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Beyond the Civil War Hospital understands Reconstruction as a period of emotional turmoil that precipitated a struggle for form in cultural production. By treating selected texts from that era as multifaceted contributions to Reconstruction's »mental adaptation process« (Leslie Butler), Kirsten Twelbeck diagnoses individual conflicts between the »heart and the brain« only partly compensated for by a shared concern for national healing. By tracing each text's unique adaptation of the healing trope, she identifies surprising disagreement over racial equality, women's rights, and citizenship. The book pairs female and male white authors from the antislavery North, and brings together a broad range of genres.
About the author
Kirsten Twelbeck (Prof. Dr.) teaches American Studies at the University of Regensburg. She is interested in American literature and culture from the nineteenth through the twenty-first century.
Report
»Firmly grounded in American Literary Studies and Cultural Studies, 'Beyond the Civil War Hospital' convincingly shows how textual forms, and especially literary experimentations, can function as key sites for negotiating the political and societal future of the United States of America.«
Marc Priewe, Amerikastudien / American Studies, 66 (2021) 20210916
