Consuming Empire in U.S. Fiction, 1865-1930

Consuming Empire in US Fiction, 1865-1930 is an interdisciplinary study that examines references to internationally-traded commodities in US fiction in order to reveal authors' attitudes toward US economic expansionism at the turn of the twentieth century. It pairs global economic histories with close readings of commodities depicted in fiction, employing a methodology informed by literary studies, global history, art history, economic history, postcolonial studies, and gender studies. The study identifies affinities across literary chronologies, geographies, genres, and fields through authors' common engagement with long international histories of commodity chains. It also reframes literary debates about domesticity in a global context to reveal complex, varied, and at times contradictory attitudes toward the intersection of gender and U.S. imperialism. The book examines a variety of primary source materials, including novels, short stories, poetry, paintings, home decorating guides, women's magazines, children's geography books, trade reports, newspaper articles, and journals.

Format: Hardback
Length: 288 pages
Publication date: 30 April 2023
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Traces authors' attitudes toward US economic expansionism through their fictional allusions to internationally-traded commodities

Pairs global economic histories with close readings of commodities depicted in fiction in order to shed new light on the strategies that both well-known and under-studied authors use to critique US economic expansionism at the turn of the twentieth century

Employs an interdisciplinary methodology informed by literary studies, global history, art history, economic history, postcolonial studies, and gender studies

Identifies affinities across literary chronologies, geographies, genres, and fields through authors' common engagement with long international histories of commodity chains

Reframes literary debates about domesticity in a global context in order to reveal complex, varied, and at times contradictory attitudes toward the intersection of gender and U.S. imperialism

Examines a variety of primary source materials, including novels, short stories, poetry, paintings, home decorating guides, women's magazines, children's geography books, trade reports, newspaper articles, and journals

What is a reference to an Italian Egyptologist doing in Louisa May Alcott's portrait of domesticity? Why does Elizabeth Stuart Phelps's painter protagonist Avis Dobell know--and care--that her red shawl is dyed with desiccated beetles? Why might W.E.B. Du Bois's fictional sharecropper display a reproduction of a painting by William-Adolphe Bouguereau near his cotton field? These questions, and more, are answered by Consuming Empire in US Fiction, 1865-1930.

Weight: 581g
Dimension: 234 x 156 x 18 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781399505710