Feminist Engagements Forays into American Literature and Culture [Paperback]

This book offers historically-grounded, feminist interventions into American literary history by one of the country's leading scholars in American Studies. Integrating criticism, biography, social history, popular culture, and personal narrative Fishkin explores the poetry, fiction, nonfiction and drama of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century. These charismatic, readable essays range from explorations of feminist humor and chutzpah, to meditations on the personal and the political, to examinations of feminists' challenges to cultural paradigms. Fishkin s lively voice engages readers with the American past and leaves a bold stamp on the literary landscape.This book offers historically-grounded, feminist interventions into American literary history by one of the country's leading scholars in American Studies. Integrating criticism, biography, social history, popular culture, and personal narrative Fishkin explores the poetry, fiction, nonfiction and drama of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century. These charismatic, readable essays range from explorations of feminist humor and chutzpah, to meditations on the personal and the political, to examinations of feminists' challenges to cultural paradigms. Fishkin s lively voice engages readers with the American past and leaves a bold stamp on the literary landscape.Introduction * PART I: Changing the Story * The Borderlands of Culture * Making a Change * Reading, Writing and Arithmetic * Changing the Story * Essentialism and its Discontents * PART II: Men Reading& Writing Women/Women Reading& Writing Men * Dreiser and the Discourse of Gender * Mark Twain and Women * An Interview with Maxine Hong Kingston * The Bondwoman's Escape * PART III: Humor and Chutzpah * Feminist Humor and Charlotte Perkins Gilman * Theresa Malkiel's Diary of a Shirtwaist Striker * Erica Jong * Epilogue

CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title for 2009

Shelley Fisher Fishkin is a Professor in the Department lƒ9