Description
Book SynopsisCollectively urging scholars and educators to pay attention to the material conditions out of which literature arises, this book inaugurates a critical realism in American literary studies. It provides a crucial link in the growing need to merge theory and practice with the goal of reconnecting the ivory tower elite to the activists on the street.
Trade ReviewAn impressive and eclectic collection that does a compelling job of addressing contemporary concerns over resistance to globalism, capitalism, and continuing attempts to silence dissenters.-Emory Elliott, editor, The Columbia Literary History of the United States
Table of ContentsContents; Preface; Acknowledgments; Introduction: A New Critical Realism; Amy Schrager Lang and Cecelia Tichi; A Short World History of ""Seattle"": 1994-2005; Body Count/Bodies Count; 1. Working-Class Actuality: ""The Great Unexamined""; Janet Zandy; 2. Crane and the Body Count; Cindy Weinstein; 3. Why Set a Free Man Free? Mark Twain, Empire and Gender; Amy Kaplan. 4. Welcoming the Unbidden: The Case for Human Biodiversity Rosemarie Garland Thomson; 5. Consumer Compassion: The ""Face"" of Global AIDS Roger Hallas Experiments in Reality; 7. ""There is evil in the world an I'm going to do something about it"": William Faulkner as Political Resource Joseph R. Urgo; 8. Rhetoric, Politics, and Ethics in Sandra Cisneros's Caramelo James Phelan; 9. Fear and Loathing in Globalization Fredric Jameson; 10. Hawthorne and Class Teresa Goddu; 11. Experiments in Reality: Wycoff's Workers Jonathan Prude The Commons; 12. Cooper and the Tragedy of the Commons Dana D. Nelson; 13. Looks the Same to Me: Post Seattle, Post Sealth Paula Gunn-Allen; 14. Agriculture, Empire, and Ecology: Re-Farming the New World Order Scott Hicks; 15. History's Place Markers in Memory: 1954 and 1999 Thadious M. Davis; 16. Along the Border Bill V. Mullen; 17. Tomato Pickers and the Challenges of Today's Classrooms Judith Scott Girgus; 18. Langston Hughes on the Historically White Campus Joanne M. Braxton Art and Activism; 19. Where the Language Discovers Itself Carolyn Forche; 20. Deep Water, No Life Rafts George Saunders; 21. Not Yet Global Citizens Laurie Garret; 22. The Anti-Tribalist Identity-Based Movement for Pluralist Democracy Tony Kushner Another World is Possible; 23. Neither Capitalist Nor American: The Democracy as Social Movement Michael Denning; 24. Ivory Towers, Velvet Gloves Daniel Lang-Levitsky; 25. The Status of Intellectual Authority and the Promise of Democracy Silvio Torres-Saillant; 26. Teaching After the Battle in Seattle: This is What Plutocracy Looks Like George Lipsitz Notes on Contributors.
