Published by University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, NE, 2015
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Thursday, October 15, 2015
Julianne Newmark published The Pluralist Imagination from East to West in American Literature in January 2015
The first three decades of the twentieth century saw the largest period of
immigration in U.S. history. This immigration, however, was accompanied by
legal segregation, racial exclusionism, and questions of residents national
loyalty and commitment to a shared set of American beliefs and identity.
The faulty premise that homogeneity as the symbol of the melting pot was
the mark of a strong nation underlined nativist beliefs while undercutting the
rich diversity of cultures and lifeways of the population. Though many authors
of the time have been viewed through this nativist lens, several texts do
indeed contain an array of pluralist themes of society and culture that
contradict nativist orientations. In The Pluralist Imagination from East
to West in American Literature, Julianne Newmark brings urban northeastern,
western, southwestern, and Native American literature into debates about
pluralism and national belonging and thereby uncovers new concepts of American
identity based on sociohistorical environments. Newmark explores themes of
plurality and place as a reaction to nativism in the writings of Louis Adamic,
Konrad Bercovici, Abraham Cahan, Willa Cather, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Charles
Alexander Eastman, James Weldon Johnson, D. H. Lawrence, Mabel Dodge Luhan, and
Zitkala-Sa, among others. This exploration of the connection between
concepts of place and pluralist communities reveals how mutual experiences of
place can offer more constructive forms of community than just discussions of nationalism,
belonging, and borders.
Published by University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, NE, 2015
Relevant Links:
Published by University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, NE, 2015
Relevant Links:
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