Feminist Engagements: Forays into American Literature and Culture

by S. Fishkin

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312238582
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan US
Publication date:	04/12/2009
Edition description:	2009
Pages:	279
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.30(h) x 2.50(d)

About the Author

Shelley Fisher Fishkin is a Professor in the Department of English at Stanford University, USA. She is the author, editor or co-editor of over forty books including "Feminist Engagements: Forays Into American Literature and Culture" (selected as an "Outstanding Academic Title" by "Choice") and has published over one hundred articles, essays, columns, and reviews. Her work has been translated into Arabic, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, Russian, Georgian, and Italian, and has been published in English-language journals in Turkey, Japan, and Korea. She has served as President of the American Studies Association and the Mark Twain Circle of America. In addition, she was co-founder of the Charlotte Perkins Gilman society, and has been chair of the MLA Nonfiction Prose Division.

Table of Contents

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

Editorial Reviews

CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title for 2009

From the Publisher