Rutgers University Press

Reading Embodied Citizenship : Disability, Narrative, and the Body Politic

Emily Russell

Liberal individualism, a foundational concept of American politics, assumes an essentially homogeneous population of independent citizens. When confronted with physical disability and the contradiction of seemingly unruly bodies, however, the public searches for a story that can make sense of the difference. The narrative that ensues makes "abnormality" an important part of the dialogue about what a genuine citizen is, though its role is concealed as an exception to the rule of individuality rather than a defining difference. Reading Embodied Citizenship brings disability to the forefront, illuminating its role in constituting what counts as U.S. citizenship.

NYU Press

American Arabesque : Arabs, Islam, and the 19th-Century Imaginary

Jacob Rama Berman

American Arabesque examines representations of Arabs, Islam and the Near East in nineteenth-century American culture, arguing that these representations play a significant role in the development of American national identity over the century, revealing largely unexplored exchanges between these two …

Temple University Press

Reading Up : Middle-Class Readers and the Culture of Success in the Early Twentieth-Century United States

Amy L. Blair

A person who reads a book for self-improvement rather than aesthetic pleasure is “reading up.” Reading Up is Amy Blair’s engaging study of popular literary critics who promoted reading generally and specific books as vehicles for acquiring cultural competence and …

Temple University Press

Modeling Citizenship : Jewish and Asian American Writing

Cathy Schlund-Vials

Navigating deftly among historical and literary readings, Cathy Schlund-Vials examines the analogous yet divergent experiences of Asian Americans and Jewish Americans in Modeling Citizenship. She investigates how these model minority groups are shaped by the shifting terrain of naturalization …

NYU Press

Interracial Encounters : Reciprocal Representations in African and Asian American Literatures, 1896-1937

Julia H. Lee

Why do black characters appear so frequently in Asian American literary works and Asian characters appear in African American literary works in the early twentieth century? Interracial Encounters attempts to answer this rather straightforward literary question, arguing that scenes depicting …

Temple University Press

Tiananmen Fictions Outside the Square : The Chinese Literary Diaspora and the Politics of Global Culture

Belinda Kong

An exciting analysis of the myriad literary effects of Tiananmen, Belinda Kong’s Tiananmen Fictions Outside the Square is the first full-length study of fictions related to the 1989 movement and massacre. More than any other episode in recent world history, …

Temple University Press

Treacherous Subjects : Gender, Culture, and Trans-Vietnamese Feminism

Lan P. Duong

Treacherous Subjects is a provocative and thoughtful examination of Vietnamese films and literature viewed through a feminist lens. Lan Duong investigates the postwar cultural productions of writers and filmmakers, including Tony Bui, Trinh T. Minh-ha, and Tran Anh Hung.

Taking …

UVA Press

Ralph Ellison and Kenneth Burke : At the Roots of the Racial Divide

Bryan Crable

Ralph Ellison and Kenneth Burke focuses on the little-known but important friendship between two canonical American writers. The story of this fifty-year friendship, however, is more than literary biography; Bryan Crable argues that the Burke-Ellison relationship can be interpreted as …

UVA Press

Disaster Writing : The Cultural Politics of Catastrophe in Latin America

Mark D. Anderson

In the aftermath of disaster, literary and other cultural representations of the event can play a role in the renegotiation of political power. In Disaster Writing, Mark D. Anderson analyzes four natural disasters in Latin America that acquired national …

NYU Press

Racial Innocence : Performing Childhood and Race from Slavery to Civil Rights

Robin Bernstein

Beginning in the mid nineteenth century in America, childhood became synonymous with innocence–a reversal of the previously-dominant Calvinist belief that children were depraved, sinful creatures. As the idea of childhood innocence took hold, it became racialized: popular culture constructed white …

NYU Press

Chicano Nations : The Hemispheric Origins of Mexican American Literature

Marissa Lopez

Chicano Nations argues that the transnationalism that is central to Chicano identity originated in the global, postcolonial moment at the turn of the nineteenth century rather than as an effect of contemporary economic conditions, which began in the mid nineteenth …

NYU Press

Empire’s Proxy : American Literature and U.S. Imperialism in the Philippines

Meg Wesling

In the late nineteenth century, American teachers descended on the Philippines, which had been newly purchased by the U.S. at the end of the Spanish-American War. Motivated by President McKinley’s project of “benevolent assimilation,” they established a school system that …

Temple University Press

How to be South Asian in America

How to Be South Asian in America: Narratives of Ambivalence and Belonging
by Anupama Jain

Temple University Press
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Providing a useful analysis of and framework for understanding immigration and assimilation narratives, anupama jain’s How to Be …

Fordham University Press

An Ethics of Betrayal : The Politics of Otherness in Emergent U.S. Literature and Culture

Crystal Parikh

WINNER! MLA Prize in United States Latina and Latino and Chicana and Chicano Literary and Cultural Studies from the Modern Language Association

Drawing on the work of Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida, Ethics of Betrayal investigates the theme and tropes …

UVA Press

The Power of Negative Thinking : Cynicism and the History of Modern American Literature

Benjamin Schreier

Suspicious of the equation of cynicism with quietism, nihilism, selfishness, or false consciousness, Benjamin Schreier rejects the representation of cynicism as something categorically different from the classical outlook of Diogenes. In his reading of Henry Adams’s The Education of Henry …

NYU Press

Neither Fugitive Nor Free : Atlantic Slavery, Freedom Suits, and the Legal Culture of Travel

Edie L. Wong

Wong contends that slavery and its logic of property had a profound effect on the notion of travel and freedom in the Atlantic World. British and American slaveholders traveled with the assumption that their right to free mobility extended to …