Literature and Literary Studies

Contrary to conventional views, Bob Pepperman Taylor argues that Thoreau was one of America's most powerful and least understood political thinkers, a man who promoted community and democratic values while being ever vigilant against the evils of excessive or illegitimate authority.

Words is a Powerful Thing gives a sustained insight into the role that creativity—in this case, poetry—plays in aiding survival and bringing positive change for inmates, and for all of us.

The first book-length examination of Abraham Lincoln’s lifelong interest in and affection for the the plays of William Shakespeare.

The fiction of John Updike offers a possible explanation for anyone wishing to understand why the Democratic Party lost its traditional base of support in significant parts of the heartland and alienated millions of white working-class Americans in the past few decades.

A creative, multidisciplinary approach to the study of American westward expansion, Inventing Destiny looks at the cultural driving forces—including art, literature, gender, and religion—behind the rapid transformation of the nation’s nineteenth-century frontier.

Big-game hunting underwent a transformation in meaning in the 1880s and hunting narratives were the vehicle for that change; although hunters appealed to traditional ideals of Americanism and the "manly virtues" in their narratives, their hunts were brought to life using very modern technologies of travel, tourism, and publishing. These elements became ever more significant as hunters began to advocate for conservation, using a powerful combination of media access and social influence to persuade their readers to support game legislation and promote hunting restrictions across North America.

The history of America’s move away from renewable energy to fossil fuels and the cultural and ecological changes and consequences.

A detailed and contextualized chronology of Hemingway’s life and times. Profusely annotated it is a major source for researchers and others dealing with Hemingway and related subjects.

The first comprehensive study of how Soviet and post-Soviet novelists—most of them war veterans—depicted the shattering experiences of World War II. Uncovers themes common to war literature in general but also distinctive to the Soviet experience. Reveals why Russia’s memories of World War II are forever tied to the suffering of its people.

Juxtaposes the mythic history of the West’s frontier past with dystopian and utopian narratives set in the present and futuristic West, turning ideas of American national identity upside down, and showing how these narratives powerfully shape our understanding of present-day circumstances.