Place, Race, and the Topography of American Literature

Abstract

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.