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Offers a timely introduction to the intersection of radical politics and American literature in the period of the Great Depression.
List of contents
Introduction William Solomon; 1. Marxist literary debates in the 1930s Alan Wald; 2. Aesthetics and politics of the depression era Matthew Stratton; 3. Architects of history: politics and experimentalism in American writing of the 1930s Catherine Morley; 4. Radical politics and experimental poetics in the 1930s Ruth Jennison; 5. 'I plan to send you some pictures': documenting the 1930s in cold blood Paula Rabinowitz; 6. Songs of social significance: theatre of the depression era Ilka Saal; 7. Literature and labor Laura Hapke; 8. Transgression and redemption in the 1930s Thomas J. Ferraro; 9. The 'race radical thrust of ethnic proletarian literature in the 1930s Chris Vials; 10. African American historical writing in the depression Nathaniel Mills; 11. Popular fiction in the 1930s Jennifer Haytock and William Solomon; 12. Performance and politics in the 1930s William Solomon; 13. Remembering the 1930s in contemporary historical fiction Caren Irr.
About the author
William Solomon is a professor of English at the State University of New York, Buffalo. He is the author of Literature, Amusement, and Technology in the Great Depression (Cambridge, 2002) and Slapstick Modernism: Chaplin to Kerouac to Iggy Pop (2016). He has published numerous articles on the intersection of politics, American literature, popular culture, and film. These include 'Politics and Rhetoric in the Novel in the 1930s' (American Literature, 1996); 'Wound Culture and James Agee' (Arizona Quarterly, 2002); 'The Rhetoric of the Freak Show in Eudora Welty's A Curtain of Green' (Mississippi Quarterly, 2015).
Summary
This book re-examines the crucial trends in the decade and places them in their political and economic contexts. It is addressed to undergraduates, graduates and scholars interested in learning more about American literature in the 1930s.
