The City in American Literature and Culture

Kevin R. McNamara

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781108841962
• eBook ISBN: 9781108902168
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: North American Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

The city's 'Americanness' has been disputed throughout US history. Pronounced dead in the late twentieth century, cities have enjoyed a renaissance in the twenty-first. Engaging the history of urban promise and struggle as represented in literature, film, and visual arts, and drawing on work in the social sciences, The City in American Literature and Culture examines the large and local forces that shape urban space and city life and the street-level activity that remakes culture and identities as it contests injustice and separation. The first two sections examine a range of city spaces and lives; the final section brings the city into conversation with Marxist geography, critical race studies, trauma theory, slow/systemic violence, security theory, posthumanism, and critical regionalism, with a coda on city literature and democracy.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title page
• Series page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• City Spaces
• City Lives
• Theory in the City
• Further Reading
• Index