable of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction: The Place That Is Pakistan 1. Punjab: Eco-cosmopolitan Feminism 2. Thar: Bioregionalism 3. Bengal: Vernacular Landscape 4. Karachi: Pakistani Eco-cosmopolitanism 5. Displacement: Animalization Conclusion: Justice for All Notes References Index

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Book Synopsis2020 Choice Outstanding Academic TitleSalvific Manhoodforegrounds the radical power of male intimacy and vulnerability in surveying each of James Baldwin’s six novels.Asserting that manhood and masculinity hold the potential for both tragedy and salvation, Ernest L. Gibson III highlights the complex and difficult emotional choices Baldwin’s men must make within their varied lives, relationships, and experiences.InSalvific Manhood, Gibson offers a new and compelling way to understand the hidden connections between Baldwin’s novels.Thematically daring and theoretically provocative, he presents a queering of salvation, a nuanced approach thatviewsredemption through the lenses of gender and sexuality. Exploring how fraternal crises develop out of sociopolitical forces and conditions,Salvific Manhoodtheorizes a spatiality of manhood, where spaces in between men are erased through expressions of intimacy and love.PosTrade Review"The author finds an edifying connection between the sanctuary the black church offered and the potential space of intimacy the body offered. Gibson engages in close readings of five seismic novels in the Baldwin canon, masterfully walking readers through the journey of John's forgotten birthday in Go Tell It on the Mountain and the streets of David's Paris in Giovanni's Room. This excellent study may interest those studying religion as well those in the disciplines of literature and cultural studies."—A. P. Pennino, Choice“Ernest L. Gibson III has given us a beautifully crafted, truly imaginative, and fresh approach to James Baldwin’s work. . . . [It] will be of interest to students and scholars of literary and cultural studies, queer studies, and even religious studies. This is truly an incredibly rich and creative work of scholarship that is not to be missed!”—Dwight A. McBride, coeditor of the James Baldwin Review “Salvific Manhood pioneers a timely and provocative discussion of James Baldwin’s revolutionary ideas on black masculinity. Professor Gibson reenvisions Baldwin’s novels through fraternal bonds between lovers, kin, and friends, elaborating politics of salvation that simultaneously trouble and bridge spirituality and the erotic.”—Magdalena J. Zaborowska, author of Me and My House: James Baldwin’s Last Decade in FranceTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: In Search of the Fraternal 1. Wrestling for Salvation: Denial, Longing, and the Beauty of Brotherhood in Go Tell It on the Mountain 2. Flight, Freedom, and Abjection: Fractured Manhood and Tragic Love in Giovanni’s Room 3. Alone in the Absurd: The Trope of Tragic Black Manhood in Another Country 4. Theatrics of Mask-ulinity: Radical Male Intimacy and Black Power in Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone 5. Concrete Jungles and the Carceral: Exploring Confinement and Imprisonment in If Beale Street Could Talk Conclusion: Somewhere in That Wreckage Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisLooking across the cultural landscape of the twenty-first century, its literature, film, television, comic books, and other media, we can see multiple examples of what Shelley S. Rees calls a “changeling western,” what others have called “weird westerns,” and what Michael K. Johnson refers to as “speculative westerns”—that is, hybrid western forms created by merging the western with one or more speculative genres or subgenres, including science fiction, fantasy, horror, and alternate history.Speculative Wests investigates both speculative westerns and other speculative texts that feature western settings. Just as “western” refers both to a genre and a region, Johnson’s narrative involves a study of both genre and place, a study of the “speculative Wests” that have begun to emerge in contemporary texts such as the zombie-threatened California of Justina Ireland’s Deathless Divide (202Trade Review"This book will be of interest to readers from genre studies and beyond, notably those from ecocriticism, migration studies, Black studies, Indigenous studies, and even trauma studies."—Adrianna Michell, H-Environment"Johnson manages to give form, and conceptual cohesion to what most current criticism has only examined in studies with a narrower focus. For this, scholars and readers of westerns, science fiction, and speculative fiction, owe him a debt of gratitude."—Christopher Conway, Journal of Popular Culture"Johnson's book is eye-opening and could be useful for writers or readers who want to be challenged by perspectives on Western fiction that they might not have previously considered."—Jeffrey J. Mariotte, Roundup Magazine“Michael K. Johnson’s Speculative Wests has a unique feel in its cogent analysis of the western motif in recent speculative fiction written by BIPOC authors between 2016 and 2020. He reinvigorates frontier mythology with politically charged genre critiques regarding time travel, alternate history, and future wars linked to the American West and its history.”—Isiah Lavender III, author of Race in American Science Fiction and Afrofuturism Rising: The Literary Prehistory of a Movement“A timely and astute study that enlarges our understanding of U.S. ethnic futurisms through conceptualizing ‘speculative westerns’: new hybridized forms suturing the western and speculative genres. Through incisive close readings, Michael K. Johnson charts alternative spatial and temporal trajectories of the American West and U.S.-Mexico borderlands.”—Cathryn J. Merla-Watson, coeditor of Altermundos: Latin@ Speculative Literature, Film, and Popular Culture“The deft analysis of race as it intersects with and challenges genre traditions—the western and speculative fiction—makes this an extremely timely and important book.”—Sara L. Spurgeon, author of Exploding the Western: Myths of Empire on the Postmodern Frontier“By looking at speculative wests that ‘disrupt’ authenticity and truth claims latent in the mythos of the western, this book provides another example of the contemporary relevance of the western as part of a hybrid genre that enables meditations on past, present, and future.”—Rebecca M. Lush, professor of literature and writing studies at California State University–San MarcosTable of ContentsIntroduction 1. Race, Time Travel, and the Western 2. Trauma, Time Travel, and Legacies of Violence 3. Alternate Cartographies of the West(ern) in Indigenous Futurist Works 4. Speculative Borderlands I: Mestizaje, Temporality, and History 5. Speculative Borderlands II: Time Travel and Cartographies of Trauma 6. Speculative Slave Narrative Westerns Afterword Notes Index

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Book SynopsisIn The New Nancy Jeff Karnicky explores how today’s successful daily comic strips are flexible and relatable, and he uses Olivia Jaimes’s 2018 reboot of the long-running comic strip Nancy to illustrate the ways that contemporary comics have adapted to twenty-first-century technology and culture. Because comic creation has become part of the gig economy, flexible comics must be accessible to both online and print readers, and they must quickly grab readers’ attention. Flexible comic creators like Jaimes must focus both on the work of producing comics and on building an audience. Daily comics also must form a relatable connection with readers. Most contemporary comic creators cultivate an online persona through which they engage readers with specific identities, beliefs, and expectations. This work might form a mutually beneficial bond that results in a successful daily comic strip, but it risks becoming fraught, toxic, and sometimeTrade Review“Extremely impressive. Jeff Karnicky demonstrates why Olivia Jaimes’s Nancy is a work of central importance. The book offers insights on the materiality of contemporary comics, including their labor conditions, their publication practices, and the ways they reflect current events such as the COVID-19 pandemic. . . . An important advance in the scholarly conversation about comics.”—Aaron Kashtan, author of Between Pen and Pixel: Comics, Materiality, and the Book of the FutureTable of ContentsList of Illustrations Series Editors’ Introduction Acknowledgments Introduction. “Going In on That Cornbread”: Becoming Flexible, Becoming #Relatable (April 9, 2018) 1. “Cash Preferred”: Olivia Jaimes’s Working Persona (November 8, 2019) 2. “New Year, New Me!”: Nancy’s Representations (June 4, 2018) 3. “But I Broke the Fourth Wall!”: Nancy’s Object Humor (January 20, 2019) 4. “You’ve Got Your Mask, Right?”: Nancy’s Pandemic (November 3, 2020) Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisReveals the largely unknown and rather surprising history of the British superhero. It is often thought that Britain did not have its own superheroes, yet Murray demonstrates that there were a great many in Britain and that they were often used as a way to comment on the relationship between Britain and America.Trade ReviewMurray writes in an engaging, fluid manner and from a clearly evident base of knowledge and experience. . . . The British Superhero is an easy book to recommend for those interested in gaining a somewhat different perspective on superhero comic history.""- Bill Capossere, Fantasy Literature;""Chris Murray’s The British Superhero does a superb job of chronicling the surprisingly compelling history of comics in England and defining the industry’s origins in nineteenth-century pop culture (boys’ weeklies, penny dreadfuls) and in the sci-fi/fantasy ‘protosuperheroes’ of 1930s pulp-fiction protagonists: the Scarlet Bat, the Black Whip, the Flaming Avenger, and Karga the Clutcher.""- Jarret Keene, Popular Culture Review

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Book SynopsisLarry Hama (b. 1949) is the writer and cartoonist who helped develop the 1980s G.I. Joe toyline and created a new generation of comic book fans from the tie-in comic book. Through many interviews with Hama, this volume reveals that G.I. Joe is far from his greatest feat as an artist.

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Book SynopsisFocusing on representations of conflict in American comics after the Vietnam War, Harriet Earle claims that the comics form is uniquely able to show traumatic experience by representing events as viscerally as possible.

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Book SynopsisMany studies have examined the ways in which folklore has provided inspiration for other forms of culture, especially literature and cinema. In Superman in Myth and Folklore, Daniel Peretti explores the meaning of folklore inspired by popular culture, focusing not on the Man of Steel's origins but on the culture he has helped create.

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Book SynopsisContributions by Torsten Caeners, Phoebe Chen, Mathieu Donner, Shannon Hervey, Angela S. Insenga, Patricia Kennon, Maryna Matlock, Ferne Merrylees, Lars Schmeink, Anita Tarr, Tony M. Vinci, and Donna R. WhiteFor centuries, humanism has provided a paradigm for what it means to be human: a rational, unique, unified, universal, autonomous being. Recently, however, a new philosophical approach, posthumanism, has questioned these assumptions, asserting that being human is not a fixed state but one always dynamic and evolving. Restrictive boundaries are no longer in play, and we do not define who we are by delineating what we are not (animal, machine, monster). There is no one aspect that makes a being human--self-awareness, emotion, artistic expression, or problem-solving--since human characteristics reside in other species along with shared DNA. Instead, posthumanism looks at the ways our bodies, intelligence, and behavior connect and interact with the environment, technology, an

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Book SynopsisNigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (b. 1977) is undoubtedly one of the most widely acclaimed African writers of the twenty-first century. Best known for her insightful fiction, viral TED talks, and essays on feminism, she is also a notoriously outspoken intellectual. As she puts it in an interview with Lia Grainger, in her characteristically straightforward style: 'I have things to say and I'll say them.'Conversations with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is the first collection of interviews with the writer. Covering fifteen years of conversations, the interviews start with the publication of Adichie's first novel, Purple Hibiscus (2003), and end in late 2018, by which time Adichie had become one of the most prominent figures on the international literary scene. As both scholars and passionate readers of the author's work are bound to find out, the opinions shared by Adichie in interviews over the years coalesce into a fascinating portrait that presents both abidin

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Book SynopsisConversations with Colum McCann brings together eighteen interviews with a world-renowned fiction writer. Ranging from his 1994 literary debut, Fishing the Sloe-Black River, to a previously unpublished interview conducted in 2016, these interviews represent the development as well as the continuation of McCann''s interests. The number and length of the later conversations attest to his star-power. Let the Great World Spin earned him the National Book Award and promises to become a major motion picture. His most recent novel, TransAtlantic, has awed readers with its dynamic yoking of the 1845-46 visit of Frederick Douglass to Ireland, the 1919 first nonstop transatlantic flight of Alcock and Brown, and Senator George Mitchell''s 1998 efforts to achieve a peace accord in Northern Ireland. An extensive interview by scholar Cécile Maudet is included here, as is an interview by John Cusatis, who wrote Understanding Colum McCann, the first extensive critica

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Book SynopsisBesides being one of America’s most celebrated living authors, George Saunders is also an excellent interview subject. In the fourteen interviews included in this volume, covering nearly twenty years of his career, the Booker Prize-winning author provides insight into his writing process and craft, alongside nuanced interpretations of his own work.

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Book SynopsisPresents scholarship by noted Faulkner studies scholar Robert W. Hamblin. The twenty-one essays present a variety of approaches to Faulkner’s work. While acknowledging Faulkner as the quintessential southern writer - particularly in his treatment of race - the essays examine his work in relation to American and even international contexts.

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Book SynopsisPresents scholarship by noted Faulkner studies scholar Robert W. Hamblin. The twenty-one essays present a variety of approaches to Faulkner’s work. While acknowledging Faulkner as the quintessential southern writer - particularly in his treatment of race - the essays examine his work in relation to American and even international contexts.

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Book Synopsis

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Book SynopsisGod only knows how many diverse, captivating impressions and thoughts evoked by these impressions... pass in a single day. If it were only possible to render them in such a way that I could easily read myself and that others could read me as I do... Such was the desire of the young Tolstoy. Although he knew that this narrative utopiaturning the totality of his life into a bookwould remain unfulfilled, Tolstoy would spend the rest of his life attempting to achieve it. Who, What Am I? is an account of Tolstoy''s lifelong attempt to find adequate ways to represent the self, to probe its limits and, ultimately, to arrive at an identity not based on the bodily self and its accumulated life experience.This book guides readers through the voluminous, highly personal nonfiction writings that Tolstoy produced from the 1850s until his death in 1910. The variety of these texts is enormous, including diaries, religious tracts, personal confessions, letters, autobiographical fragments, anTrade ReviewOffers a rare exploration into the internal world of Tolstoy by examining his nonfictional, first-person writings, including diaries, letters, reminiscences, autobiographical and confessional statements, and essays.... Paperno makes an invaluable contribution to Tolstoy scholarship. -- R. A. Erb * CHOICE *Paperno reads all his [Tolstoy’s] writings in relation to the central project of his life: the transformation of his life into a book that would teach others how to live.... ‘Who, What Am I?’ is an important book that will become a standard source for students, general readers and scholars alike. * SLAVONIC AND EAST EUROPEAN REVIEW *Paperno deftly shows how Tolstoi's attempt to write an autobiography failed, but his perceived failure at capturing the moral, philosophical, and technical issues accurately becomes a testament to his literary honesty (102). "Who, What Am I?" is highly important for any Tolstoi researcher, as it brings together the whole of his writings dealing with the exploration of the self. -- Radha Balasubramanian * Slavic Review *This is a relatively short book, yet it is rich in content, taking on some of the most important and challenging problems Tolstoy faced as a writer and thinker. [Irina Paperno] draws on a full range of Tolstoy's nonfiction writings from the 1850s until his death in 1910: diaries, letters, reminiscences, autobiographical and confessional statements, essays, and religious tracts. In addition, her book is informed by vast reading in other sources, primary and secondary. -- Randall A. Poole * The Russian Review *Table of ContentsIntroductionChapter 1. "So That I Could Easily Read Myself": Tolstoy's Early DiariesTolstoy Starts a Diary—The Moral Vision of Self and the Temporal Order of Narrative—What Is Time? Cultural Precedents—“A History of Yesterday”— Time and Narrative—The Dream: The Hidden Recesses of Time—What Am I? The Young Tolstoy Defines Himself—What Am I? Cultural PrecedentsInterlude: Between Personal Documents and FictionFrom Diaries to Childhood: Tolstoy Becomes a Writer (1852)—“I Think I Will Never Write Again”: Tolstoy Attempts to Renounce Literature (1859)—“I . . . Don’t Even Think about the Accursed Lit-t-terature and Lit-t-terateurs”: Tolstoy Renounces Literature Again (1870); and Again (1874–75)Chapter 2. “To Tell One’s Faith Is Impossible. . . . How to Tell That Which I Live By. I’ll Tell You, All the Same. . . .” Tolstoy in His Correspondence“What Is My Life? What Am I?”: Tolstoy’s Philosophical Dialogue with Nikolai Strakhov—“I Wish that You, Instead of Reading Anna Kar [ enina ], Would Finish It. . . .”—“In the Form of Catechism,” “In the Form of a Dialogue”—To Tell One’s Life—Rousseau and His Profession/Confession—The Parting of Ways: Tolstoy Writes His Confession, and Strakhov Continues to Confess in His Letters to TolstoyChapter 3. Tolstoy’s Confession : What Am I?Tolstoy Publishes his Confession—The Conversion Narrative: Excursus on the Genre—Tolstoy’s Confession : Step by Step—Tolstoy’s Confession Related to Rousseau’s and Augustine’s—After Confession: “Presenting Christ’s Teaching as Something New after 1,800 Years of Christianity”—Coda: Tolstoy’s InfluenceChapter 4. “To Write My Life ”: Tolstoy Tries, and Fails, to Produce a Memoir or AutobiographyThe Author Biography—“My Life”: “On the Basis of My Own Memories”—“Reminiscences”: “More Useful Than All That Artistic Prattle with Which the Twelve Volumes of My Works Are Filled”—“Reminiscences”: “I Cannot Provide a Coherent Description of Events and States of Mind”—“The Green Stick”: “Où Suis-Je? Pourquoi Suis-Je? Que Suis-Je?”—Tolstoy and the Autobiographical TraditionChapter 5. “What Should We Do Then?”: Tolstoy on Self and Other“Why Have You, a Man from a Different World, Stopped near Us? Who Are You?”—Master and Slave: Tolstoy Rewrites Hegel—Tolstoy and the Washerwoman—The Order of Things: The Church, the State, the Arts and Sciences—“Master and Man”—Coda: Nonparticipation in EvilChapter 6. “I Felt a Completely New Liberation from Personality”: Tolstoy’s Late DiariesTolstoy Resumes his Diary—The Temporal Order of Narrative: The Last Day—“On Life and Death ”—The Diary as a Spiritual Exercise—“I, the Body, Is Such a Disgusting Chamber Pot”—“I Am Conscious of Myself Being Conscious of Myself Being Conscious of Myself. . . .”—“I Have Lost the Memory of Everything, Almost Everything. . . . How Can One Not Rejoice at the Loss of Memory?”—Sleeping, Dreaming, and Awakening—Tolstoy’s Dreams—Dreams: The World beyond Time and Representation—The Book of life: “It Is Written on Time”—The Circle of Reading: “To Replace the Consciousness of Leo Tolstoy with the Consciousness of All Humankind”—“The Death of Socrates”—Tolstoy’s DeathAppendix: Russian QuotationsNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisIn Stanley Corngold's view, the themes and strategies of Kafka's fiction are generated by a tension between his concern for writing and his growing sense of its arbitrary character. Analyzing Kafka's work in light of the necessity of form, which is also a merely formal necessity, Corngold uncovers the fundamental paradox of Kafka's art and life. The first section of the book shows how Kafka's rhetoric may be understood as the daring project of a man compelled to live his life as literature. In the central part of the book, Corngold reflects on the place of Kafka within the modern tradition, discussing such influential precursors of Cervantes, Flaubert, and Nietzsche, whose works display a comparable narrative disruption. Kafka's distinctive narrative strategies, Corngold points out, demand interpretation at the same time they resist it. Critics of Kafka, he says, must be aware that their approaches are guided by the principles that Kafka's fiction identifies, dramatizes, and rejectsTrade ReviewThe remarkable convergence of form and content in this book brings it close to a work of art. -- Steven Taubeneck * German Quarterly *For those readers who have admired Stanley Corngold’s essays on Kafka this volume will be particularly welcome. It collects his work on Kafka written over the past two decades. Corngold is at all times concerned with the issue of writing and often with figures (metaphor, chiasmus) at work in Kafka’s prose. This single-mindedness of purpose produces a coherence in the volume and enables Corngold to do what he does best: rhetorical and philosophical analysis of specific words and passages and their implications for Kafka’s fictional logic. -- Robert C. Holub * Comparative Literature *

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Book SynopsisIn Hunting Nature, Thomas P. Hodge explores Ivan Turgenev''s relationship to nature through his conception, description, and practice of huntingthe most unquenchable passion of his life. Informed by an ecocritical perspective, Hodge takes an approach that is equal parts interpretive and documentarian, grounding his observations thoroughly in Russian cultural and linguistic context and a wide range of Turgenev''s fiction, poetry, correspondence, and other writings. Included within the book are some of Turgenev''s important writings on naturenever previously translated into English. Turgenev, who is traditionally identified as a chronicler of Russia''s ideological struggles, is presented in Hunting Nature as an expert naturalist whose intimate knowledge of flora and fauna deeply informed his view of philosophy, politics, and the role of literature in society. Ultimately, Hodge argues that we stand to learn a great deal about Turgenev''s thought and complex literarTrade ReviewTurgenev (1818–83) was a passionate, lifelong hunter, and in this scholarly work, Hodge (Wellesley College) argues that hunting greatly affected Turgenev's work. In making his case, Hodge thoroughly examines Turgenev's writings—mainly novels and short fiction but also other types, such as prose poems and letters. * Choice *A new book on Ivan Turgenev, a writer who has recently been a focus of renewed scholarly attention, is bound to excite interest. That is all the more the case for Thomas Hodge's monograph, which is elegantly written, beautifully produced, lovingly illustrated, and ambitious in its overarching claim. * The Russian Review *Hunting Nature: Ivan Turgenev and the Organic World is, quite simply, the best analysis of Turgenev yet written. It captures his essence, it is also, incidentally, a fascinating history of Russian field sports. At its core, however, Hunting Nature addresses one of the central preoccupations of our time: humanity's engagement with, and alienation from, the natural world. Most of us in today's climate live detached from the land, and many of today's intelligentsia, presumably a majority, would regard with abhorrence the hunting of animals for pleasure. For these reasons we have tended to overlook Turgenev's hunting and to get his writing fundamentally wrong. In Hodge's words, 'if we ignore the gun, we will remain partially deaf to the lyre.' Precisely because I am not a hunting person, I know I shall treasure Thomas P. Hodge's book and return to it as a guide not only to Ivan Turgenev, but also to the mindset of the past. * Contemporary Western Rusistika *Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Hunting Writer: An Ecocritical Approach 1. Catching Nature by the Tail 2. The Gun before the Lyre: Turgenev Afield 3. "A Different Kind of Game": Notes of a Hunter 4. Thinking Oneself into Nature: The Aksakov Reviews and Their Aftermath 5. Nature and Nidification: "Journey to the Forest-Belt," Rudin, A Gentry Nest 6. Life at the Lek: On the Eve, "First Love," Fathers and Children Conclusion: I'm a Sportsman": Deviations and Doubts

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewScholars and readers interested in regional culture will benefit from the text, as will those who are studying contemporary entries into American gothic nonfiction. Recommended for classrooms in creative writing, sociology, anthropology, and American studies. * Choice *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Middle American Gothic and the Haunt of Home Part I: Legacies 1. Life in Sunnier Climes 2. Playing Ball for the Team of the Dead 3. Springtime on the Prairie: A Middle American Gothic Part II: Visitations 4. The Promise of New Blood 5. Pitchforks and Pies 6. The Casket-maker's Son 7. Death by Mail 8. Life and Death in Oz 9. Exhuming the Regionalist Body 10. Dredge: A Middle American Gothic Part III: Resurrections 11. Ghost Players 12. Cornfield Cathedrals 13. Dovesong: A Middle American Dirge Afterword: Life after Death

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Book SynopsisMarvel Comics in the 1970s explores a forgotten chapter in the story of the rise of comics as an art form. Bridging Marvel''s dizzying innovations and the birth of the underground comics scene in the 1960s and the rise of the prestige graphic novel and postmodern superheroics in the 1980s, Eliot Borenstein reveals a generation of comic book writers whose work at Marvel in the 1970s established their own authorial voice within the strictures of corporate comics.Through a diverse cast of heroes (and the occasional antihero)Black Panther, Shang-Chi, Deathlok, Dracula, Killraven, Man-Thing, and Howard the Duckwriters such as Steve Gerber, Doug Moench, and Don McGregor made unprecedented strides in exploring their characters'' inner lives. Visually, dynamic action was still essential, but the real excitement was taking place inside their heroes'' heads. Marvel Comics in the 1970s highlights the brilliant and sometimes gloriously imperfect creations thatTrade ReviewMarvel Comics in the 1970s is a detailed, wonky examination of a significant period in the history of Marvel Comics for die-hard comics fans and scholars of the graphic novel. * Kirkus Reviews *Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Best Marvel Comic of the 1970s 1. Inside Out: Stan Lee and the Drama of the Visible Self 2. Everyday Transcendence: Steve Englehart and the Quest for Selfhood 3. Crouching Tiger, Running Commentary: Doug Moench on the Margins of Marvel 4. Blood Will Tell: Marv Wolfman's Tomb of Dracula 5. Bodies and Words: Don McGregor's Tortured Romantic Individualism 6. Subjectivity and Its Discontents: Steve Gerber and the Uses of Disenchantment Coda: Claremont Rising

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Book SynopsisThis book traces American writers' contributions and responses to the War on Poverty. Its title comes from the 1964 Opportunity Act, which established a network of federally funded Community Action Agencies that encouraged "maximum feasible participation" by the poor. With this phrase, the Johnson administration provided its imprimatur for an emerging model of professionalism that sought to eradicate boundaries between professionals and their clients—a model that appealed to writers, especially African Americans and Chicanos/as associated with the cultural nationalisms gaining traction in the inner cities. These writers privileged artistic process over product, rejecting conventions that separated writers from their audiences. "Participatory professionalism," however, drew on a social scientific conception of poverty that proved to be the paradigm's undoing: the culture of poverty thesis popularized by Oscar Lewis, Michael Harrington, and Daniel Moynihan. For writers and policy experts associated with the War on Poverty, this thesis described the cultural gap that they hoped to close. Instead, it eventually led to the dismantling of the welfare state. Ranging from the 1950s to the present, the book explores how writers like Jack Kerouac, Amiri Baraka, Gwendolyn Brooks, Oscar Zeta Acosta, Alice Walker, Philip Roth, and others exposed the War on Poverty's contradictions during its heyday and kept its legacy alive in the decades that followed.Trade Review"The works analyzed here—many of which I have taught often and know well—come alive in new ways as Stephen Schryer puts them in conversation with each other and with their historical era. Here's one reliable sign of success: I am sure that I will read these texts differently from now on." -- Carlo Rotella * Boston College *"Stephen Schryer introduces new research into the literature of poverty, demonstrating how a generation of writers engaged with the ideals and problems of welfare-state liberalism. Well-written and wide-ranging, his book shows that confronting poverty alters literary discourse, just as it fractures assumptions based on cultural identity and political sensibility." -- Gavin Jones * Stanford University *Table of ContentsContents and AbstractsIntroduction: Maximum Feasible Participation chapter abstractFocusing on the African American poet and playwright Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones), the Introduction explores links between 1950s and 1960s process literature and the Community Action Program. Baraka's Black Arts Repertory Theatre and School (BARTS) was funded through the War on Poverty, and his version of process art fulfilled the participatory requirements of the Community Action Program. Both Baraka and many welfare activists allied with the Community Action Program also drew on a binary conception of class culture popularized by the post–World War II counterculture and liberal social science. This binary conception produced two figures that alternately incited and frustrated literary and social work efforts to bridge the gap between the middle class and the poor: the juvenile delinquent and the welfare mother. 1Jack Kerouac's Delinquent Art chapter abstractThis chapter puts the Beat writer Jack Kerouac in conversation with 1950s sociologists and psychologists interested in juvenile delinquency. These social scientists used the delinquent to develop ideas that would culminate in the class culture paradigm of the 1960s. Kerouac's fiction prefigures this paradigm, drawing on the work of Oswald Spengler to distinguish between lower-class minority and middle-class white cultures in the United States. In autobiographical novels like Maggie Cassidy, On the Road, and Dr. Sax, Kerouac imagines the delinquent as a self-divided figure, alienated from the traditional lower class and unable to adapt to the new demands of the rising professional class. His version of process art replicates this division, offering its readers a failed synthesis of middlebrow and avant-garde literature. 2Black Arts and the Great Society chapter abstractThis chapter discusses two Black Arts writers who benefited from War on Poverty patronage: Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) and Gwendolyn Brooks. In The System of Dante's Hell and In the Mecca, the two writers developed distinct versions of participatory art. Like much of Baraka's Beat-period work, The System of Dante's Hell thematizes his dissatisfaction with the white counterculture and desire to create art that could connect him with black urban audiences. However, the novel draws on the counterculture's essentialist conception of lower-class culture in ways that would continue to shape Baraka's cultural nationalist output of the late 1960s. In contrast, Brooks's In the Mecca rejects the immersive drama that defines Baraka's Black Arts. Inspired by her Community Action Program–sponsored work with Chicago's Blackstone Rangers, the collection insists that minority poets use the resources of poetic form to achieve a calibrated distance from their lower-class subjects. 3Legal Services and the Cockroach Revolution chapter abstractThis chapter focuses on the Chicano writer and lawyer Oscar Zeta Acosta, whose novels, Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo and Revolt of the Cockroach People, chart his transformation into a radical lawyer for Los Angeles's Brown Power Movement. Acosta began his career with Legal Services, a network of War on Poverty–funded Legal Aid offices. When he turned to movement activism, he radicalized Legal Services' demand that lawyers use their expertise to challenge laws that work against the interest of their lower-class clients. This demand became central to Acosta's version of process art. At the same time, Acosta's work replicates gender biases that ran throughout the War on Poverty. His political turn entailed his rejection of welfare mothers as clients in favor of militant young men—a turn that paralleled the War on Poverty's focus on male delinquents. 4Writing Urban Crisis after Moynihan chapter abstractThis chapter explores literary responses to the late 1960s crisis in participatory professionalism, provoked by the period's race riots and by conservatives' successful appropriation of liberal poverty discourse. The chapter focuses on two texts that address the Community Action Program: Joyce Carol Oates's them and Tom Wolfe's Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers. While these texts voice opposing political positions, both distrust white liberal efforts to speak for the ghetto, drawing on traditions of urban writing (naturalism and literary journalism) that resist the process imperative to break down barriers between author, audience, and lower-class subject matter. At the same time, both writers complicate their literary objectivity by incorporating aspects of the very participatory professionalism they seek to delimit. 5Civil Rights and the Southern Folk Aesthetic chapter abstractThis chapter explores the persistence of community action as an ideal in post-1960s black feminist fiction, focusing on Alice Walker's Meridian and Toni Cade Bambara's The Salt Eaters. Both writers began their careers as social workers associated with War on Poverty programs; both were also influenced by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee's version of community action, implemented during the 1964 Freedom Summer. In their novels, Walker and Bambara explore the legacy of the civil rights movement, focusing on intraracial class divisions that community action was supposed to suture. In both novels, these divisions turn out to be ineradicable, and their persistence marks the Southern folk aesthetic—the influential version of process art that Walker, Bambara, and other black feminist writers created in the 1970s. 6Who Belongs in the University? chapter abstractThis chapter focuses on Philip Roth's late 1990s novel, The Human Stain, arguing that the novel draws an analogy between the university and the Democratic Party. In early War on Poverty–era novels like Portnoy's Complaint, Roth developed an antiprocess conception of art and welfare politics, one that conceived of works of art and public institutions as products that require audiences to appreciate them on their own terms. In The Human Stain, Roth extends this conception to the postmodern academy, using it to criticize multicultural education and affirmative action. Linking the university and New Deal liberal coalition, Roth insists that both are under assault by cultural and ideological outsiders. This analogy leads Roth to embrace a strategic conservatism, one that echoes the politics of Bill Clinton, whose impeachment trial recurs throughout The Human Stain. Conclusion: Working-Class Community Action chapter abstractThe Conclusion sums up ongoing anxieties about lower-class cultural difference in the wake of Donald Trump's electoral victory, exploring the notion that the rural white working class inhabits an alternative culture hostile toward expert knowledge. The Conclusion develops this notion through a reading of Carolyn Chute's The School on Heart's Content Road and Treat Us like Dogs and We Will Become Wolves. In these fictions, Chute imagines an educational co-op that creates working-class experts, bypassing the division between professionals and lower-class clients that marked the Community Action Program. Chute embodies this notion of working-class expertise in the novels' form; she presents them as alternative histories, accessible to nonexpert reading practices. However, the novels replicate the War on Poverty–era notion of class culture, which cannot be eradicated without exterminating the tribal consciousness of working-class Maine.

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Book SynopsisInscrutable Belongings brings together formalist and contextual modes of critique to consider narrative strategies that emerge in queer Asian North American literature. Stephen Hong Sohn provides extended readings of fictions involving queer Asian North American storytellers, looking to texts including Russell Leong's "Camouflage," Lydia Kwa's Pulse, Alexander Chee's Edinburgh, Nina Revoyr's Wingshooters, and Noël Alumit's Letters to Montgomery Clift. Despite many antagonistic forces, these works' protagonists achieve a revolutionary form of narrative centrality through the defiant act of speaking out, recounting their "survival plots," and enduring to the very last page. These feats are made possible through their construction of alternative social structures Sohn calls "inscrutable belongings." Collectively, the texts that Sohn examines bring to mind foundational struggles for queer Asian North Americans (and other socially marginalized groups) and confront a broad range of issues, including interracial desire, the AIDS/HIV epidemic, transnational mobility, and postcolonial trauma. In these texts, Asian North American queer people are often excluded from normative family structures and must contend with multiple histories of oppression, erasure, and physical violence, involving homophobia, racism, and social death. Sohn's work makes clear that for such writers and their imagined communities, questions of survival, kinship, and narrative development are more than representational—they are directly tied to lived experience.Trade Review"In this groundbreaking, meticulously researched book, Stephen Hong Sohn teases out how specific formal strategies in novels by queer Asian North American writers are used to develop and explore alternative kinship networks, forms of social recognition, and survival plots in the face of physical death as well social death, in which a Asian North American LGBTQ existence literally cannot be imagined. In its theorizing of queer racial formalisms, Inscrutable Belongings is the genuine melding of narrative theory, queer theory, and ethnic studies that we have been waiting for."—Sue J. Kim, University of Massachusetts, Lowell"In this book, Stephen Sohn takes not only an interethnic but a continental approach, analyzing fiction by Asian American, Asian Canadian, and mixed-race queer authors, while paying careful attention to subtle national differences. Concerning itself with the complex interplay of aesthetics, ethics, and politics, Inscrutable Belongings is a vitally important intervention in Asian North American and queer literary studies." -- Donald C. Goellnicht * McMaster University *"Sohn's book is a valuable addition to Queer Asian American Studies because it not only advances an optimistic vision of queer lives but also pieces together a unique textual archive composed of novels by queer-identifying authors that we don't see very often in the field." -- Kai Hang Cheang * Criticism *Table of ContentsContents and Abstracts1Tactical Diversions: Toward Queer Asian North American Formalisms chapter abstractThe first chapter of Inscrutable Belongings explores queer racial formalisms. This chapter articulates three formal and thematic patterns that are variations of tactical diversions. This phrasing is employed because these patterns move away from the author's autobiographically imbued fictional double—a queer Asian North American—to explore other discursive viewpoints, characters, and social contexts. 2Narrative Endurance: Queer Asian North American Storytellers, Survival Plots and Inscrutable Belongings chapter abstractThis chapter more fully engages the key terms of the project, defining the survival plot, outlining the pivotal importance of inscrutable belongings, and establishing how these alternative social formations enable the queer Asian North American storyteller to endure. The latter half of the chapter engages in a sustained analysis of Russell Leong's short story "Camouflage," which comes from Phoenix Eyes & Other Stories. 3Inscrutable Belongings in Pathology: Infectious Genealogies in Alexander Chee's Edinburgh chapter abstractThe third chapter primarily involves a storyteller named Fee who recounts a harrowing tale in which he—along with numerous other young boys—is molested by a choir director. While many of his fellow choirboys commit suicide, the narrator manages to reach adulthood. However, existing under the weight of these traumas, Fee finds himself struggling to work through his troubled past. To assuage these feelings, Fee constructs connections to metaphorical progenitors, allowing him to reframe the sexual abuse he endured as a preteen and to reconstitute notions of family and kinship through the logic of a community of individuals who have survived an outbreak. The chapter in addition investigates the ways in which the novel critically links earlier pandemics to the AIDS/HIV crises in the 1980s. Acknowledging these infectious genealogies enables Fee to disengage from his own participation in abusive intergenerational relationships. 4Inscrutable Belongings in Cinema: Filmic Lineages in Noël Alumit's Letters to Montgomery Clift chapter abstractChapter 4 considers the metaphorical ancestries and alternative social formations developed by a storyteller named Bong. He spends much of his time mooning over Hollywood movie stars, especially Montgomery Clift. In this sense, this chapter explores the novel's source of spectral haunting by moving forward into the Golden Age of Hollywood cinema. The chapter further considers how the protoqueer Asian North American boy employs his imagination to deal with childhood traumas. The narrator recounts the centrality of Clift as part of an inscrutable belonging that helps restore order in a chaotic and dangerous period in which he is abused by a family member and left abandoned. Eventually he is adopted, allowing him a chance to foster lasting attachments, but these changes also come with others: Bong's relationship to Clift alters, and the nature of such social affinities must evolve for him to emerge as the survival plot's heroic center. 5Inscrutable Belongings in Hunting: Interracial Surrogacies in Nina Revoyr's Wingshooters chapter abstractThe specters of the bubonic plague victim and Montgomery Clift remain palpable in Chapter 5, in which the narrator, Michelle, obsessively returns to a period in her youth during which an African American couple, Mr. and Mrs. Garrett, moves to Deerhorn, her hometown, which is a bucolic but segregated midwestern location during the 1970s. A period of heightened racial tensions ensues during which Mrs. Garrett is targeted and then murdered by a townsperson. This moment is traumatic because the storyteller-as-young-girl had imagined the possibility of an inscrutable belonging based on the bonds she had forged with Mr. and Mrs. Garrett. The novel reveals the need to reconceptualize her life through "interracial surrogacies," a phrase that calls attention to the desire for this protagonist to construct a makeshift family, however ephemeral and unlikely, in a racially homogenous agrarian setting. 6Inscrutable Belongings in Bondage: Degenerate Descendants in Lydia Kwa's Pulse chapter abstractThe final chapter takes us to Singapore, where the storyteller, Natalie, grapples with the suicide of a close friend's son. Whereas earlier chapters focus on marginalized subjects who act as metaphorical progenitors, Chapter 6 shows how Natalie reconfigures her relationships through healing and alternative therapies. These therapeutic approaches are necessary to heal her past traumas, which come to light after she acknowledges the unexpected parallel she shares with the suicide victim. In this case, the ghost that haunts this chapter belongs not to someone who died long ago but to a figure who was born after her and comes from a later generation. The storyteller comes to embrace this phantom through their collective status as "degenerate descendants" of the postcolonial nation. The novel's Singaporean setting elucidates the transnational stakes in my critique, as these two characters function to critique national ideologies that promote technological progress and ethnoracial factionalism. Coda chapter abstractThe coda sums up the project, establishing the pressing need to recognize queer Asian North American lives and associated social formations. Introduction: Imagining Queer Asian North American Lives chapter abstractThe Introduction establishes the key terms, methodologies, and central archives of the project. Inscrutable Belongings involves extended readings of queer Asian North American fictions, focusing on first-person storytellers who manage to endure to their respective narrative conclusions. Their harrowing journeys, called "survival plots," are enabled by a coterie of individuals who are biologically unrelated to the storyteller and who together denote an "inscrutable belonging."

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Book SynopsisInscrutable Belongings brings together formalist and contextual modes of critique to consider narrative strategies that emerge in queer Asian North American literature. Stephen Hong Sohn provides extended readings of fictions involving queer Asian North American storytellers, looking to texts including Russell Leong's "Camouflage," Lydia Kwa's Pulse, Alexander Chee's Edinburgh, Nina Revoyr's Wingshooters, and Noël Alumit's Letters to Montgomery Clift. Despite many antagonistic forces, these works' protagonists achieve a revolutionary form of narrative centrality through the defiant act of speaking out, recounting their "survival plots," and enduring to the very last page. These feats are made possible through their construction of alternative social structures Sohn calls "inscrutable belongings." Collectively, the texts that Sohn examines bring to mind foundational struggles for queer Asian North Americans (and other socially marginalized groups) and confront a broad range of issues, including interracial desire, the AIDS/HIV epidemic, transnational mobility, and postcolonial trauma. In these texts, Asian North American queer people are often excluded from normative family structures and must contend with multiple histories of oppression, erasure, and physical violence, involving homophobia, racism, and social death. Sohn's work makes clear that for such writers and their imagined communities, questions of survival, kinship, and narrative development are more than representational—they are directly tied to lived experience.Trade Review"In this groundbreaking, meticulously researched book, Stephen Hong Sohn teases out how specific formal strategies in novels by queer Asian North American writers are used to develop and explore alternative kinship networks, forms of social recognition, and survival plots in the face of physical death as well social death, in which a Asian North American LGBTQ existence literally cannot be imagined. In its theorizing of queer racial formalisms, Inscrutable Belongings is the genuine melding of narrative theory, queer theory, and ethnic studies that we have been waiting for."—Sue J. Kim, University of Massachusetts, Lowell"In this book, Stephen Sohn takes not only an interethnic but a continental approach, analyzing fiction by Asian American, Asian Canadian, and mixed-race queer authors, while paying careful attention to subtle national differences. Concerning itself with the complex interplay of aesthetics, ethics, and politics, Inscrutable Belongings is a vitally important intervention in Asian North American and queer literary studies." -- Donald C. Goellnicht * McMaster University *"Sohn's book is a valuable addition to Queer Asian American Studies because it not only advances an optimistic vision of queer lives but also pieces together a unique textual archive composed of novels by queer-identifying authors that we don't see very often in the field." -- Kai Hang Cheang * Criticism *Table of ContentsContents and Abstracts1Tactical Diversions: Toward Queer Asian North American Formalisms chapter abstractThe first chapter of Inscrutable Belongings explores queer racial formalisms. This chapter articulates three formal and thematic patterns that are variations of tactical diversions. This phrasing is employed because these patterns move away from the author's autobiographically imbued fictional double—a queer Asian North American—to explore other discursive viewpoints, characters, and social contexts. 2Narrative Endurance: Queer Asian North American Storytellers, Survival Plots and Inscrutable Belongings chapter abstractThis chapter more fully engages the key terms of the project, defining the survival plot, outlining the pivotal importance of inscrutable belongings, and establishing how these alternative social formations enable the queer Asian North American storyteller to endure. The latter half of the chapter engages in a sustained analysis of Russell Leong's short story "Camouflage," which comes from Phoenix Eyes & Other Stories. 3Inscrutable Belongings in Pathology: Infectious Genealogies in Alexander Chee's Edinburgh chapter abstractThe third chapter primarily involves a storyteller named Fee who recounts a harrowing tale in which he—along with numerous other young boys—is molested by a choir director. While many of his fellow choirboys commit suicide, the narrator manages to reach adulthood. However, existing under the weight of these traumas, Fee finds himself struggling to work through his troubled past. To assuage these feelings, Fee constructs connections to metaphorical progenitors, allowing him to reframe the sexual abuse he endured as a preteen and to reconstitute notions of family and kinship through the logic of a community of individuals who have survived an outbreak. The chapter in addition investigates the ways in which the novel critically links earlier pandemics to the AIDS/HIV crises in the 1980s. Acknowledging these infectious genealogies enables Fee to disengage from his own participation in abusive intergenerational relationships. 4Inscrutable Belongings in Cinema: Filmic Lineages in Noël Alumit's Letters to Montgomery Clift chapter abstractChapter 4 considers the metaphorical ancestries and alternative social formations developed by a storyteller named Bong. He spends much of his time mooning over Hollywood movie stars, especially Montgomery Clift. In this sense, this chapter explores the novel's source of spectral haunting by moving forward into the Golden Age of Hollywood cinema. The chapter further considers how the protoqueer Asian North American boy employs his imagination to deal with childhood traumas. The narrator recounts the centrality of Clift as part of an inscrutable belonging that helps restore order in a chaotic and dangerous period in which he is abused by a family member and left abandoned. Eventually he is adopted, allowing him a chance to foster lasting attachments, but these changes also come with others: Bong's relationship to Clift alters, and the nature of such social affinities must evolve for him to emerge as the survival plot's heroic center. 5Inscrutable Belongings in Hunting: Interracial Surrogacies in Nina Revoyr's Wingshooters chapter abstractThe specters of the bubonic plague victim and Montgomery Clift remain palpable in Chapter 5, in which the narrator, Michelle, obsessively returns to a period in her youth during which an African American couple, Mr. and Mrs. Garrett, moves to Deerhorn, her hometown, which is a bucolic but segregated midwestern location during the 1970s. A period of heightened racial tensions ensues during which Mrs. Garrett is targeted and then murdered by a townsperson. This moment is traumatic because the storyteller-as-young-girl had imagined the possibility of an inscrutable belonging based on the bonds she had forged with Mr. and Mrs. Garrett. The novel reveals the need to reconceptualize her life through "interracial surrogacies," a phrase that calls attention to the desire for this protagonist to construct a makeshift family, however ephemeral and unlikely, in a racially homogenous agrarian setting. 6Inscrutable Belongings in Bondage: Degenerate Descendants in Lydia Kwa's Pulse chapter abstractThe final chapter takes us to Singapore, where the storyteller, Natalie, grapples with the suicide of a close friend's son. Whereas earlier chapters focus on marginalized subjects who act as metaphorical progenitors, Chapter 6 shows how Natalie reconfigures her relationships through healing and alternative therapies. These therapeutic approaches are necessary to heal her past traumas, which come to light after she acknowledges the unexpected parallel she shares with the suicide victim. In this case, the ghost that haunts this chapter belongs not to someone who died long ago but to a figure who was born after her and comes from a later generation. The storyteller comes to embrace this phantom through their collective status as "degenerate descendants" of the postcolonial nation. The novel's Singaporean setting elucidates the transnational stakes in my critique, as these two characters function to critique national ideologies that promote technological progress and ethnoracial factionalism. Coda chapter abstractThe coda sums up the project, establishing the pressing need to recognize queer Asian North American lives and associated social formations. Introduction: Imagining Queer Asian North American Lives chapter abstractThe Introduction establishes the key terms, methodologies, and central archives of the project. Inscrutable Belongings involves extended readings of queer Asian North American fictions, focusing on first-person storytellers who manage to endure to their respective narrative conclusions. Their harrowing journeys, called "survival plots," are enabled by a coterie of individuals who are biologically unrelated to the storyteller and who together denote an "inscrutable belonging."

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Book SynopsisThis book recovers the curious history of the "insensible" in the Age of Sensibility. Tracking this figure through the English novel's uneven and messy past, Wendy Anne Lee draws on Enlightenment theories of the passions to place philosophy back into conversation with narrative. Contemporary critical theory often simplifies or disregards earlier accounts of emotions, while eighteenth-century studies has focused on cultural histories of sympathy. In launching a more philosophical inquiry about what emotions are, Failures of Feeling corrects for both of these oversights. Proposing a fresh take on emotions in the history of the novel, its chapters open up literary history's most provocative cases of unfeeling, from the iconic scrivener who would prefer not to and the reviled stock figure of the prude, to the heroic rape survivor, the burnt-out man-of-feeling, and the hard-hearted Jane Austen herself. These pivotal cases of insensibility illustrate a new theory of mind and of the novel predicated on an essential paradox: the very phenomenon that would appear to halt feeling and plot actually compels them. Contrary to the assumption that fictional investment relies on a richness of interior life, Lee shows instead that nothing incites the passions like dispassion. Trade Review"In this stunningly original book, Wendy Anne Lee looks beyond the usual suspects in the history of the novel. A masterful stylist who navigates between wit and eloquence with admirable brio, she often made me laugh out loud—and almost made me weep." -- Deidre Lynch * Harvard University *"Arguing for the novel as a form provoked and sustained by the vexatious philosophical problem of insensibility, Wendy Lee anchors high theory in history, providing striking new readings of a wide range of canonical and lesser-known texts. Her elegant, witty, and sociable prose makes unfeeling endlessly engaging." -- Helen Deutsch * University of California at Los Angeles *"Wendy Lee makes the bold, paradigm-shifting argument that unfeeling is the heart—the inscrutable, insensible heart!—of the novel. She does so with bravura style and impressive range, producing a book that is both memorable and persuasive." -- Sarah Kareem, University of California * Los Angeles *"Lee traces insensibility from 'the unlikely stock figure of the prude' to Austen'sSense and Sensibilityand Melville's 'Bartleby, the Scrivener'—from Samuel Richardson's Clarissa Harlowe to George Eliot's Gwendolen Harleth. Along the way, she blends philosophical erudition and a series of razor-sharp readings with an uncommon wit that ratifies the absolute centrality of insensibility in the novel but also in the world...Essential."––J. Risinger, CHOICE"Wendy Lee's book is an astonishing achievement. Not simply has she turned inside-out one of our deeply held beliefs about eighteenth-century literature and culture—that the novel is an exercise in cultivating and celebrating sensibility—but she has also presented us with a series of compelling new readings of some of the eighteenth century's most-read fictions....Each strikingly original chapter presents a new facet of the problem she investigates, never falling into the pattern of reiteration with new evidence, but instead, driving the argument further and deeper, nuancing her central contention in ways that continually surprise and amaze." -- Rebecca Tierney-Hynes * The Review of English Studies *"Wendy Anne Lee makes me think about what we feel privately. Her brilliantly contrarian Failures of Feeling: Insensibility and the Novel looks at what happens when the answer is nothing....a dazzlingly original and irreverent monograph." -- Jayne Lewis * Studies in English Literature *"Through her capacious research, masterful close readings, and exquisitely stylish prose, Wendy Anne Lee presents her readers with an enlightening study of the preeminent genre of fiction that the British Enlightenment would produce....she offers what is no less than a new way of reading the novel—a method that is as attuned to the expressiveness of silence as it is to profusive embodiments of emotion." -- Kirstin M. Girten * Modern Philology *"A significant contribution to the study of both eighteenth-century philosophy and novel theory, Failures of Feeling—like its central figures—will no doubt generate significant response. It is the rare monograph that I feel the need—but also the willingness—to reread upon finishing, but I am certain that returning to Lee's text will only reveal new connections and depths." -- Stephanie Insley Hershinow * Eighteenth-Century Fiction *"Failures of Feeling is an absorbing, challenging, and profound work....While it may be true that the narrative trajectories of most of the novels Lee discusses flirt with tragedy and irresolution, in her hands the beauty of these works shines more brightly than ever." -- Adela Pinch * Novel *Table of ContentsContents and Abstracts1A Brief History of the Prude chapter abstractThis chapter locates an unlikely precursor to Bartleby in the stock figure of the prude, whose ubiquity in early print culture attests to a primary connection in the history of the novel between insensibility and gender. Diving into an elaborate, seventeenth-century taxonomy of female subjects, this discussion highlights the précieuses, a fraught libertine construction that registered the political and social discomforts generated by women's writing. Eighteenth-century English prude fictions, this chapter argues, extend the feminocentric threat of the précieuses (to estate, sovereignty, and conjugality) and import the punitive script of their transformation, a story line dedicated to the violent exposure of female feeling. The chapter concludes with a reading of Madame de Lafayette's La Princesse de Clèves, a breathtaking novel that revises and redeems Descartes's account of desire in The Passions of the Soul. 2Clarissa's Marble Heart chapter abstractThis chapter explicates Samuel Richardson's prime demonstration of the doomed logic of insensibility in European fiction, Clarissa; or, The History of a Young Lady. The so-called father of the psychological novel, Richardson distilled narrative purpose into the probing of female interiority. Newly framed by early prude fictions, Clarissa, this section argues, can be understood through a long-standing and deeply gendered anxiety about dualism, or the metaphysical gaps between sensation, speech, and action. Drawing on John Locke's concept of "indifferency" and Frances Ferguson's crucial theorization of rape and the psychological novel, the chapter spotlights the embedded narrative of Clarissa's life as an urban rape survivor. Insensibility, it argues, embeds a trenchant countermodel within a Richardsonian project. 3The Man of No Feeling chapter abstractThis chapter turns to sentimental fiction's man of feeling, radically reinterpreting his fine-tuned sensibility as a late iteration of sovereign contempt. In a close look at the insensible who loomed largest over the eighteenth century, Charles I, this discussion takes up the phenomenon of laughter, what Hobbes controversially defined as a triumphant glorying in the infirmities of others. Reconnecting power to humor, the analysis focuses on Oliver Goldsmith, a Grub Street writer who exploited his period's tipping point between satire and sentiment. Dissatisfied with what he regarded as the distinct humorlessness of the novel, Goldsmith turned to theater's ready-made insensible, the hero of comic misrule, Puck. Arguing for the political transformations of that figure in early modernity, the chapter depicts the "insensible cub" Tony Lumpkin in She Stoops to Conquer as the fictional force that reanimates sovereign laughter. 4Sense, Insensibility, Sympathy chapter abstractChapter 4 features the figure of godlike dispassion who presides at the apex of the novel form, Jane Austen. The case of Austen's insensibility exemplifies the ways in which failures of feeling are entwined with narrative failure and how the charge of contempt so often marks a disruption to protocols of fiction. This analysis focuses on the curdled plot of Sense and Sensibility, whose stalwart Elinor Dashwood has been identified with Austen herself. Examining David Hume's Treatise of Human Nature, a text considered to be the philosophical companion to Austen's oeuvre, this chapter examines the qualities of resemblance, contiguity, and causation that conduce to sympathy in Hume's account, or what in Austen's novel makes emotion a contagion, or one sister's pain feel distressingly like the other's. Conclusion: Death Wish for the Novel chapter abstractI conclude this study of insensibility with George Eliot's Daniel Deronda, a late nineteenth-century novel that draws together the different strands of the Bartleby problem presented by the book: the ridiculed dream of female sovereignty in prude fictions, the anxious and sadistic logic of the Richardsonian plot, the inevitable burnout of the man of feeling, and the compromising ethics of intimacy in Jane Austen. Eliot, this reading argues, brings these elements to bear in order to euthanize a genre that relies on the now thoroughly pathologized principle by which insensibility inflames the passions. Featured here is the character of the Alcharisi, a brilliant conflation of Diderot's paradoxically dispassionate actor and Defoe's flagrantly unmaternal mother, revived by Eliot to call out the constraints of the novel form. Introduction: The Bartleby Problem chapter abstractThe introduction lays out the book's theory at large through a reading of Herman Melville's "Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street," which features fiction's most infamous insensible, a motionless young clerk who would prefer not to. The analysis here draws on the writings of Thomas Hobbes, Adam Smith, and contemporary affect theorists to showcase and explain that signature feeling of unfeeling: contempt. Reframing the Bartleby problem from a picture of capitalist abjection to a fundamental philosophical problem about narrative, this introduction returns to the riddle of the unmoved or prime mover as the instigator of all motions and, it argues, emotions.

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Book SynopsisLos Angeles is a city of borders and lines, from the freeways that transect its neighborhoods to streets like Pico Boulevard that slash across the city from the ocean to the heart of downtown, creating both ethnic enclaves and pathways for interracial connection. Examining neighborhoods in east, south central, and west L.A.—and their imaginative representation by Chicana, African American, and Jewish American writers—this book investigates the moral and political implications of negotiating space. The Border and the Line takes up the central conceit of "the neighbor" to consider how the geography of racial identification and interracial encounters are represented and even made possible by literary language. Dean J. Franco probes how race is formed and transformed in literature and in everyday life, in the works of Helena María Viramontes, Paul Beatty, James Baldwin, and the writers of the Watts Writers Workshop. Exploring metaphor and metonymy, as well as economic and political circumstance, Franco identifies the potential for reconciliation in the figure of the neighbor, an identity that is grounded by geographical boundaries and which invites their crossing.Trade Review"Dean Franco's vibrant prose and dexterous analysis make The Border and the Line a significant contribution to the study of U.S. ethnic literatures. So much more than a regional case study, this book gifts us a comparative imaginary as far-reaching as it is urgently needed." -- Keith Feldman * University of California, Berkeley *"The Border and the Line is a must-read for anyone concerned with the resurgence of ethically informed reading in ethnic studies, Jewish studies, and literary criticism. Few scholars today read texts as astutely as Dean Franco. He does so here to demonstrate how we all live in relational proximity to our neighbors, even as constructed barriers seek to keep us separate. Superbly written." -- Michael Hames-García * University of Oregon *"[Franco is] both analytically astute and attentive to the interlocking lived realities of the communities on whom his book focuses, thus elegantly breathing new life into the practice of comparative ethnic studies....The Border and the Line is a model for those of us aiming to connect cultural representations to the political-economic realities of communities coexisting in Los Angeles's historical past and present." -- Richard T. Rodríguez * Western American Literature *Table of ContentsContents and AbstractsIntroduction: The Borders and Lines of Social Identities chapter abstractThe chapter posits a theory of how race materializes through the production of space. With reference to Ernesto Laclau's rhetorical theory, the introduction examines how metaphor and metonymy correspond to the social and political significance of racial identification. Thus the Introduction aligns the contingent formation of racial and religious identities with metonymy, or the material experience of being-in-place, and aligns static racial names with metaphor. The Introduction theorizes the terms border and line as interrelated figures of spatial constraint and access. Each term has a normative and a transgressive meaning, and the Introduction explores how and when the normative meaning of one term is in play, the transgressive meaning of the other term likewise emerges. 1Redlining and Realigning in East L.A.: The Neighborhoods of Helena María Viramontes and Union de Vecinos chapter abstractThis chapter takes on a fundamental question for literature scholars: How can readers bear responsibility for the literature they read and love? The chapter argues that the reader becomes the neighbor to the literature, and follows with an exploration of the philosophical and material implications of that neighboring. The chapter examines Helena María Viramontes's novel Their Dogs Came with Them, set in Boyle Heights at the peak of its gang wars in the 1970s, and explores the real neighborhood, including the activist project Union de Vecinos, a socialist organizing collective inspired by liberation theology to reclaim the neighborhood, from both the gangs and reactionary policing, in the name of social justice. In both examples, the chapter posits the concept of the miracle as something worldly and material, capable of transformation. 2The Matter of the Neighbor and the Property of "Unmitigated Blackness" chapter abstractThe first half of this chapter explores the Watts Writers Workshop, founded in the heart of Watts by Budd Schulberg after the Watts Riots in 1965. Schulberg created Frederick Douglass House, a charitable foundation and a physical building for black creative arts, and the chapter argues that Schulberg's personal and financial investment in Watts relocated his political standing as the "neighbor" to the Watts writers with whom he worked. The chapter examines a conversation between Schulberg and his friend James Baldwin, about the meaning of "race." Both writers hit upon "love" as the only way to cut through the Gordian knot of racism binding the nation. The chapter closes with a study of Paul Beatty's Los Angeles novel, The Sellout (2015), in which love is ironized and black Angelenos assert an atavistic claim on property, with segregation, plantations, and the return of slavery. 3My Neighborhood: Private Claims, Public Space, and Jewish Los Angeles chapter abstractThis chapter argues for the emergence of privately held ethics in the formation of neighborhood publics. The chapter primarily focuses on Jewish neighborhoods, including the L.A. Eruv, the largest in the West. An eruv is an area with boundaries designated by a rabbinical authority to constitute domestic rather than public space for Jews living within. Eruv is Hebrew for "mixture," and it involves mixing public and private spaces into one large "courtyard" or domestic enclosure. The chapter argues that the eruv is a "counter-public" for the Orthodox space it circumscribes, but that the public alignment of "Jewish" with "Orthodox" eclipses other kinds of Jewish publics in Los Angeles. The chapter compares the idea of the neighborhood in the eruv with Jewish concepts of the neighborhood in a recent short documentary, My Neighbourhood, about secular Israeli Jews who partner with Muslim Palestinians to protest Orthodox Jewish appropriation of Palestinians' homes. Conclusion: Love, Space, and the Grounds of Comparative Ethnic Literature Study chapter abstractThis chapter argues for the value of comparative analysis in studies of race and ethnicity, and makes the case for the inclusion of Jewish studies in the ethnic studies matrix. The Conclusion reviews the parallel but distinct histories of ethnic studies and Jewish studies, and explains the basis of their mutual exclusion. The Conclusion posits the book's critical motif of "the neighborhood" as the apt figure for reconciling different academic accounts of race and ethnicity, and for seeking understanding through unexpected comparisons across racial groups.

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Book SynopsisLos Angeles is a city of borders and lines, from the freeways that transect its neighborhoods to streets like Pico Boulevard that slash across the city from the ocean to the heart of downtown, creating both ethnic enclaves and pathways for interracial connection. Examining neighborhoods in east, south central, and west L.A.—and their imaginative representation by Chicana, African American, and Jewish American writers—this book investigates the moral and political implications of negotiating space. The Border and the Line takes up the central conceit of "the neighbor" to consider how the geography of racial identification and interracial encounters are represented and even made possible by literary language. Dean J. Franco probes how race is formed and transformed in literature and in everyday life, in the works of Helena María Viramontes, Paul Beatty, James Baldwin, and the writers of the Watts Writers Workshop. Exploring metaphor and metonymy, as well as economic and political circumstance, Franco identifies the potential for reconciliation in the figure of the neighbor, an identity that is grounded by geographical boundaries and which invites their crossing.Trade Review"Dean Franco's vibrant prose and dexterous analysis make The Border and the Line a significant contribution to the study of U.S. ethnic literatures. So much more than a regional case study, this book gifts us a comparative imaginary as far-reaching as it is urgently needed." -- Keith Feldman * University of California, Berkeley *"The Border and the Line is a must-read for anyone concerned with the resurgence of ethically informed reading in ethnic studies, Jewish studies, and literary criticism. Few scholars today read texts as astutely as Dean Franco. He does so here to demonstrate how we all live in relational proximity to our neighbors, even as constructed barriers seek to keep us separate. Superbly written." -- Michael Hames-García * University of Oregon *"[Franco is] both analytically astute and attentive to the interlocking lived realities of the communities on whom his book focuses, thus elegantly breathing new life into the practice of comparative ethnic studies....The Border and the Line is a model for those of us aiming to connect cultural representations to the political-economic realities of communities coexisting in Los Angeles's historical past and present." -- Richard T. Rodríguez * Western American Literature *Table of ContentsContents and AbstractsIntroduction: The Borders and Lines of Social Identities chapter abstractThe chapter posits a theory of how race materializes through the production of space. With reference to Ernesto Laclau's rhetorical theory, the introduction examines how metaphor and metonymy correspond to the social and political significance of racial identification. Thus the Introduction aligns the contingent formation of racial and religious identities with metonymy, or the material experience of being-in-place, and aligns static racial names with metaphor. The Introduction theorizes the terms border and line as interrelated figures of spatial constraint and access. Each term has a normative and a transgressive meaning, and the Introduction explores how and when the normative meaning of one term is in play, the transgressive meaning of the other term likewise emerges. 1Redlining and Realigning in East L.A.: The Neighborhoods of Helena María Viramontes and Union de Vecinos chapter abstractThis chapter takes on a fundamental question for literature scholars: How can readers bear responsibility for the literature they read and love? The chapter argues that the reader becomes the neighbor to the literature, and follows with an exploration of the philosophical and material implications of that neighboring. The chapter examines Helena María Viramontes's novel Their Dogs Came with Them, set in Boyle Heights at the peak of its gang wars in the 1970s, and explores the real neighborhood, including the activist project Union de Vecinos, a socialist organizing collective inspired by liberation theology to reclaim the neighborhood, from both the gangs and reactionary policing, in the name of social justice. In both examples, the chapter posits the concept of the miracle as something worldly and material, capable of transformation. 2The Matter of the Neighbor and the Property of "Unmitigated Blackness" chapter abstractThe first half of this chapter explores the Watts Writers Workshop, founded in the heart of Watts by Budd Schulberg after the Watts Riots in 1965. Schulberg created Frederick Douglass House, a charitable foundation and a physical building for black creative arts, and the chapter argues that Schulberg's personal and financial investment in Watts relocated his political standing as the "neighbor" to the Watts writers with whom he worked. The chapter examines a conversation between Schulberg and his friend James Baldwin, about the meaning of "race." Both writers hit upon "love" as the only way to cut through the Gordian knot of racism binding the nation. The chapter closes with a study of Paul Beatty's Los Angeles novel, The Sellout (2015), in which love is ironized and black Angelenos assert an atavistic claim on property, with segregation, plantations, and the return of slavery. 3My Neighborhood: Private Claims, Public Space, and Jewish Los Angeles chapter abstractThis chapter argues for the emergence of privately held ethics in the formation of neighborhood publics. The chapter primarily focuses on Jewish neighborhoods, including the L.A. Eruv, the largest in the West. An eruv is an area with boundaries designated by a rabbinical authority to constitute domestic rather than public space for Jews living within. Eruv is Hebrew for "mixture," and it involves mixing public and private spaces into one large "courtyard" or domestic enclosure. The chapter argues that the eruv is a "counter-public" for the Orthodox space it circumscribes, but that the public alignment of "Jewish" with "Orthodox" eclipses other kinds of Jewish publics in Los Angeles. The chapter compares the idea of the neighborhood in the eruv with Jewish concepts of the neighborhood in a recent short documentary, My Neighbourhood, about secular Israeli Jews who partner with Muslim Palestinians to protest Orthodox Jewish appropriation of Palestinians' homes. Conclusion: Love, Space, and the Grounds of Comparative Ethnic Literature Study chapter abstractThis chapter argues for the value of comparative analysis in studies of race and ethnicity, and makes the case for the inclusion of Jewish studies in the ethnic studies matrix. The Conclusion reviews the parallel but distinct histories of ethnic studies and Jewish studies, and explains the basis of their mutual exclusion. The Conclusion posits the book's critical motif of "the neighborhood" as the apt figure for reconciling different academic accounts of race and ethnicity, and for seeking understanding through unexpected comparisons across racial groups.

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Book SynopsisThis book recovers the curious history of the "insensible" in the Age of Sensibility. Tracking this figure through the English novel's uneven and messy past, Wendy Anne Lee draws on Enlightenment theories of the passions to place philosophy back into conversation with narrative. Contemporary critical theory often simplifies or disregards earlier accounts of emotions, while eighteenth-century studies has focused on cultural histories of sympathy. In launching a more philosophical inquiry about what emotions are, Failures of Feeling corrects for both of these oversights. Proposing a fresh take on emotions in the history of the novel, its chapters open up literary history's most provocative cases of unfeeling, from the iconic scrivener who would prefer not to and the reviled stock figure of the prude, to the heroic rape survivor, the burnt-out man-of-feeling, and the hard-hearted Jane Austen herself. These pivotal cases of insensibility illustrate a new theory of mind and of the novel predicated on an essential paradox: the very phenomenon that would appear to halt feeling and plot actually compels them. Contrary to the assumption that fictional investment relies on a richness of interior life, Lee shows instead that nothing incites the passions like dispassion. Trade Review"In this stunningly original book, Wendy Anne Lee looks beyond the usual suspects in the history of the novel. A masterful stylist who navigates between wit and eloquence with admirable brio, she often made me laugh out loud—and almost made me weep." -- Deidre Lynch * Harvard University *"Arguing for the novel as a form provoked and sustained by the vexatious philosophical problem of insensibility, Wendy Lee anchors high theory in history, providing striking new readings of a wide range of canonical and lesser-known texts. Her elegant, witty, and sociable prose makes unfeeling endlessly engaging." -- Helen Deutsch * University of California at Los Angeles *"Wendy Lee makes the bold, paradigm-shifting argument that unfeeling is the heart—the inscrutable, insensible heart!—of the novel. She does so with bravura style and impressive range, producing a book that is both memorable and persuasive." -- Sarah Kareem, University of California * Los Angeles *"Lee traces insensibility from 'the unlikely stock figure of the prude' to Austen'sSense and Sensibilityand Melville's 'Bartleby, the Scrivener'—from Samuel Richardson's Clarissa Harlowe to George Eliot's Gwendolen Harleth. Along the way, she blends philosophical erudition and a series of razor-sharp readings with an uncommon wit that ratifies the absolute centrality of insensibility in the novel but also in the world...Essential."––J. Risinger, CHOICE"Wendy Lee's book is an astonishing achievement. Not simply has she turned inside-out one of our deeply held beliefs about eighteenth-century literature and culture—that the novel is an exercise in cultivating and celebrating sensibility—but she has also presented us with a series of compelling new readings of some of the eighteenth century's most-read fictions....Each strikingly original chapter presents a new facet of the problem she investigates, never falling into the pattern of reiteration with new evidence, but instead, driving the argument further and deeper, nuancing her central contention in ways that continually surprise and amaze." -- Rebecca Tierney-Hynes * The Review of English Studies *"Wendy Anne Lee makes me think about what we feel privately. Her brilliantly contrarian Failures of Feeling: Insensibility and the Novel looks at what happens when the answer is nothing....a dazzlingly original and irreverent monograph." -- Jayne Lewis * Studies in English Literature *"Through her capacious research, masterful close readings, and exquisitely stylish prose, Wendy Anne Lee presents her readers with an enlightening study of the preeminent genre of fiction that the British Enlightenment would produce....she offers what is no less than a new way of reading the novel—a method that is as attuned to the expressiveness of silence as it is to profusive embodiments of emotion." -- Kirstin M. Girten * Modern Philology *"A significant contribution to the study of both eighteenth-century philosophy and novel theory, Failures of Feeling—like its central figures—will no doubt generate significant response. It is the rare monograph that I feel the need—but also the willingness—to reread upon finishing, but I am certain that returning to Lee's text will only reveal new connections and depths." -- Stephanie Insley Hershinow * Eighteenth-Century Fiction *"Failures of Feeling is an absorbing, challenging, and profound work....While it may be true that the narrative trajectories of most of the novels Lee discusses flirt with tragedy and irresolution, in her hands the beauty of these works shines more brightly than ever." -- Adela Pinch * Novel *Table of ContentsContents and Abstracts1A Brief History of the Prude chapter abstractThis chapter locates an unlikely precursor to Bartleby in the stock figure of the prude, whose ubiquity in early print culture attests to a primary connection in the history of the novel between insensibility and gender. Diving into an elaborate, seventeenth-century taxonomy of female subjects, this discussion highlights the précieuses, a fraught libertine construction that registered the political and social discomforts generated by women's writing. Eighteenth-century English prude fictions, this chapter argues, extend the feminocentric threat of the précieuses (to estate, sovereignty, and conjugality) and import the punitive script of their transformation, a story line dedicated to the violent exposure of female feeling. The chapter concludes with a reading of Madame de Lafayette's La Princesse de Clèves, a breathtaking novel that revises and redeems Descartes's account of desire in The Passions of the Soul. 2Clarissa's Marble Heart chapter abstractThis chapter explicates Samuel Richardson's prime demonstration of the doomed logic of insensibility in European fiction, Clarissa; or, The History of a Young Lady. The so-called father of the psychological novel, Richardson distilled narrative purpose into the probing of female interiority. Newly framed by early prude fictions, Clarissa, this section argues, can be understood through a long-standing and deeply gendered anxiety about dualism, or the metaphysical gaps between sensation, speech, and action. Drawing on John Locke's concept of "indifferency" and Frances Ferguson's crucial theorization of rape and the psychological novel, the chapter spotlights the embedded narrative of Clarissa's life as an urban rape survivor. Insensibility, it argues, embeds a trenchant countermodel within a Richardsonian project. 3The Man of No Feeling chapter abstractThis chapter turns to sentimental fiction's man of feeling, radically reinterpreting his fine-tuned sensibility as a late iteration of sovereign contempt. In a close look at the insensible who loomed largest over the eighteenth century, Charles I, this discussion takes up the phenomenon of laughter, what Hobbes controversially defined as a triumphant glorying in the infirmities of others. Reconnecting power to humor, the analysis focuses on Oliver Goldsmith, a Grub Street writer who exploited his period's tipping point between satire and sentiment. Dissatisfied with what he regarded as the distinct humorlessness of the novel, Goldsmith turned to theater's ready-made insensible, the hero of comic misrule, Puck. Arguing for the political transformations of that figure in early modernity, the chapter depicts the "insensible cub" Tony Lumpkin in She Stoops to Conquer as the fictional force that reanimates sovereign laughter. 4Sense, Insensibility, Sympathy chapter abstractChapter 4 features the figure of godlike dispassion who presides at the apex of the novel form, Jane Austen. The case of Austen's insensibility exemplifies the ways in which failures of feeling are entwined with narrative failure and how the charge of contempt so often marks a disruption to protocols of fiction. This analysis focuses on the curdled plot of Sense and Sensibility, whose stalwart Elinor Dashwood has been identified with Austen herself. Examining David Hume's Treatise of Human Nature, a text considered to be the philosophical companion to Austen's oeuvre, this chapter examines the qualities of resemblance, contiguity, and causation that conduce to sympathy in Hume's account, or what in Austen's novel makes emotion a contagion, or one sister's pain feel distressingly like the other's. Conclusion: Death Wish for the Novel chapter abstractI conclude this study of insensibility with George Eliot's Daniel Deronda, a late nineteenth-century novel that draws together the different strands of the Bartleby problem presented by the book: the ridiculed dream of female sovereignty in prude fictions, the anxious and sadistic logic of the Richardsonian plot, the inevitable burnout of the man of feeling, and the compromising ethics of intimacy in Jane Austen. Eliot, this reading argues, brings these elements to bear in order to euthanize a genre that relies on the now thoroughly pathologized principle by which insensibility inflames the passions. Featured here is the character of the Alcharisi, a brilliant conflation of Diderot's paradoxically dispassionate actor and Defoe's flagrantly unmaternal mother, revived by Eliot to call out the constraints of the novel form. Introduction: The Bartleby Problem chapter abstractThe introduction lays out the book's theory at large through a reading of Herman Melville's "Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street," which features fiction's most infamous insensible, a motionless young clerk who would prefer not to. The analysis here draws on the writings of Thomas Hobbes, Adam Smith, and contemporary affect theorists to showcase and explain that signature feeling of unfeeling: contempt. Reframing the Bartleby problem from a picture of capitalist abjection to a fundamental philosophical problem about narrative, this introduction returns to the riddle of the unmoved or prime mover as the instigator of all motions and, it argues, emotions.

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Book SynopsisWith Reading the Obscene, Jordan Carroll reveals new insights about the editors who fought the most famous anti-censorship battles of the twentieth century. While many critics have interpreted obscenity as a form of populist protest, Reading the Obscene shows that the editors who worked to dismantle censorship often catered to elite audiences composed primarily of white men in the professional-managerial class. As Carroll argues, transgressive editors, such as H. L. Mencken at the Smart Set and the American Mercury, William Gaines and Al Feldstein at EC Comics, Hugh Hefner at Playboy, Lawrence Ferlinghetti at City Lights Books, and Barney Rosset at Grove Press, taught their readers to approach even the most scandalizing texts with the same cold calculation and professional reserve they employed in their occupations. Along the way, these editors kicked off a middle-class sexual revolution in which white-collar professionals imagined they could control sexuality through management science. Obscenity is often presented as self-shattering and subversive, but with this provocative work Carroll calls into question some of the most sensational claims about obscenity, suggesting that when transgression becomes a sign of class distinction, we must abandon the idea that obscenity always overturns hierarchies and disrupts social order. Winner of the 2022 MLA Prize for Independent Scholars, sponsored by the Modern Language AssociationTrade Review"In Carroll's hands, the question of obscenity in midcentury literature has a whole new conceptual frame and in the figure of theeditor, a whole new protagonist. Going where few critical works before it have dared to tread, this is a highly persuasive and lucidly readable contribution to twentieth-century American cultural studies."—Mark McGurl, Stanford University"A thoroughly enjoyable examination of the role that literary obscenity played in forging the professional-managerial white male commitment to 'free speech.' Jordan Carroll shows that defending obscene literature enshrined modes of dispassion that served liberals' professional climbing."—Sarah Brouillette, Carleton University"What draws us to the obscene? It's a question scholars rarely ask because the allure of the forbidden seems so obvious. What if, though, for the white male professional-managerial class of the mid-to-late twentieth century, the enticement of the obscene was not so hot but rather cool? What if the point of reading smut was not to indulge in prurient interest but to show oneself capable of overcoming such base impulses? Not to masturbate, but to master? Such is the gambit of Jordan S. Carroll's Reading the Obscene, which charts a bildungsroman of boomer hermeneutics."—Whitney Strub, The Baffler"[I]n his Reading the Obscene: Transgressive Editors and the Class Politics of US Literature, Jordan S. Carroll is interested in a different, subtler aspect of the era's creeping corporatization. Rather than examining how the economics of publishing affected culture, Carroll considers how its class politics drove the industry's challenges to censorship, asserting that the 'values and training of the professional-managerial class (PMC)' were the driving force behind publishing's challenges to obscenity laws."—Greg Barnhisel, American Literary History"Carroll's surprising argument is that editors trained PMC men in the exigent art of cool detachment through obscenity.... Reading the Obscene teems with telling details and relishes double-entendres."—Dan Sinykin, ASAP/JournalTable of ContentsIntroduction: The Naked Editor 1. Shocking the Middle Class 2. An Aristocracy of Smut 3. Decrypting EC Comics 4. Reading Playboy for the Science Fiction 5. Mad Ones, Mad Men 6. White-Collar Masochism Conclusion: Transgression in the Post-pornographic Era

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Book SynopsisWhile much recent ecocriticism has questioned the value of nature as a concept, Thought's Wilderness insists that it is analytically and politically indispensable, and that romanticism shows us why. Without a concept of nature, Greg Ellermann argues, our thinking is limited to the world that capitalism has made. Defamiliarizing the tradition of romantic nature writing, Ellermann contends that the romantics tried to circumvent the domination of nature that is essential to modern capitalism. As he shows, poets and philosophers in the period such as Immanuel Kant, G. W. F. Hegel, Mary Wollstonecraft, William Wordsworth, and Percy Shelley were highly attuned to nature's ephemeral, ungraspable forms: clouds of vapor, a trace of ruin, deep silence, and the "world-surrounding ether." Further, he explains how nature's vanishing—its vulnerability and its flight from apprehension—became a philosophical and political problem. In response to a nascent industrial capitalism, romantic writers developed a poetics of wilderness—a poetics that is attentive to fleeting presence and that seeks to let things be. Trying to imagine what ultimately eludes capture, the romantics recognized the complicity between conceptual and economic domination, and they saw how thought itself could become a technology for control. This insight, Ellermann proposes, motivates romantic efforts to think past capitalist instrumentality and its devastation of the world. Ultimately, this new work undertakes a fundamental rethinking of the aesthetics and politics of nature. Trade Review"This erudite, eloquent, and genuinely original book, with its nuanced close readings and fascinating reassessment of the reception of romanticism, makes a persuasive case for the continuing resonance of a romantic poetics of nature."—Catherine Rigby, University of Cologne"This is a vital, eloquent, and necessary book, which scholars of romanticism and ecocriticism will be engaging for years to come."—Jonathan Sachs, Concordia University"Thought's Wilderness: Romanticism and the Apprehension of Nature... is a fine contribution to current materialist discourse, which, in this case, engages in a critique of industrial capitalism, as Ellermann advances a 'romantic poetics of wilderness,' suggesting nature is at the 'threshold of apprehension.'"—Dewey W. Hall, Nineteenth-Century Contexts"Greg Ellermann's Thought's Wilderness is an ambitious work of Romanticism studies that explores how human consciousness impacts the natural world."—Johannah King-Slutzky, Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment"By providing a unique perspective on the relationship between nature, society, and consciousness, Thought's Wilderness offers insight into the limitations of capitalism and the potential for alternative ways of relating to nature. In all, Ellermann's work is a thorough and thought-provoking literary study that explores how capitalist societies grapple with the idea of nature. This work demonstrates the importance of romanticism and its ability to show how the concept of nature is fundamental to understanding the natural world."—Paige Figanbaum, H-Environment"Greg Ellermann's short but impressively ambitious Thought's Wilderness... seeks to reconcile the traditions of Marxist thought, idealist philosophy, and Romantic poetics to the central goal of ecocriticism, which is to make room for nature.... Its success lies in the consistency of its focus and force of its thesis, and most of all through the striking and welcome clarity of its prose. Ellermann eschews jargon of all kinds, and finds eloquence in brevity. In short, this book is an actual pleasure to read, and when was the last time you said that about the work of a young, ambitious, theory-devoted critic?"—Onno Oerlemans, Modern Philology"Greg Ellermann's Thought's Wilderness: Romanticism and the Apprehension of Nature contributes to the ever-vibrant field of Romantic ecocriticism with a provocative combination of critical theory and Romantic poetics."—Eric Gidal, The Wordsworth Circle"[An] incisive and sophisticated book.... Ellerman's poetics of wilderness—defined by 'withdrawal' and a 'consent to distance'—offers a notable precedent for contemporary practices of rewilding, which involve both active management and careful withdrawal, an act of 'letting be'."—Tobias Menley, GenreTable of Contents1. Romanticism and Real Abstraction 2. Kant's Remaining Time 3. Hegel in and Out of the Woods 4. Wollstonecraft in Ruins 5. Accidental Revelation in Wordsworth 6. Shelley's Ethereal Poetics

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Book SynopsisWith this incisive work, Palmer Rampell reveals the surprising role genre fiction played in redefining the category of the private person in the postwar period. Especially after the Supreme Court established a constitutional right to privacy in 1965, legal scholars, judges, and the public scrambled to understand the scope of that right. Before and after the Court's ruling, authors of genre fiction and film reformulated their aliens, androids, and monsters to engage in debates about personal privacy as it pertained to issues like abortion, police surveillance, and euthanasia. Triangulating novels and films with original archival discoveries and historical and legal research, Rampell provides new readings of Patricia Highsmith, Dorothy B. Hughes, Philip K. Dick, Octavia Butler, Chester Himes, Stephen King, Cormac McCarthy, and others. The book pairs the right of privacy for heterosexual sex with queer and proto-feminist crime fiction; racialized police surveillance at midcentury with Black crime fiction; Roe v. Wade (1973) with 1960s and 1970s science fiction; the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (1974) with horror; and the right to die with westerns. While we are accustomed to defenses of fiction for its capacity to represent fully rendered private life, Rampell suggests that we might value a certain strand of genre fiction for its capacity to theorize the meaning of the protean concept of privacy.Trade Review"In crisp and lucid prose, Palmer Rampell gives us new and compelling views of the ambitious genre writers who explored the rough edges of the postwar liberal consensus. Bolstered with rare finds from Rampell's original archival research, this book brilliantly shows the unnoted power of genre fiction."—Sean McCann, author of A Pinnacle of Feeling"This richly interdisciplinary book transforms our understanding of the relationship between privacy and literature, and Rampell's provocative readings of genre fiction mount a compelling case against literary and liberal truisms about the bourgeois private self."—Annie McClanahan, author of Dead Pledges"Genres of Privacyis a brainy and painstaking literature review of a variety of postwar genre works and their relationship to contemporary privacy-related issues... Rampell's expansive definition of the right to privacy gives his book a wide sweep and provides a view into several different issues and genres, lending it an immediate relevance."—Harrison Blackman, Los Angeles Review of Books"Recommended."—G. Grieve-Carlson, CHOICE

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Book SynopsisWith Reading the Obscene, Jordan Carroll reveals new insights about the editors who fought the most famous anti-censorship battles of the twentieth century. While many critics have interpreted obscenity as a form of populist protest, Reading the Obscene shows that the editors who worked to dismantle censorship often catered to elite audiences composed primarily of white men in the professional-managerial class. As Carroll argues, transgressive editors, such as H. L. Mencken at the Smart Set and the American Mercury, William Gaines and Al Feldstein at EC Comics, Hugh Hefner at Playboy, Lawrence Ferlinghetti at City Lights Books, and Barney Rosset at Grove Press, taught their readers to approach even the most scandalizing texts with the same cold calculation and professional reserve they employed in their occupations. Along the way, these editors kicked off a middle-class sexual revolution in which white-collar professionals imagined they could control sexuality through management science. Obscenity is often presented as self-shattering and subversive, but with this provocative work Carroll calls into question some of the most sensational claims about obscenity, suggesting that when transgression becomes a sign of class distinction, we must abandon the idea that obscenity always overturns hierarchies and disrupts social order. Winner of the 2022 MLA Prize for Independent Scholars, sponsored by the Modern Language AssociationTrade Review"In Carroll's hands, the question of obscenity in midcentury literature has a whole new conceptual frame and in the figure of theeditor, a whole new protagonist. Going where few critical works before it have dared to tread, this is a highly persuasive and lucidly readable contribution to twentieth-century American cultural studies."—Mark McGurl, Stanford University"A thoroughly enjoyable examination of the role that literary obscenity played in forging the professional-managerial white male commitment to 'free speech.' Jordan Carroll shows that defending obscene literature enshrined modes of dispassion that served liberals' professional climbing."—Sarah Brouillette, Carleton University"What draws us to the obscene? It's a question scholars rarely ask because the allure of the forbidden seems so obvious. What if, though, for the white male professional-managerial class of the mid-to-late twentieth century, the enticement of the obscene was not so hot but rather cool? What if the point of reading smut was not to indulge in prurient interest but to show oneself capable of overcoming such base impulses? Not to masturbate, but to master? Such is the gambit of Jordan S. Carroll's Reading the Obscene, which charts a bildungsroman of boomer hermeneutics."—Whitney Strub, The Baffler"[I]n his Reading the Obscene: Transgressive Editors and the Class Politics of US Literature, Jordan S. Carroll is interested in a different, subtler aspect of the era's creeping corporatization. Rather than examining how the economics of publishing affected culture, Carroll considers how its class politics drove the industry's challenges to censorship, asserting that the 'values and training of the professional-managerial class (PMC)' were the driving force behind publishing's challenges to obscenity laws."—Greg Barnhisel, American Literary History"Carroll's surprising argument is that editors trained PMC men in the exigent art of cool detachment through obscenity.... Reading the Obscene teems with telling details and relishes double-entendres."—Dan Sinykin, ASAP/JournalTable of ContentsIntroduction: The Naked Editor 1. Shocking the Middle Class 2. An Aristocracy of Smut 3. Decrypting EC Comics 4. Reading Playboy for the Science Fiction 5. Mad Ones, Mad Men 6. White-Collar Masochism Conclusion: Transgression in the Post-pornographic Era

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Book SynopsisNovels are often said to help us understand how others think—especially when those others are profoundly different from us. When interpreting a character's behavior, readers are believed to make use of "Theory of Mind," the general human capacity to attribute mental states to other people. In many well-known nineteenth-century American novels, however, characters behave in ways that are opaque to readers, other characters, and even themselves, undermining efforts to explain their actions in terms of mental states like beliefs and intentions. Writing the Mind dives into these unintelligible moments to map the weaknesses of Theory of Mind and explore alternative frameworks for interpreting behavior. Through readings of authors such as Charles Brockden Brown, Herman Melville, Martin Delany, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Charles Chesnutt, and Mark Twain, Hannah Walser explains how experimental models of cognition lead to some of the strangest formal features of canonical American texts. These authors' attempts to found social life on something other than mental states not only invite us to revise our assumptions about the centrality of mind reading and empathy to the novel as a form; they can also help us understand more contemporary concepts in social cognition, including gaslighting and learned helplessness, with more conceptual rigor and historical depth.Trade Review"This deeply interdisciplinary book is also a call to literary scholars to attend to the ways in which cognitive theory can enhance our understanding of how fiction operates formally. Elegantly written, thoughtful, and thorough."—Justine S. Murison, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign"Walser provides a stunning reevaluation of the work fiction does to experiment with the problem of other people's minds. Essential for scholars interested in thinking about social cognition, cognitive diversity, and how those phenomena were explored in the nineteenth century."—Sari Altschuler, Northeastern University"Writing the Mind carefully parses through canonical nineteenth-century American texts, sagaciously teasing new readings from familiar and rich passages. Covering a stunning array of primary texts and theorists, Walser offers a compelling new lens through which to read the socio-cognition of some of the nineteenth-century's most familiar, if baffling, characters."—Kassie Jo Baron, Modern PhilologyTable of ContentsIntroduction: Toward a Literary History of Cognition 1. Boundedness 2. Epistemic Reality 3. Causal Power 4. Responsibility

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Book SynopsisThe Romantic Rhetoric of Accumulation provides an account of the long arc of dispossession from the British Romantic period to today. Lenora Hanson glimpses histories of subsistence (such as reproductive labor, vagrancy and criminality, and unwaged labor) as figural ways of living that are superfluous—simultaneously more than enough to live and less than what is necessary for capitalism. Hanson treats rhetorical language as an archive of capital's accumulation through dispossession, in works by S.T. Coleridge, Edmund Burke, Mary Robinson, William Wordsworth, Benjamin Moseley, Joseph Priestley, and Alexander von Humboldt, as well as in contemporary film and critical theory. Reading riots through apostrophe, enclosure through anachronism, superstition and witchcraft through tautology, and the paradoxical coincidence of subsistence living with industrialization, Hanson shows the figural to be a material record of the survival of non-capitalist forms of life within capitalism. But this survival is not always-already resistant to capitalism, nor are the origins of capital accumulation confined to the Romantic past. Hanson reveals rhetorical figure as entwined in deeply ambivalent ways with the circuitous, ongoing process of dispossession. Reading both historically and rhetorically, Hanson argues that rhetorical language records histories of dispossession and the racialized, gendered distribution of the labor of subsistence. Romanticism, they show, is more contemporary than ever.Trade Review"For Lenora Hanson, careful attunement to rhetorical and poetic figuration in the age of Romanticism must not only acknowledge its deployment in forms of dispossession enacted by and against capital; it must also chart the movement of the figure in the proliferation of subsistence in the war against subsistence, in the riot of differences in the accumulation of differences, and in the globality of Romanticism that survives the globalization of Romanticism. To understand these stringent requirements—and then to practice them, with such aplomb, brilliance, and dedication—is a stirring achievement. The Romantic Rhetoric of Accumulation is a work of massive and singular importance."—Fred Moten, New York University"This is a profound work that engages as deeply with Romantic poetry as it does with traditions of literary criticism, gender studies, and critical race studies. The seriousness and lyricism of its argumentation will make this an enduring contribution."—Jordy Rosenberg, University of Massachusetts-Amherst"This book establishes Hanson as a significant theorist of subsistence and will be a landmark of Romanticism. Original, learned, and always engaging."—Rei Terada, University of California, Irvine"Reading historically and rhetorically is itself a complex way. It is to Hanson's credit that this book is intricate—wide-ranging and lateral in its connections, deeply learned and ethical in its orientation—without being difficult to learn things from. Hanson argues as well as teaches, tells as well as shows through examples, illustrations, and, in one case, a bespoke visualization of the spatial logic of Joseph Priestley's An Account of a Society for Encouraging the Industriousness of the Poor (1787). Thus Hanson invites readers interested both in and beyond Romanticism to meet the problem of Marx's 'so-called primitive accumulation' in the gendered and racialized forms of subsistence that dispossession produces and figuration records."—Carmen Faye Mathes, Critical InquiryTable of Contents0. Introduction: The Romantic Rhetoric of Accumulation 1. Apostrophe and Riot 2. Anachronism, Dreams, and Enclosure 3. Tautology, Witchcraft, and a Thingly Commons 4. Figure, Space, and Race between 1769 and 1985 5. Coda toward a Global Romanticism

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Book SynopsisIn this revisionist account of romantic-era poetry and language philosophy, Tristram Wolff recovers vibrant ways of thinking language and nature together. Wolff argues that well-known writers including Phillis Wheatley Peters, William Blake, William Wordsworth, and Henry David Thoreau offer a radical chronopolitics in reaction to the "uprooted word," or the formal analytic used to classify languages in progressive time according to a primitivist timeline of history and a hierarchy of civilization. Before the bad naturalisms of nineteenth-century race science could harden language into place as a metric of social difference, poets and thinkers try to soften, thicken, deepen, and dissolve it. This naturalizing tendency makes language more difficult to uproot from its active formation in the lives of its speakers. And its "gray romanticism" simultaneously gives language different kinds of time—most strikingly, the deep time of geologic form—to forestall the hardening of time into progress. Reorienting romantic studies to consider colonialism's pervasive effects on theories of language origin, Wolff shows us the ambivalent position of romantics in this history. His reparative reading makes visible language's ability to reimagine social forms. Trade Review"Against the Uprooted Word is a splendid piece of scholarship. It will be a welcome arrival to students across disciplines (including language studies and anthropology) in addition to charting the future of the literary field—romanticism—in which it is most immediately grounded."—William Galperin, author of The History of Missed Opportunities"Wolff reclaims the literary imaginary as a rich archive for rethinking linguistics and philology. This erudite, ranging, and provocative book has helped me to learn—and unlearn—a lot."—Maureen McLane, author of My Poets"The compelling conjunctions of imaginative literature and linguistic, philological, and proto-anthropological theories that [Against the Uprooted Word] presents make the most convincing case for the discrepant force of Romantic-era writing, and Wolff is an impressively erudite guide to this richly comparative, interdisciplinary, and trans-Atlantic Romanticism."—Nancy Yousef, European Romantic Review"The book's arguments are extraordinarily complex and nuanced. Wolff marshals an impressive erudition, an original theoretical synthesis (drawing on thinkers from Denise Ferreira da Silva to Valentin Voloshinov), and a fine sensitivity to minute inflections and reverberations of linguistic and poetic form."—Joseph Albernaz, Nineteenth-Century Contexts"Against the Uprooted Word is an original, incisive study, a perceptive weaving together of various threads in recent Romanticist scholarship that revisits the familiar terrain of Romantic language theory in a consequential, disorienting, and ultimately hopeful way."—Jacob Risinger, Modern PhilologyTable of ContentsIntroduction: Pulling Roots 1. Giving Language Time 2. The Transported Word: Wheatley's Part 3. Voices of the Ground: Blake's Language in Deep Time 4. Radical Diversions: Wordsworth's Overgrowth 5. The Primitive Today: Thoreau in the Wild Conclusion: Deracination

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Book SynopsisMid-twentieth-century developments in science and technology produced new understandings and images of the planet that circulated the globe, giving rise to a modern ecological consciousness; but they also contributed to accelerating crises in the global environment, including climate change, pollution, and waste. In this new work, Patrick Whitmarsh analyzes postwar narrative fictions that describe, depict, or express the earth from above (the aerial) and below (the subterranean), revealing the ways that literature has engaged this history of vertical science and linked it to increasing environmental precarity, up to and including the extinction of humankind. Whitmarsh examines works by writers such as Don DeLillo, Karen Tei Yamashita, Reza Negarestani, and Colson Whitehead alongside postwar scientific programs including the Space Race, atmospheric and underground nuclear testing, and geological expeditions such as Project Mohole (which attempted to drill to the earth's mantle). As Whitmarsh argues, by focusing readers' attention on the fragility of postwar life through a vertical lens, Anthropocene fiction highlights the interconnections between human behavior and planetary change. These fictions situate industrial history within the much longer narrative of geological time and reframe scientific progress as a story through which humankind writes itself out of existence.Trade Review"This brilliant book tackles a vital topic with creativity, grace, and depth. Chock full of ideas, Writing Our Extinction opens up fascinating questions about what Whitmarsh calls 'vertical science.' A crucial touchstone for current debates in ecocriticism."—Caren Irr, Brandeis University"What happens when we look up? Or look down? Writing Our Extinction insists these are vital questions to ask, as it carefully shows how vertical perspectives illuminate a present ripe with the anticipation of our species' demise."—Min Hyoung Song, Boston College"[For] an ecological humanism characteristically prone to deep despair (on the one hand) and deluded self-aggrandizement (on the other), Writing Our Extinction is an exemplary model for how to do this hard work right."—Gerry Canavan, H-EnvironmentTable of ContentsIntroduction: The Vertical Anthropocene 1. Earthly Language: Don DeLillo and the Novel of the Anthropocene 2. Plot Holes: Anthropocene Fiction After Project Mohole 3. Overview Effects: Anthropocene Fiction in the Orbital Field 4. Fossil Labor: Anthropocene Fiction and the Racial Politics of Extinction Underview: Writing Our Resilience

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Book SynopsisThe Romantic Rhetoric of Accumulation provides an account of the long arc of dispossession from the British Romantic period to today. Lenora Hanson glimpses histories of subsistence (such as reproductive labor, vagrancy and criminality, and unwaged labor) as figural ways of living that are superfluous—simultaneously more than enough to live and less than what is necessary for capitalism. Hanson treats rhetorical language as an archive of capital's accumulation through dispossession, in works by S.T. Coleridge, Edmund Burke, Mary Robinson, William Wordsworth, Benjamin Moseley, Joseph Priestley, and Alexander von Humboldt, as well as in contemporary film and critical theory. Reading riots through apostrophe, enclosure through anachronism, superstition and witchcraft through tautology, and the paradoxical coincidence of subsistence living with industrialization, Hanson shows the figural to be a material record of the survival of non-capitalist forms of life within capitalism. But this survival is not always-already resistant to capitalism, nor are the origins of capital accumulation confined to the Romantic past. Hanson reveals rhetorical figure as entwined in deeply ambivalent ways with the circuitous, ongoing process of dispossession. Reading both historically and rhetorically, Hanson argues that rhetorical language records histories of dispossession and the racialized, gendered distribution of the labor of subsistence. Romanticism, they show, is more contemporary than ever.Trade Review"For Lenora Hanson, careful attunement to rhetorical and poetic figuration in the age of Romanticism must not only acknowledge its deployment in forms of dispossession enacted by and against capital; it must also chart the movement of the figure in the proliferation of subsistence in the war against subsistence, in the riot of differences in the accumulation of differences, and in the globality of Romanticism that survives the globalization of Romanticism. To understand these stringent requirements—and then to practice them, with such aplomb, brilliance, and dedication—is a stirring achievement. The Romantic Rhetoric of Accumulation is a work of massive and singular importance."—Fred Moten, New York University"This is a profound work that engages as deeply with Romantic poetry as it does with traditions of literary criticism, gender studies, and critical race studies. The seriousness and lyricism of its argumentation will make this an enduring contribution."—Jordy Rosenberg, University of Massachusetts-Amherst"This book establishes Hanson as a significant theorist of subsistence and will be a landmark of Romanticism. Original, learned, and always engaging."—Rei Terada, University of California, Irvine"Reading historically and rhetorically is itself a complex way. It is to Hanson's credit that this book is intricate—wide-ranging and lateral in its connections, deeply learned and ethical in its orientation—without being difficult to learn things from. Hanson argues as well as teaches, tells as well as shows through examples, illustrations, and, in one case, a bespoke visualization of the spatial logic of Joseph Priestley's An Account of a Society for Encouraging the Industriousness of the Poor (1787). Thus Hanson invites readers interested both in and beyond Romanticism to meet the problem of Marx's 'so-called primitive accumulation' in the gendered and racialized forms of subsistence that dispossession produces and figuration records."—Carmen Faye Mathes, Critical InquiryTable of Contents0. Introduction: The Romantic Rhetoric of Accumulation 1. Apostrophe and Riot 2. Anachronism, Dreams, and Enclosure 3. Tautology, Witchcraft, and a Thingly Commons 4. Figure, Space, and Race between 1769 and 1985 5. Coda toward a Global Romanticism

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Book SynopsisIn this book, Amy R. Wong unravels the colonial and racial logic behind seemingly innocuous assumptions about "speech": that our words belong to us, and that self-possession is a virtue. Through readings of late-Victorian fictions of empire, Wong revisits the scene of speech's ideological foreclosures as articulated in postcolonial theory. Engaging Afro-Caribbean thinkers like Édouard Glissant and Sylvia Wynter, Refiguring Speech reroutes attention away from speech and toward an anticolonial poetics of talk, which emphasizes communal ownership and embeddedness within the social world and material environment. Analyzing novels by Robert Louis Stevenson, Bram Stoker, George Meredith, Joseph Conrad, and Ford Madox Ford, Wong refashions the aesthetics of disordered speech—such as parroting, eavesdropping, profuse inarticulacy, and dysfluency—into alternate forms of communication that stand on their own as talk. Wong demonstrates how late nineteenth-century Britain's twin crises of territorialization—of empire and of new media—spurred narrative interests in capturing the sense that speech's tethering to particular persons was no longer tenable. In doing so, Wong connects this period to US empire by constructing a genealogy of Anglo-American speech's colonialist and racialized terms of proprietorship. Refiguring Speech offers students and scholars of Victorian literature and postcolonial studies a powerful conceptualization of talk as an insurgent form of communication. Trade Review"Refiguring Speech is a daring and deft new work within Victorian studies as well as colonial and postcolonial theory. Its brilliant, timely argument for retheorizing 'talk' as racially embodied linguistic production represents the next generation of research."—Susan Zieger, University of California, Riverside"This book makes a sophisticated argument about the distinction between speech and talk in the late Victorian novel and how, when the propriety of speech gives way to talk, glimpses of an anticolonial aesthetic come into view. Illuminating and eloquent."—Tanya Agathocleous, Hunter College"InRefiguring Speech, Wong analyzes four Victorian novels that illustrate a breakdown in the notion of speech as an indication of cultural self-possession and the erosion of the assumption of Ango-European civilization as universal.... Recommended."—L. A. Brewer, CHOICETable of ContentsIntroduction 1. Parroting With and Eavesdropping On Robert Louis Stevenson 2. Multilingual Talk and Bram Stoker's White Cosmopolitics 3. George Meredith's Profuse Inarticulacy 4. Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Ford's Dysfluent End of the World Conclusion

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Book SynopsisAn incisive demonstration of how Orwell's body of work was defined by the four major conflicts that punctuated his life: World War I, the Spanish Civil War, World War II, and the Cold War. Few English writers wielded a pen so sharply as George Orwell, the quintessential political writer of the twentieth century. His literary output at once responded to and sought to influence the tumultuous times in which he lived—decades during which Europe and eventually the entire world would be torn apart by war, while ideologies like fascism, socialism, and communism changed the stakes of global politics. In this study, Stanford historian and lifelong Orwell scholar Peter Stansky incisively demonstrates how Orwell's body of work was defined by the four major conflicts that punctuated his life: World War I, the Spanish Civil War, World War II, and the Cold War. Young Orwell came of age against the backdrop of the First World War, and published his final book, Nineteen Eighty-Four, nearly half a century later, at the outset of the Cold War. The intervening three decades of Orwell's life were marked by radical shifts in his personal politics: briefly a staunch pacifist, he was finally a fully committed socialist following his involvement in the Spanish Civil War. But just before the outbreak of World War II, he had adopted a strong anti-pacifist position, stating that to be a pacifist was equivalent to being pro-Fascist. By carefully combing through Orwell's published works, notably "My Country Right or Left," The Lion and the Unicorn, Animal Farm, and his most dystopian and prescient novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, Stansky teases apart Orwell's often paradoxical views on patriotism and socialism. The Socialist Patriot is ultimately an attempt to reconcile the apparent contradictions between Orwell's commitment to socialist ideals and his sharp critique of totalitarianism by demonstrating the centrality of his wartime experiences, giving twenty-first century readers greater insight into the inner world of one of the most influential writers of the modern age.Trade Review"A veteran Orwell scholar, Stansky provides a sketch of his subject's formative experiences before, during, and after some of the most seismic convulsions of the past century.... He makes an admirable attempt to present the real Orwell in all his seeming contradictions, a socialist who loved his capitalist homeland, a decent man who came to see the necessity of war, and a leftist who reviled communist tyranny."—Michael Washburn, The National Review"The evolution of the English writer George Orwell's thinking about war is instructive. In this slim and readable volume, Stansky considers how four wars transformed Orwell's worldview."—Andrew Moravcsik, Foreign Affairs"The Socialist Patriot is a considered analysis of the role of war in the development of Orwell's thinking, notably his sudden shifts from one ideological position to its polar opposite. In its text, as in its title, it captures what would be the two constants informing Orwell's engagement with the momentous events of his time."—Martin Tyrell, Dublin Review of BooksTable of Contents0. Preface: Writing about George Orwell: An Autobiographical Introduction 1. Before the First World War 2. The First World War 3. The Spanish Civil War 4. The Second World War 5. The Cold War

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Book SynopsisMid-twentieth-century developments in science and technology produced new understandings and images of the planet that circulated the globe, giving rise to a modern ecological consciousness; but they also contributed to accelerating crises in the global environment, including climate change, pollution, and waste. In this new work, Patrick Whitmarsh analyzes postwar narrative fictions that describe, depict, or express the earth from above (the aerial) and below (the subterranean), revealing the ways that literature has engaged this history of vertical science and linked it to increasing environmental precarity, up to and including the extinction of humankind. Whitmarsh examines works by writers such as Don DeLillo, Karen Tei Yamashita, Reza Negarestani, and Colson Whitehead alongside postwar scientific programs including the Space Race, atmospheric and underground nuclear testing, and geological expeditions such as Project Mohole (which attempted to drill to the earth's mantle). As Whitmarsh argues, by focusing readers' attention on the fragility of postwar life through a vertical lens, Anthropocene fiction highlights the interconnections between human behavior and planetary change. These fictions situate industrial history within the much longer narrative of geological time and reframe scientific progress as a story through which humankind writes itself out of existence.Trade Review"This brilliant book tackles a vital topic with creativity, grace, and depth. Chock full of ideas, Writing Our Extinction opens up fascinating questions about what Whitmarsh calls 'vertical science.' A crucial touchstone for current debates in ecocriticism."—Caren Irr, Brandeis University"What happens when we look up? Or look down? Writing Our Extinction insists these are vital questions to ask, as it carefully shows how vertical perspectives illuminate a present ripe with the anticipation of our species' demise."—Min Hyoung Song, Boston College"[For] an ecological humanism characteristically prone to deep despair (on the one hand) and deluded self-aggrandizement (on the other), Writing Our Extinction is an exemplary model for how to do this hard work right."—Gerry Canavan, H-EnvironmentTable of ContentsIntroduction: The Vertical Anthropocene 1. Earthly Language: Don DeLillo and the Novel of the Anthropocene 2. Plot Holes: Anthropocene Fiction After Project Mohole 3. Overview Effects: Anthropocene Fiction in the Orbital Field 4. Fossil Labor: Anthropocene Fiction and the Racial Politics of Extinction Underview: Writing Our Resilience

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Book SynopsisWhat grounds the fictional world of a novel? Or is such a world peculiarly groundless? In a powerful engagement with the latest debates in novel theory, Daniel Wright investigates how novelists reckon with the ontological status of their works. Philosophers who debate whether fictional worlds exist take the novel as an ontological problem to be solved; instead, Wright reveals the novel as a genre of immanent ontological critique. Wright argues that the novel imagines its own metaphysical "grounds" through figuration, understanding fictional being as self-sufficient, cohesive, and alive, rather than as beholden to the actual world as an existential anchor. Through philosophically attuned close readings of novels and reflections on writerly craft by Thomas Hardy, Olive Schreiner, Colson Whitehead, Virginia Woolf, Zadie Smith, Henry James, and Akwaeke Emezi, Wright shares an impassioned vision of reading as stepping into ontologically terraformed worlds, and of literary criticism as treading and re-treading the novel's grounds. Trade Review"The Grounds of the Novel is an exceptionally bold and brave work that pushes our understanding of the essence of fiction in new directions. This utterly original book will interest all scholars of the novel, particularly students of radical ontology."—Adela Pinch, University of Michigan"In this lyrical and intimate book, Wright invites us to look again at what metaphors of fictional being might do. Reconfiguring the metaphysics of the novel across time, he lays new groundwork for the intersection of personal and philosophical criticism."—David James, University of BirminghamTable of ContentsPreface: The Truth of Earth Introduction:On What There Is in the Novel 1. Groundwork 2. Underground 3. The Ground Gained 4. Meeting Grounds Afterword: Basement Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisWhat grounds the fictional world of a novel? Or is such a world peculiarly groundless? In a powerful engagement with the latest debates in novel theory, Daniel Wright investigates how novelists reckon with the ontological status of their works. Philosophers who debate whether fictional worlds exist take the novel as an ontological problem to be solved; instead, Wright reveals the novel as a genre of immanent ontological critique. Wright argues that the novel imagines its own metaphysical "grounds" through figuration, understanding fictional being as self-sufficient, cohesive, and alive, rather than as beholden to the actual world as an existential anchor. Through philosophically attuned close readings of novels and reflections on writerly craft by Thomas Hardy, Olive Schreiner, Colson Whitehead, Virginia Woolf, Zadie Smith, Henry James, and Akwaeke Emezi, Wright shares an impassioned vision of reading as stepping into ontologically terraformed worlds, and of literary criticism as treading and re-treading the novel's grounds. Trade Review"The Grounds of the Novel is an exceptionally bold and brave work that pushes our understanding of the essence of fiction in new directions. This utterly original book will interest all scholars of the novel, particularly students of radical ontology."—Adela Pinch, University of Michigan"In this lyrical and intimate book, Wright invites us to look again at what metaphors of fictional being might do. Reconfiguring the metaphysics of the novel across time, he lays new groundwork for the intersection of personal and philosophical criticism."—David James, University of BirminghamTable of ContentsPreface: The Truth of Earth Introduction:On What There Is in the Novel 1. Groundwork 2. Underground 3. The Ground Gained 4. Meeting Grounds Afterword: Basement Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisIt had never been attempted before, and might never be done again. One man watching another man write a novel from beginning to end. On September 1, 2014, in an 11th floor apartment in New York, Lee Child embarked on the twentieth book in his globally successful Jack Reacher series. Andy Martin was there to see him do it, sitting a couple of yards behind him, peering over his shoulder as the writer took another drag of a Camel cigarette and tapped out the first sentence: “Moving a guy as big as Keever wasn’t easy.” Miraculously, Child and Martin stuck with it, in tandem, for the next 8 months, right through to the bitter-sweet end and the last word, “needle”. Reacher Said Nothing is a one-of-a-kind meta-book, an uncompromising account in real time of the genesis, evolution and completion of a single work, Make Me. While unveiling the art of writing a thriller Martin also gives us a unique insight into the everyday life of an exemplary writer. From beginning to end, Martin captures all the sublime confidence, stumbling uncertainty, omniscience, cluelessness, ecstasy, despair, and heart-thumping suspense that go into writing a number-one bestseller.Trade Review�Love Jack Reacher? You'll have to enjoy this... [Andy Martin] revels in the minutiae you didn't realize you wanted to know.� Shortlist �It's fascinating to watch the process of writing unfolding in real time... it shouldn't work - after all writing is a predominantly mental activity - and yet it does in a way that makes you wonder why no-one's thought of doing this before... Andy Martin has created something new here: a fusion of literary criticism, biography and fly-on-the-wall meta-novel which serves as a remarkable insight into the creative process.�Spectator �Very entertaining. Until Child can be persuaded to publish his own version of Stephen King's On Writing, I think it will be a wise investment for anybody who wants to write popular fiction.�Jake Kerridge, Daily TelegraphTable of ContentsIntroduction 1 Part 1: Politics and You 7 Part 2: Making Your Voice Heard 29 Part 3: Politics is a Team Sport 67 Part 4: It’s All Marketing 131 Part 5: Let the Campaigns Begin 189 Part 6: Presidential Politics 263 Part 7: The Part of Tens 311 Appendix: State ID Voting Requirements 331 Index 353

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Book SynopsisIs plot a line, an arc, or a shape? None of these. Rather than thinking of plot as a sequence of events or actions put into place solely through human agency against the backdrop of setting, this book questions why we should distinguish between plot and setting—and indeed, whether we can make such a distinction. After all, plot, Yoon Sun Lee contends, cannot be disentangled from the material setting in which it takes place. In The Natural Laws of Plot, Lee connects the history of the novel and the history of science to show how plot in the realist novel is given shape by the characteristics of the physical world—and how in turn, plot serves as the avenue through which the realist novel participates in the same lines of inquiry about the world as pursued by the natural and physical sciences. Lee argues that the novel emerges and evolves in tandem with the development of scientific practices and concepts in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe to investigate the idea of a unified and objective world. Drawing on readings from Defoe, Austen, Scott, and many others, Lee demonstrates how bodies, human and non-human, behave according to laws that are built into worlds by plot, and how they are subject to causes and consequences that can occur independently of individual action, social forces, or metaphysical destiny. This interest in representing and exploring how things happen sets the novel apart from other literary genres, and makes the history of science integral to the understanding of the history and theory of the novel, and of narrative. Plot, Lee shows us, is immersive and powerful, because it satisfies our wish to know how things happen in a coherent, objective, and possibly real world.Trade Review"The Natural Laws of Plot adds to a growing slate of new materialist accounts of the eighteenth century and of the novel, yet it does so in a way that excitingly resuscitates plot—too often ignored or reduced to mere human action at the exclusion of the uncountable actions and reactions of the world. In grounding plot in the eighteenth century’s evolving notion of objectivity, Lee offers a fresh and convincing perspective on the capaciousness and complexity of plot." * Eighteenth-Century Fiction *"[An] impressive book...In its scope, its research, its originality, it is an important paving stone, so to speak, in our understanding of the novel. Lee’s book disarticulates plot from narrative and character, but she does not leave us with a macerated skeleton: plot is fused, living, into description and motion, matter and space, shaped by the forces that were seen shaping the (shall we say it?) real world." * Modern Philology *"[An] ingenious study...Lee shows herself well versed in contemporary narratology, but in developing this counter-history of plot, she sets to one side the uses of contemporary cognitive psychology for analyzing how plots are recognized and valued. Instead, she works in a historicistmode, explaining how a whole series of scientific models informed the thought experiments proffered by realist fiction...[O]ur histories and theories of the British novel, of realism, of plot, and of literature and science will stand greatly enriched by this study, to which all those working in those broad and interconnected fields should attend." * The Wordsworth Circle *"Ambitiously conceived and persuasively argued, The Natural Laws of Plot shows how, over a crucial century or more of British and Irish fiction, developments in experimental science came to shape the representation of action in the realist novel." * James Chandler, University of Chicago *

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Book SynopsisDeath and the Body in the Eighteenth-Century Novel demonstrates that archives continually speak to the period’s rising funeral and mourning culture, as well as the increasing commodification of death and mourning typically associated with nineteenth-century practices. Drawing on a variety of historical discourses—such as wills, undertaking histories, medical treatises and textbooks, anatomical studies, philosophical treatises, and religious tracts and sermons—the book contributes to a fuller understanding of the history of death in the Enlightenment and its narrative transformation. Death and the Body in the Eighteenth-Century Novel not only offers new insights about the effect of a growing secularization and commodification of death on the culture and its productions, but also fills critical gaps in the history of death, using narrative as a distinct literary marker. As anatomists dissected, undertakers preserved, jewelers encased, and artists figured the corpse, so too the novelist portrayed bodily artifacts. Why are these morbid forms of materiality entombed in the novel? Jolene Zigarovich addresses this complex question by claiming that the body itself—its parts, or its preserved representation—functioned as secular memento, suggesting that preserved remains became symbols of individuality and subjectivity. To support the conception that in this period notions of self and knowing center upon theories of the tactile and material, the chapters are organized around sensory conceptions and bodily materials such as touch, preserved flesh, bowel, heart, wax, hair, and bone. Including numerous visual examples, the book also argues that the relic represents the slippage between corpse and treasure, sentimentality and materialism, and corporeal fetish and aesthetic accessory. Zigarovich’s analysis compels us to reassess the eighteenth-century response to and representation of the dead and dead-like body, and its material purpose and use in fiction. In a broader framework, Death and the Body in the Eighteenth-Century Novel also narrates a history of the novel that speaks to the cultural formation of modern individualism.

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Book SynopsisA new history of the queer novel shows its role in constructing gay and lesbian lives The gay and lesbian novel has long been a distinct literary genre with its own awards, shelving categories, bookstore spaces, and book reviews. But very little has been said about the remarkable history of its emergence in American literature, particularly the ways in which the novel about homosexuality did not just reflect but actively produced queer life.Drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin’s insight that the history of society is connected to the history of language, author Natasha Hurley charts the messy, complex movement by which the queer novel produced the very frames that made it legible as a distinct literature and central to the imagination of queer worlds. Her vision of the queer novel's development revolves around the bold argument that literary circulation is the key ingredient that has made the gay and lesbian novel and its queer forebears available to its audiences.Challenging the narrative that the gay and lesbian novel came into view in response to the emergence of homosexuality as a concept, Hurley posits a much longer history of this novelistic genre. In so doing, she revises our understanding of the history of sexuality, as well as of the processes of producing new concepts and the evolution of new categories of language.Trade Review"Circulating Queerness outlines a queer literary history founded in ‘rogue circulation’—the surprising pathways and unexpected affinities that emerge when texts stray beyond their expected circuits—rather than identity. Natasha Hurley’s attention to the way queerness accrues through rereading and recirculation constitutes a powerful intervention into how we understand what queer literature has been and what it might become."—Dana Luciano, Georgetown UniversityTable of ContentsContentsPrologue: On the Queer Worlds of BooksIntroduction: Circuits, Lies, and the Queer Novel in America1. Acquired Queerness: The Sexual Life and Afterlife of Typee2. The Stoddard Archive and Its Dissed Contents3. Type Complication and Literary Old Maids4. Reading The Bostonians’s History of Sexuality from the Outside In5. Worlds Inside: Afterlives of Nineteenth-Century TypesCoda: Short Circuits and Untrodden PathsAcknowledgmentsNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisCo-winner, Ray & Pat Browne Award for Best Edited Collection in Popular Culture and American Culture Once a small subculture, the steampunk phenomenon exploded in visibility during the first years of the twenty-first century, its influence and prominence increasing ever since. From its Victorian and literary roots to film and television, video games, music, and even fashion, this subgenre of science fiction reaches far and wide within current culture. Here Rachel A. Bowser and Brian Croxall present cutting-edge essays on steampunk: its rise in popularity, its many manifestations, and why we should pay attention. Like Clockwork offers wide-ranging perspectives on steampunk’s history and its place in contemporary culture, all while speaking to the “why” and “why now” of the genre. In her essay, Catherine Siemann draws on authors such as William Gibson and China Miéville to analyze steampunk cities; Kathryn Crowther turns to disability studies to examine the role of prosthetics within steampunk as well as the contemporary culture of access; and Diana M. Pho reviews the racial and national identities of steampunk, bringing in discussions of British chap-hop artists, African American steamfunk practitioners, and multicultural steampunk fan cultures.From disability and queerness to ethos and digital humanities, Like Clockwork explores the intriguing history of steampunk to evaluate the influence of the genre from the 1970s through the twenty-first century. Contributors: Kathryn Crowther, Perimeter College at Georgia State University; Shaun Duke, University of Florida; Stefania Forlini, University of Calgary (Canada); Lisa Hager, University of Wisconsin–Waukesha; Mike Perschon, MacEwan University in Edmonton, Alberta; Diana M. Pho; David Pike, American University; Catherine Siemann, New Jersey Institute of Technology; Joseph Weakland, Georgia Institute of Technology; Roger Whitson, Washington State University. Trade Review"A lively, engaging collection of essays about the past, present, future (and alternate versions thereof) of steampunk culture, literature and meaning, ranging from disability and queerness to ethos and digital humanities."—Boing Boing"Covering an impressive range of topics, from steampunk cities to how steampunk addresses disabilities and identity, the essays are scholarly and full of solid examples and research yet remain accessible."—CHOICE"There are layers of irony and of ironic irony here that would keep a critical Lyell occupied for decades."—Science Fiction ReviewsTable of ContentsContents Acknowledgments Introduction. It’s about Time: Reading Steampunk’s Rise and Roots Rachel A. Bowser and Brian Croxall I. Steampunk Spaces and Things 1. Steampunk and the Victorian City: Time Machines, Bryan Talbot, and the Center of the Multiverse David Pike 2. How to Theorize With a Hammer; or, Making and Baking Things in Steampunk and the Digital Humanities Roger Whitson 3. The Steampunk City in Crisis Catherine Siemann II. Steampunk Bodies and Identities 4. From Steam Arms to Brass Goggles: Steampunk, Prostheses and Disability Kathryn Crowther 5. The Aesthete, the Dandy, and the Steampunk; or Things as They are Now Stefania Forlini 6. Punking the Other: On the Performance of Racial and National Identities in Steampunk Diana M. Pho III. Steampunk Reading and Revising 7. Seminal Steampunk: Proper and True Mike Perschon 8. The Alchemy of Aether: Steampunk as Reading Practice in Karina Cooper’s Tarnished and Gilded Lisa Hager 9. Out of Control: Disrupting Technological Mastery in Michael Moorcock’s The Warlord of the Air and K.W. Jeter’s Infernal Devices Joseph Weakland and Shaun Duke Contributors Index

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