Place, Race, and the Topography of American Literature
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Issue Date
2017-12-31Author
Cunningham, William Weldon
Publisher
University of Kansas
Format
236 pages
Type
Dissertation
Degree Level
Ph.D.
Discipline
English
Rights
Copyright held by the author.
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
This dissertation enters a vibrant conversation in literary criticism and cultural geography about the changing nature of place, race, and identity in American literature. Drawing from a wide range of theoretical models, including neo-Marxist geography, critical race theory, and space and place theory, it explores interrelations between the spatial and the social and their co-joined impact on racial identity. Collectively, the novels in this study articulate a complicated relationship between capital systems, material culture, and cultural enunciation. I argue that each novel operates within the nexus of global capitalism, market economies, and spatial models of center and periphery, but that each novel shows a secondary, destabilizing narrative of American experience. In moving away from geographic and literary models that prioritize stasis, the imposition of boundaries, and simplistic agrarian appeals, this project illustrates a vibrant spatial history that is rooted in the experiential and the material. By distinguishing between the ideals of modernity and the process of modernization, I draw out in each chapter the existence of two opposing narratives that wind through the main body of American literature and embroil in a paradoxical constitution of American imperialism and resistance. Relying on close reading of the texts, this project highlights the historical enunciation of these co-joined, spatially manifest narratives, and argues for a new understanding of place and space as components of the American literary canon.
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- Dissertations [4701]
- English Dissertations and Theses [449]
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