Whiteness and American Literature
Whiteness and American Literature
$120.00
USDThis volume provides an illuminating exploration of how ideas about whiteness have shaped the literature and culture of the United States. Covering nearly 250 years – from the 1790 Naturalization Act, which limited access to citizenship to immigrants who were 'free white person[s],' to the present – Whiteness and American Literature considers how a broad spectrum of novels, movies, short stories, television shows, poems, songs, and other works depict whiteness. The collection's twenty accessible and engaging chapters by renowned scholars analyze representations of whiteness in a variety of historical periods, literary genres, and aesthetic forms. Chapters also survey scholarly work at the crossroads of whiteness studies and disability studies, food studies, and other academic disciplines. Designed for scholars, students, and general readers, this book is essential reading for anyone interested in gaining a deeper understanding of the role whiteness plays in the US imagination.
- Provides an illuminating exploration of how ideas about whiteness have shaped the literature and culture of the United States
- Offers approaches to whiteness of interest to students and scholars working in a few different humanistic fields and interested in various analytic approaches
- Sets forth new takes on canonical works of US literature and introduces readers to less-well-known works
Product details
July 2025Hardback
9781009522793
344 pages
229 × 152 × 24 mm
0.608kg
Available
Table of Contents
- Introduction Jolene Hubbs
- Part I. Whiteness and National Identity:
- 1. The imperial sounds of whiteness Harilaos Stecopoulos
- 2. Whiteness in late-nineteenth-century literature and law Mita Banerjee
- 3. Poor white people in the eugenic imagination Matt Wray
- 4. White nationalism Edward K. Chan
- 5. Whiteness and the US-Mexico border Lee Bebout
- 6. How Hollywood pictures whiteness Justin Gomer
- 7. Whiteface minstrels, stage Europeans, and twenty-first-century television dramas Marvin McAllister
- Part II. Whiteness in the American literary imagination:
- 8. Whiteness in nineteenth-century speculative writing Hannah Lauren Murray
- 9. Whiteness and the slave narrative John Ernest
- 10. Passing in modernist literature Masami Sugimori
- 11. Whiteness in African American writers' nonfictional works Veronica T. Watson
- 12. The historical novel of whiteness T. Austin Graham
- 13. The unbearable whiteness of contemporary US climate fiction Teresa A. Goddu
- 14. The twenty-first-century white life novel Stephanie Li
- Part III. Approaches to Whiteness:
- 15. Whiteness and food studies Catherine Keyser
- 16. Whiteness and queer studies Andrew Donnelly
- 17. Whiteness and legal studies Eden Osucha
- 18. Whiteness and working-class studies Timothy Helwig
- 19. Whiteness and feminism Taylor Nygaard and Jorie Lagerwey
- 20. Whiteness and disability studies Stephen Knadler.
