A study of the pragmatism of Emerson, James, and Peirce and its relevance for the neopragmatism of thinkers like Richard Rorty, Stanley Fish, and Cornel West. In offering neopragmatism, a theory of the mind taken from Emerson, James, and Peirce, this book suggests that the neopragmatists' arguments can be sharpened across a variety of disciplines.

Unlike studies of nineteenth-century culture that perpetuate a dichotomy of a public, male world set against a private, female world, Lora Romero's "Home Fronts" shows the many, nuanced, and sometimes contradictory cultural planes on which struggles for authority unfolded in antebellum America.
Romero remaps the literary landscape of the last century by looking at the operations of domesticity on the frontier as well as within the middle-class home and by reconsidering such crucial (if sometimes unexpected) sites for the workings of domesticity as social reform movements, African-American...

Originating as a proponent of U.S. exceptionalism during the Cold War, American Studies has now reinvented itself, vigorously critiquing various kinds of critical hegemony and launching innovative interdisciplinary endeavors. The Futures of American Studies considers the field today and provides important deliberations on what it might yet become. Essays by both prominent and emerging scholars provide theoretically engaging analyses of the postnational impulse of current scholarship, the field's historical relationship to social movements, the status of theory, the state of higher...

Originating as a proponent of U.S. exceptionalism during the Cold War, American Studies has now reinvented itself, vigorously critiquing various kinds of critical hegemony and launching innovative interdisciplinary endeavors. The Futures of American Studies considers the field today and provides important deliberations on what it might yet become. Essays by both prominent and emerging scholars provide theoretically engaging analyses of the postnational impulse of current scholarship, the field's historical relationship to social movements, the status of theory, the state of higher...

Explores the drive of whites to "individualize" Indians -- showing them how they should pursue happiness, find the meaning of life and how they should labor.

In 1823, President James Monroe announced that the Western Hemisphere was closed to any future European colonization and that the United States would protect the Americas as a space destined for democracy. Over the next century, these ideas--which came to be known as the Monroe Doctrine--provided the framework through which Americans understood and articulated their military and diplomatic role in the world. "Hemispheric Imaginings" demonstrates that North Americans conceived and developed the Monroe Doctrine in relation to transatlantic literary narratives. Gretchen Murphy argues that...

In 1823, President James Monroe announced that the Western Hemisphere was closed to any future European colonization and that the United States would protect the Americas as a space destined for democracy. Over the next century, these ideas--which came to be known as the Monroe Doctrine--provided the framework through which Americans understood and articulated their military and diplomatic role in the world. "Hemispheric Imaginings" demonstrates that North Americans conceived and developed the Monroe Doctrine in relation to transatlantic literary narratives. Gretchen Murphy argues that...

Challenges the familiar way of reading a major strain of 19th century American literature. Rather than seeing this strain as preoccupied with a subject's inner mental life, it shows that subjects can only be understood, and understand themselves, through

Stacey Margolis rethinks a key chapter in American literary history, challenging the idea that nineteenth-century American culture was dominated by an ideology of privacy that defined subjects in terms of their intentions and desires. She reveals how writers from Nathaniel Hawthorne to Henry James depicted a world in which characters could only be understood--and, more importantly, could only understand themselves--through their public actions. She argues that the social issues that nineteenth-century novelists analyzed--including race, sexuality, the market, and the law--formed integral...

Political theorist and cultural critic, novelist and cricket enthusiast, C. L. R. James (1901 - 1989) was a brilliant polymath who has been described by Edward Said as "a centrally important 20th-century figure." Through such landmark works as The Black Jacobins, Beyond a Boundary, and American Civilization, James's thought continues to influence and inspire scholars in a wide variety of fields. "There is little doubt," wrote novelist Caryl Phillips in The New Republic, "that James will come to be regarded as the outstanding Caribbean mind of the twentieth century."

In his seminal work of...