Turns of Event (Ebook) von Hester Blum

American literary studies has undergone a series of field redefinitions that have been described as turns, whether transnational, aesthetic, or affective. Turns of Event: Nineteenth-Century American Literary Studies in Motion argues that the propensity of the field to reinvent itself without dissolution is one of its greatest strengths.

Introduction. Academic Positioning Systems
Hester Blum

PART I. PROVOCATIONS
Chapter 1. Turn It Up: Affects, Structures of Feeling, and Face-to-Face Education
Geoffrey Sanborn
Chapter 2. Literary History, Book History, and Media Studies
Meredith L. McGill
Chapter 3. The Cartographic Turn and American Literary Studies: Of Maps, Mappings, and the Limits of Metaphor
Martin Brückner
Chapter 4. Twists and Turns
Christopher Castiglia

PART II. TURN-BY-TURN DIRECTIONS: TRANSNATIONAL, HEMISPHERIC, OCEANIC
Chapter 5. Of Turns and Paradigm Shifts: Humanities, Science, and Transnational American Studies
Ralph Bauer
Chapter 6. The Geopolitics and Tropologies of the American Turn
Monique Allewaert
Chapter 7. The Caribbean Turn in C19 American Literary Studies
Sean X. Goudie
Chapter 8. Oceanic Turns and American Literary History in Global Context
Michelle Burnham

Notes
List of Contributors
Index
Acknowledgments

American literary studies has undergone a series of field redefinitions over the past two decades that have been consistently described as "turns," whether transnational, hemispheric, postnational, spatial, temporal, postsecular, aesthetic, or affective. InTurns of Event, Hester Blum and a splendid roster of contributors explore the conditions that have produced such movements. Offering an overview of the state of the study of nineteenth-century American literature, Blum contends that the field's propensity to turn, to reinvent itself constantly without dissolution, is one of its greatest strengths.

The essays in the volume's first half, "Provocations," trace the theoretical and methodological development and institutional emergence of certain turns, as well as providing calls to arms. The geopolitically oriented turns toward the transnational, hemispheric, and oceanic (whether Atlantic, Caribbean, Pacific, or archipelagic in focus) have held a certain prevalence in American studies in recent years, and the second half of this volume presents a series of scholarly essays that exemplify these subfields.

Taken together, these essays survey the field of American literary studies as it moves beyond new historicism as its primary methodology and evolves in light of ideological, conceptual, and material considerations. There is much at stake in these movements: the consequences and opportunities range from citational and evidentiary practices to canon expansion, resource allocation, and institutional futurity.

Contributors: Monique Allewaert, Ralph Bauer, Hester Blum, Martin Brückner, Michelle Burnham, Christopher Castiglia, Sean X. Goudie, Meredith L. McGill, Geoffrey Sanborn.