{"product_id":"androgynous-democracy-modern-american-literature-and-the-dual-sexed-body-politic-9781621904274","title":"Androgynous Democracy: Modern American Literature and the Dual-Sexed Body Politic","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eAndrogynous Democracy\u003c\/i\u003e examines how the notions of gender  equality propounded by transcendentalists and other nineteenth-century  writers were further developed and complicated by the rise of literary  modernism. Aaron Shaheen specifically investigates the ways in which  intellectual discussions of androgyny, once detached from earlier  gonadal-based models, were used by various American authors to formulate  their own paradigms of democratic national cohesion. Indeed, Henry  James, Frank Norris, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, John Crowe Ransom, Grace  Lumpkin, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Marita Bonner all expressed a deep  fascination with androgyny—an interest that bore directly on their  thoughts about some of the most prominent issues America confronted as  it moved into the first decades of the twentieth century.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShaheen not only considers the work of each of these seven writers  individually, but he also reveals the interconnectedness of their ideas.  He shows that Henry James used the concept of androgyny to make sense  of the discord between the North and the South in the years immediately  following the Civil War, while Norris and Gilman used it to formulate a  new model of citizenship in the wake of America’s industrial ascendancy.  The author next explores the uses Ransom and Lumpkin made of androgyny  in assessing the threat of radicalism once the Great Depression had  weakened the country’s faith in both capitalism and religious  fundamentalism. Finally, he looks at how androgyny was instrumental in  the discussions of racial uplift and urban migration generated by Du  Bois and Bonner.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThoroughly documented, this engrossing volume will be a valuable  resource in the fields of American literary criticism, feminism and  gender theory, queer theory, and politics and nationalism.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAaron Shaheen is UC Foundation Assistant Professor of English at the  University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. He has published articles in the  \u003ci\u003eSouthern Literary Journal, American Literary Realism, \u003c\/i\u003eand the \u003ci\u003eHenry James Review.\u003c\/i\u003e","brand":"University of Tennessee Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53188888363351,"sku":"9781621904274","price":27.86,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/androgynous-democracy-modern-american-literature-and-the-dual-sexed-body-politic-9781621904274","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}