Early America and the Modern Imagination: Rewriting the Past in the Present

Patrick M. Erben (Curatore)

Rebecca L. Harrison (Curatore)

Edinburgh University Press, 2025

Recurring culture war controversies in the US-ranging from reproductive freedom and gender identity to racial inequality and immigration-often turn public attention to early American precedents. At the same time, early American figures and tropes enjoy a stunning cachet in popular culture. Early America and the Modern Imagination squarely interprets the significance and cultural uses of these transhistorical re-imaginings of the early American past. While drawing productively on public memory scholarship, this volume augments its neglect of early American studies. The collection's critical and pedagogical essays investigate how a variety of modalities-including literature, film, television, theatre, video games and graphic novels-rescript early America as a usable past for contemporary audiences. Early America and the Modern Imagination, therefore, interprets early American themes and their present-day echoes to grapple with the evolving and highly contested import of the American nation's past in the present cultural moment.

• Curatore: Patrick M. Erben, Rebecca L. Harrison
• Editore: Edinburgh University Press
• Anno: 2025
• Rilegatura: Hardback
• Pagine: 336 p.
• Dimensioni: 234 x 156 mm
• EAN: 9781399536172

Testo in English