American category: 24906 books

Home is a powerful metaphor guiding the literature of African Americans throughout the twentieth century. While scholars have given considerable attention to the Great Migration and the role of the northern city as well as to the place of the South in African American literature, few have given specific...

The invocation of blood-as both an image and a concept-has long been critical in the formation of American racism. In Blood Work, Shawn Salvant mines works from the American literary canon to explore the multitude of associations that race and blood held in the consciousness of late nineteenth- and...

Inter-American literary study is an exciting and fast-growing area of comparative scholarship. The Americas are tied together by a common historical heritage and by a history of social, political, economic, and cultural interaction. As a contribution to this field, this book brings together...

There has been almost no study of the American writings of Henry James, that is, the fiction, essays, and travel literature with an American setting. The great bulk of Jamesian criticism deals with the international novels, particularly his late works. This study places James’s career in...

Essays in centennial celebration of William Faulkner and his achievement With essays and commentaries by André Bleikasten, Joseph Blotner, Larry Brown, Thadious M. Davis, Susan V. Donaldson, Doreen Fowler, The Reverend Duncan M. Gray, Jr., Minrose C. Gwin, Robert W. Hamblin, W. Kenneth Holditch,...

American Literature in Context to 1865 discusses the issues and events that engaged American writers of the period, providing original and useful readings of important literary works that demonstrate how context contributes to meaning Covers a range of genres including the myths, chants and songs...

Los Angeles has a tantalizing hold on the American imagination. Its self-magnifying myths encompass Hollywood glamour, Arcadian landscapes, and endless summer, but also the apocalyptic undertow of riots, environmental depredation, and natural disaster. This Companion traces the evolution of Los Angeles...

This volume explores African American historical fiction written by women in the last four decades of the twentieth century. Nunes' approach to the texts aims at emphasizing the narrative and thematic achievements of individual novels set in the context of the main trends and developments of the contemporary African American historical novel.

100 American Crime Writers  features discussion and analysis of the lives of crime writers and their key works, examining the developments in American crime writing from the Golden Age to hardboiled detective fiction. This study is essential to scholars and an ideal introduction to crime fiction for anyone who enjoys this fascinating genre.

At the time of his death in 1935, Edwin Arlington Robinson was regarded as the leading American poet-the equal of Frost and Stevens. In this biography, Scott Donaldson tells the intriguing story of this poet's life, based in large part on a previously unavailable trove of more than 3,000 personal...

A Companion to Latin American Literature and Culture reflects the changes that have taken place in cultural theory and literary criticism since the latter part of the twentieth century. Written by more than thirty experts in cultural theory, literary history, and literary criticism, this authoritative...

Writing and violence have been inextricably linked in Spanish America from the Conquest onward. Spanish authorities used written edicts, laws, permits, regulations, logbooks, and account books to control indigenous peoples whose cultures were predominantly oral, giving rise to a mingled awe and mistrust...

In Turning South Again the distinguished and award-winning essayist, poet, and scholar of African American literature Houston A. Baker, Jr. offers a revisionist account of the struggle for black modernism in the United States. With a take on the work of Booker T. Washington and the Tuskegee Institute...

The time is right for a critical reassessment of Cold War culture both because its full cultural impact remains unprocessed and because some of the chief paradigms for understanding that culture confuse rather than clarify.   A collection of the work of some of the best cultural critics...