Unsettled States
Nineteenth-Century American Literary Studies
Published on 15. August 2014
Book
Hardback
352 pages
978-1-4798-5772-2 (ISBN)
Description
In Unsettled States, Dana Luciano and Ivy G. Wilson present some of the most exciting emergent scholarship in American literary and cultural studies of the "long" nineteenth century. Featuring eleven essays from senior scholars across the discipline, the book responds to recent critical challenges to the boundaries, both spatial and temporal, that have traditionally organized scholarship within the field. The volume considers these recent challenges to be aftershocks of earlier revolutions in content and method, and it seeks ways of inhabiting and amplifying the ongoing unsettledness of the field.
Written by scholars primarily working in the "minor" fields of critical race and ethnic studies, feminist and gender studies, labor studies, and queer/sexuality studies, the essays share a minoritarian critical orientation. Minoritarian criticism, as an aesthetic, political, and ethical project, is dedicated to finding new connections and possibilities within extant frameworks. Unsettled States seeks to demonstrate how the goals of minoritarian critique may be actualized without automatic recourse to a predetermined "minor" location, subject, or critical approach. Its contributors work to develop practices of reading an "American literature" in motion, identifying nodes of inquiry attuned to the rhythms of a field that is always on the move.
Written by scholars primarily working in the "minor" fields of critical race and ethnic studies, feminist and gender studies, labor studies, and queer/sexuality studies, the essays share a minoritarian critical orientation. Minoritarian criticism, as an aesthetic, political, and ethical project, is dedicated to finding new connections and possibilities within extant frameworks. Unsettled States seeks to demonstrate how the goals of minoritarian critique may be actualized without automatic recourse to a predetermined "minor" location, subject, or critical approach. Its contributors work to develop practices of reading an "American literature" in motion, identifying nodes of inquiry attuned to the rhythms of a field that is always on the move.
Reviews / Votes
"Innovative and thought-provoking, this collection will be of broad interest, opening up discussions on an array of texts, critical approaches, and developing conversations in the study of of nineteenth-century literature. With essays that are accessible, lucid, and utterly fascinating,Unsettled Statesoffers arresting analyses andmakes a real contributionto the field." - Dana Nelson,author of Bad for Democracy "Unsettled Statessheds light on the papers long swept under the rug ranging from early Hispanic literature to polar periodicals. More importantly, the authors of the articles conscientiously build up their discussions in relation to contemporary literature and critical theory, which makes the collection even more distinguishing and valuable for the twenty-first century reader." (American Studies Journal)More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 153 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-4798-5772-2 (9781479857722)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
08/2014
1st Edition
New York University Press
€142.99
Available for download
Persons
Dana Luciano is Associate Professor of English and Women's & Gender Studies at Rutgers University. She is the author of Arranging Grief: Sacred Time and the Body in Nineteenth-Century America (2007), which won the 2008 MLA Prize for a First Book. She co-edited, with Ivy G. Wilson, Unsettled States: Nineteenth-Century American Literary Studies (2014), and "Queer Inhumanisms," a special issue of GLQ: A Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies, with Mel Y. Chen (2015).
Ivy G. Wilson is Associate Professor of English and Director of the Program in American Studies at Northwestern University. His most recent book is Specters of Democracy: Blackness and the Aesthetics of Politics in the Antebellum U.S.
Ivy G. Wilson is Associate Professor of English and Director of the Program in American Studies at Northwestern University. His most recent book is Specters of Democracy: Blackness and the Aesthetics of Politics in the Antebellum U.S.
Content
Contents Introduction: On Moving Ground 1 Dana Luciano Part I: Archives Unbound 1. Confederates in the Hispanic Attic: The Archive against Itself 31 Rodrigo Lazo 2. Historical Totality and the African American Archive 55 Lloyd Pratt 3. Race, Reenactment, and the "Natural-Born Citizen" 76 Tavia Nyong'o 4. Doing Justice to the Archive: Beyond Literature 103 Shelley Streeby Part II: States of Exception 5. Unsettled Life: Early Liberia's Epistolary Equivocations 119 David Kazanjian 6. The News at the Ends of the Earth: Polar Periodicals 158 Hester Blum 7. Feeling Like a State: Writing the 1863 New York City Draft Riots 189 Glenn Hendler 8. Impersonating the State of Exception 232 Jonathan Elmer Part III: Speculative Sexualities 9. Eat, Sex, Race 245 Kyla Wazana Tompkins 10. Connecticut Yankings: Mark Twain and the Masturbating Dude 275 Elizabeth Freeman 11. What Came Before 298 Peter Coviello P.S.: A Coda 307 Ivy G. Wilson About the Contributors 315 Index 317