A reexamination of key Frankfurt School thinkers--Benjamin, Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse--in the light of contemporary theory and cultural studies across the disciplines, Rethinking the Frankfurt School asks what consequences such a rethinking might have for study of the Frankfurt School on its own terms. Ironically, contemporary theorists find themselves turning back toward the Frankfurt School precisely for the reasons it was once scorned: for a notion of subjects whose desires are less liberated and multiplied than they are produced and regulated by a far-reaching, very-nearly totalizing...

One of the leading figures in the debate over postmodernism in the 1980s and 1990s, Fredric Jameson is regarded as the most important Marxist theoretician and cultural critic writing in America today. Although Jameson's significance as a global intellectual has been widely recognized for some time, none of the literature covers the full range of his work. This timely collection reflects on Jameson's entire body of work and demonstrates its potential to shape the emerging field of globalization studies. Experts in literary theory, Slavic studies, film criticism, and Biblical studies explore...

In "The Suburb of Dissent "Caren Irr explores the leftist literary subculture of the United States and Canada during the 1930s to reconstruct the ideas of mass culture, class, and nationality that emerged as a result of the Great Depression. Unearthing plots and characters that still surface in contemporary narratives, Irr juxtaposes classic and neglected works of criticism, fiction, poetry, and journalism and demonstrates how leftist writers resisted totalitarianism much more thoroughly than Cold War accounts would suggest.
Irr highlights works by Richard Wright, John Dos Passos,...

Explores the leftist literary subculture of the United States and Canada during the 1930s to reconstruct the ideas of mass culture, class, and nationality that emerged as a result of the Great Depression.