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The human body has been depicted in a variety of ways across a range of cultural and historical locations. It has been described, variously, as a biological entity, clothing for the soul, a site of cultural production, a psychosexual construct, and a material encumbrance. Each of these different approaches brings with it a range of anthropological, political, theological, and psychological discourses that explore and construct identities and subject positions. This Companion examines connections between American literature and bodies from the eighteenth century through the present. It reveals the singular way that literature can help us understand the body's entanglement within social and biological influences, and it traces the body's existence within histories of race, gender, and ability. This volume details the genres, critical fields, and interpretive practices that best facilitate the analysis of bodies in the full span of American literary imaginings.
List of contents
Introduction: Travis M. Foster; I. Genres: 1. Bodies in early US-Atlantic theater Marvin McAllister; 2. Sentimentalism and the feeling body Claudia Stokes; 3. Slavery, disability and the Black body/White body complex in the American slave narrative Maurice Wallace; 4. Monstrous bodies of the American gothic Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet; 5. Bodies at war Colleen Glenney Boggs; 6. Decolonizing the body in multiethnic American fiction Sony Coráñez Bolton; 7. Science fiction's humanoid bodies of the future Frances Tran; 8. Contemporary North American transgender literature: realness, fantasy, and the body Stephanie Clare; II. Critical Methodologies: 9. Feminist theory, feminist criticism, and the sex/gender distinction Christine 'Xine' Yao; 10. Reading bodies and textual materialities Thomas Constantinesco; 11. How to read disabled bodies in history Erica Fretwell; 12. How to read disabled bodies now: crip of color critique Anna Hinton; 13. Health humanities, illness, and the body in American literature Lindsey Grubbs; 14. The Indigenous body in American literature Sean Teuton; 15. The Black Body and the reading of race Christine Okoth; 16. Ecocriticism and the body Delia Byrnes.
About the author
Travis M. Foster is an associate professor of American literature at Villanova University, where he is also the academic director of Gender and Women's Studies. His book Genre and White Supremacy in the Postemancipation United States was published in 2019 as part of Oxford University Press's Studies in American Literary History Series.
Summary
This volume offers a rigorous yet accessible overview of the key questions and intersectional approaches pertaining to American literature and the body. The chapters have been written in an accessible style, making them useful for undergraduates as well as for more experienced researchers.
