A Companion to American Fiction, 1865 - 1914

A Companion to American Fiction, 1865 - 1914

Author: Robert Paul Lamb

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2008-04-15

Total Pages: 640

ISBN-13: 1405178310

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A Companion to American Fiction, 1865-1914 is a groundbreaking collection of essays written by leading critics for a wide audience of scholars, students, and interested general readers. An exceptionally broad-ranging and accessible Companion to the study of American fiction of the post-civil war period and the early twentieth century Brings together 29 essays by top scholars, each of which presents a synthesis of the best research and offers an original perspective Divided into sections on historical traditions and genres, contexts and themes, and major authors Covers a mixture of canonical and the non-canonical themes, authors, literatures, and critical approaches Explores innovative topics, such as ecological literature and ecocriticism, children’s literature, and the influence of Darwin on fiction


Teach the Nation

Teach the Nation

Author: Anne-Elizabeth Murdy

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-10-24

Total Pages: 202

ISBN-13: 1317849493

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Is knowledge power? In Teach the Nation , Anne-Elizabeth Murdy explores the history and contradictions in the notion that education and literacy are vital means for improving social and political status in the US. By closely examining the rapidly shifting social context of education, and the emerging literature by and for African-American women during the 1890s, Murdy proves that the histories of education and literature are deeply connected and argues that their current lives must be regarded as mutually dependent. Teach the Nation offers a new understanding of literacy and pedagogical study and identifies how literary history enhances current feminist and anti-racist teachings. By excavating notions about education in the 1890s-as turbulent a time for American public education as today-Murdy asks readers to step back from this historical moment to better understand the contexts and institutions within which we theorize learning and teaching. In doing so, she compels readers to reimagine the potential for gaining social power through education and literature.


The Clubwomen's Daughters

The Clubwomen's Daughters

Author: Gwen Tarbox

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-04-23

Total Pages: 175

ISBN-13: 1317776038

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The author provides an interdisciplinary cultural study of the evolution of Progressive-era girls' peer groups, their representation in popular girls' fiction, and the influence of these communities, both real and fictional, upon young women's lives during the years leading up to the Second World War. The writers featured in this volume were the first generation of New Women, whose ability to enter traditionally male spaces such as the college campus, the playing field, the wilderness, and the office was facilitated by their membership in women's clubs, political and religious organizations, and athletic teams. Eager to promote the idea that same-sex group activities would lead to female empowerment, these clubwomen targeted young girls as their intended audience and developed an idealized fictional portrait of female cooperation that girls could replicate in their own lives. By adding to our knowledge of girls' cultural history, the author gives voice to a segment of the population that was, and still is, at the center of society's debates concerning the appropriate roles for girls and women. Authors discussed include Louisa May Alcott, Emma Dunham Kelley, Laura Lee Hope (psuedonym for Lilian Garis), Carolyn Keene (pseudonym for Mildred Wirt Benson), and Margaret Sutton.


The Coupling Convention : Sex, Text, and Tradition in Black Women's Fiction

The Coupling Convention : Sex, Text, and Tradition in Black Women's Fiction

Author: Ann duCille Associate Professor of English and African American Studies Wesleyan University

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 1993-10-19

Total Pages: 222

ISBN-13: 0195359119

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What does the tradition of marriage mean for people who have historically been deprived of its legal status? Generally thought of as a convention of the white middle class, the marriage plot has received little attention from critics of African-American literature. In this study, Ann duCille uses texts such as Nella Larsen's Quicksand (1928) and Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) to demonstrate that the African-American novel, like its European and Anglo-American counterparts, has developed around the marriage plot--what she calls "the coupling convention." Exploring the relationship between racial ideology and literary and social conventions, duCille uses the coupling convention to trace the historical development of the African-American women's novel. She demonstrates the ways in which black women appropriated this novelistic device as a means of expressing and reclaiming their own identity. More than just a study of the marriage tradition in black women's fiction, however, The Coupling Convention takes up and takes on many different meanings of tradition. It challenges the notion of a single black literary tradition, or of a single black feminist literary canon grounded in specifically black female language and experience, as it explores the ways in which white and black, male and female, mainstream and marginalized "traditions" and canons have influenced and cross-fertilized each other. Much more than a period study, The Coupling Convention spans the period from 1853 to 1948, addressing the vital questions of gender, subjectivity, race, and the canon that inform literary study today. In this original work, duCille offers a new paradigm for reading black women's fiction.


Domestic Allegories of Political Desire

Domestic Allegories of Political Desire

Author: Claudia Tate

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 1993-01-07

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 019536080X

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Why did African-American women novelists use idealized stories of bourgeois courtship and marriage to mount arguments on social reform during the last decade of the nineteenth century, during a time when resurgent racism conditioned the lives of all black Americans? Such stories now seem like apolitical fantasies to contemporary readers. This is the question at the center of Tate's examination of the novels of Pauline Hopkins, Emma Kelley, Amelia Johnson, Katherine Tillman, and Frances Harper. Domestic Allegories of Political Desire is more than a literary study; it is also a social and intellectual history--a cultural critique of a period that historian Rayford W. Logan called "the Dark Ages of recent American history." Against a rich contextual framework, extending from abolitionist protest to the Black Aesthetic, Tate argues that the idealized marriage plot in these novels does not merely depict the heroine's happiness and economic prosperity. More importantly, that plot encodes a resonant cultural narrative--a domestic allegory--about the political ambitions of an emancipated people. Once this domestic allegory of political desire is unmasked in these novels, it can be seen as a significant discourse of the post-Reconstruction era for representing African-Americans' collective dreams about freedom and for reconstructing those contested dreams into consummations of civil liberty.


Writing African American Women [2 volumes]

Writing African American Women [2 volumes]

Author: Elizabeth A. Beaulieu

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2006-04-30

Total Pages: 1035

ISBN-13: 0313024626

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Women have had a complex experience in African American culture. The first work of its kind, this encyclopedia approaches African American literature from a Women's Studies perspective. While Yolanda Williams Page's Encyclopedia of African American Women Writers provides biographical entries on more than 150 literary figures, this book is much broader in scope. Included are several hundred alphabetically arranged entries on African American women writers, as well as on male writers who have treated women in their works. Entries on genres, periods, themes, characters, historical events, texts, places, and other topics are included as well. Each entry is written by an expert contributor and relates its subject to the overall experience of women in African American literature. Entries cite works for further reading, and the encyclopedia closes with a selected, general bibliography. African American culture is enormously diverse, and the experience of women in African American society is especially complex. Women were among the first African American writers, and works by black women writers are popular among students and general readers alike. At the same time, African American women have been oppressed, and texts by black male authors represent women in a variety of ways. The first of its kind, this encyclopedia approaches African American literature from a Women's Studies perspective, and thus significantly illuminates the African American cultural experience through literary works. Included are several hundred alphabetically arranged entries, written by numerous expert contributors. In addition to covering male and female African American authors, the encyclopedia also discusses themes, major works and characters, genres, periods, historical events, places, and other topics. Included are entries on such authors as: ; Maya Angelou ; James Baldwin ; Frederick Douglass ; Nikki Giovanni ; June Jordan ; Claude McKay ; Ishmael Reed ; Sojourner Truth ; Phillis Wheatley ; And many others. In addition, the many works discussed include: ; Beloved ; Blanche on the Lam ; Iknow Why the Caged Bird Sings ; The Men of Brewster Place ; Quicksand ; The Street ; Waiting to Exhale ; And many more. The many topical entries cover: ; Black Feminism ; Black Nationalism ; Conjuring ; Children's and Young Adult Literature ; Detective Fiction ; Epistolary Novel ; Motherhood ; Sexuality ; Spirituality ; Stereotypes ; And many others. Entries relate their topics to the experience of African American women and cite works for further reading. Features and Benefits: ; Includes hundreds of alphabetically arranged entries. ; Draws on the work of numerous expert contributors. ; Includes a selected, general bibliography. ; Offers a range of finding aids, such as a list of entries, a guide to related topics, and an extensive index. ; Supports the literature curriculum by helping students analyze major writers and works. ; Supports the social studies curriculum by helping students use literature to understand the experience of African American women. ; Covers the full chronological range of African American literature. ; Fosters a respect for cultural diversity. ; Develops research skills by directing students to additional sources of information. ; Builds bridges between African American history, literature, and Women's Studies.


Activist Sentiments

Activist Sentiments

Author: Pier Gabrielle Foreman

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 0252076648

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Examining how nineteenth-century Black women writers engaged radical reform, sentiment and their various readerships


Making Girls Into Women

Making Girls Into Women

Author: Kathryn R. Kent

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2003-01-17

Total Pages: 372

ISBN-13: 9780822330165

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DIVExplores the links between the emergence of lesbian and proto-lesbian identities at the turn of the century and the discourses of sentimentality, mass culture, and modernism./div


Modeling Minority Women

Modeling Minority Women

Author: Reshmi J. Hebbar

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-10-11

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 1135873402

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This powerful study reconceptualizes ideas of ethnic literature while investigating the construction of ethnic heroines, shifting the focus away from cultural politics and considering instead narrative or poetic qualities which involve surprising relationships between Anglo-American women's writing and fiction produced by Asian American and African American women authors.