Editorial Material
Literature, American
Walter Benn Michaels
AMERICAN LITERARY HISTORY
(2022)
Article
Literature, American
Michelle S. Hite, Deanna P. Koretsky
Summary: This essay reflects on the use of loving Blackness as an educational tool to go beyond anti-Blackness and white supremacy, and to focus on the inner lives of Black people. The author uses Honoree Fanonne Jeffers's The Age of Phillis as a model to reconsider the narrative strands of pre-nineteenth-century Black history and the promises of Black futures, bringing together STEM students and advanced English literature students.
EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE
(2022)
Article
Literature, American
Cecile Roudeau
Summary: This essay interprets Billy Budd, Sailor as an exploration of democracy as a material and regulated practice, emphasizing the importance of language and questioning the foundations of democratic institutions. The author believes that Melville challenges the opposition between democratic government and democratic life through the handling of forms, showcasing a critical and ever-evolving democracy.
LEVIATHAN-A JOURNAL OF MELVILLE STUDIES
(2022)
Article
Literature, American
Susan Gillman
Summary: This essay focuses on the works of Amy Kaplan and Edward Said, who have engaged with the concept of the personal = the political. They updated Mathew Arnold's theory of criticism and applied it to the study of American empire. Through experimenting with different forms, they reoriented the personal = the political and viewed empire as an ongoing historical subject rather than a monolithic entity. The essay also explores the significance of early empire studies and their connection to current events.
AMERICAN LITERARY HISTORY
(2022)
Article
Literature, American
Jim Casey, Sarah H. Salter
Summary: This essay advocates for a focused study on editorship as a unique mode of cultural expression, emphasizing the importance of understanding the practices and techniques of editing in historical context. Analyzing examples from 1862, the essay reveals the practical language of editorship expressed through serial formats and argues for the broader study of editorship in various print cultures.
AMERICAN LITERATURE
(2022)
Article
Literature, American
Colleen Lye
Summary: The sharpening contradictions in US-China economic interdependency have created both a crisis and an opportunity for Asian American cultural critique. This crisis is due to the misalignment of antiracism and anti-imperialism, while the opportunity arises from the booming Asian American novel genre fueled by the financial entanglements between the US and China. This highlights the new social relevance of Asian American novel criticism.
AMERICAN LITERARY HISTORY
(2022)
Article
Literature, American
Robert S. Levine
Summary: The importance of studying literary historicism and recovering neglected voices like Tourgee's works is crucial in contemporary American literary criticism.
AMERICAN LITERARY HISTORY
(2022)
Article
Literature, American
Christy L. Pottroff
Summary: This article provides a rich contextual analysis of several objects related to the lives of Phillis Wheatley Peters and her husband, exploring the multiple meanings these items may have conveyed. Through studying these objects and their origins, associations, and environmental contexts, scholars can gain a better understanding of the couple's lives and the practices of self-expression and social life for Black authors in the eighteenth century, as well as their connections to global networks and local communities.
EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE
(2022)
Article
Literature, American
David Waldstreicher
Summary: This essay discusses the possibility of misattribution of Wheatley's poems. By researching contemporary newspapers and magazines, the author discovered several poems that could have been written by Wheatley, and explains her motivation for anonymous publication.
EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE
(2022)
Article
Literature, American
Yumi Pak
Article
Literature, American
David James
Summary: Criticism in the literary field has always desired to have real-world impact and change minds, which provides a sense of self-importance and sustains the field's dreams of social agency. These desires have been intensified by current pressures on the humanities and the need to oppose injustice. These essays reflect on and explore the possibility of criticism influencing constituencies beyond its traditional audience.
AMERICAN LITERARY HISTORY
(2022)
Article
Cultural Studies
Joseph Darda
STRANGE CAREER OF RACIAL LIBERALISM
(2022)
Article
Literature, American
Maurice S. Lee
Summary: This essay discusses the survival of literary criticism as a profession and argues that the lack of shared criteria in literary studies should provoke an openness to change. The author brings a pragmatist approach to address the crisis in the humanities, emphasizing the importance of pluralism, affect, fallibilism, and experimentation.
AMERICAN LITERARY HISTORY
(2022)
Article
Literature, American
Valerie Sirenko
Summary: This article examines how Charles Brockden Brown's novel, Arthur Mervyn, intervened in the changing concept of property rights in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Brown presents property rights as a fluid set of shifting relations that can be shaped by narrative.
EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE
(2022)
Article
Literature, American
Amy Kaplan
AMERICAN LITERARY REALISM
(2022)
Book Review
Literature, American
Matthew N. Hannah
AMERICAN LITERARY HISTORY
(2022)
Article
Literature, American
Trevor Jackson
Summary: This article examines the impact of modernity's epistemological assumptions on its subjects and uses examples from Cormac McCarthy's Child of God to illustrate how the central character's ideas are influenced by his social circumstances. It analyzes three incidents in the novel, including Ballard's interactions with the legal system, his performances of hypermasculinity, and his voyeurism, and concludes with two accusatory quotations that address the reader's social responsibility.
CORMAC MCCARTHY JOURNAL
(2022)
Article
Literature, American
Wendy Raphael Roberts
Summary: This article argues that the recently recovered manuscript poem On the Death of Love Rotch can confidently be attributed to Phillis Wheatley (Peters). The poem’s attribution provides new evidence for Wheatley’s early presence and influence in Nantucket, New Bedford, and Newport, and highlights her impact on early abolitionist efforts in those regions. Additionally, the presence of the poem indicates Wheatley’s engagement with other communities of color and the possibility of writing an elegy for a Black woman named Rose. Overall, this article expands the Wheatley canon and demonstrates the importance of attribution studies in understanding the author’s life and influence.
EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE
(2023)
Article
Literature, American
Ellen Song
AMERICAN LITERARY HISTORY
(2023)
Book Review
Literature, American
Liliana M. Naydan
AMERICAN LITERARY HISTORY
(2022)
