It is all but inevitable for literary history to be divided into periods. ""Early American,"" ""antebellum,"" ""modern,"" ""post-1945""'such designations organize our knowledge of the past and shape the ways we discuss that past today. The authors in this collection believe it is high time we rethink these defining periods of American literary history.
In these short, spirited, and imaginative essays, 23 leading Americanists gamely fashion new, unorthodox literary periods'from 600 B.C.E. to the present, from the Age of Van Buren to the Age of Microeconomics. They bring to light literary and cultural histories that have been obscured by traditional timelines and raise provocative questions.
Filled with challenges to scholars, inspirations for teachers, and entry points for students, Timelines of American Literature gathers some of the most exciting new work in the field to showcase the revelatory potential of fresh thinking about how we organize the literary past.
List of Illustrations Acknowledgments
1. Introduction Cody Marrs and Christopher Hager
Part 1. Prehistories and Transitions 2. Prologue. What's in a Date? Sandra Gustafson
Prehistories 3. 1833-1932: American Literature's Other Scripts Erica Fretwell 4. 1922-1968: The Disenchanted Literature of Homeownership Adrienne Brown 5. 1830-1924: The Literatures of Sovereignty Phillip Round 6. 600 BCE-1830 CE: The Book of Mormon and the Lived Eschatology of Settler Colonialism Jared Hickman
Transitions 7. 1629-1852: American Literature, Democracy, and the Patroons Jennifer Greiman 8. 1973: When It Changed Gerry Canavan 9. The Three Burials of Confederate Nationalism Coleman Hutchison 10. 1819-1857: Romantic Cycles from the Panic of 1819 to the Panic of 1857 Andrew Kopec 11. Reimagining 1820-1865 Robert S. Levine
Part 2. Ages and the Long Present 12. Prologue. The Anthropocene, 1945/1783/1610/1492-???? (or, I Wish I Knew How to Quit You) Dana Luciano
Ages 13. The Age of US Latinidad Jesse Alemán 14. The Age of Van Buren Justine S. Murison 15. The Ages of Appalachian Literature Rachel A. Wise 16. The Civil War in the Age of Civil Rights Michael LeMahieu 17. The Age of Warhol Bryan Waterman
The Long Present 18. All of It Is Now: Slavery and the Post-black Moment in Contemporary African American Literature Yogita Goyal 19. Propaganda and the Movement of American Literary History Russ Castronovo 20. De-ciphering American Literature: Caroline Levander 21. Methodological Individualism and the Novel in the Age of Microeconomics, 1871 to the Present Annie McClanahan 22. 1980 to the Present: Formalism and the New Authoritarianism Rachel Greenwald Smith 23. American Captivity Narratives from the Colonial Era to the Present: A New Timeline Birgit Brander Rasmussen 24. Afterword. The Newer Newest Thing: Reperiodizing, Redux Susan Gillman Appendix. Sample Syllabi Contributors Index
