What is it about?

This paper is a study of how the emergence of the notion of "cultures" in the late nineteenth century United States altered the way class was seen and understood. This had a detrimental impact on left wing politics. The case study is the fiction of New Jersey author Stephen Crane.

Featured Image

Why is it important?

This publication rethinks the history of multiculturalism in America. It argues that the development of ideas of pluralistic cultural identities fundamentally altered how social class was understood and treated in discourses from literature, to anthropology and reform writing. In place of a pluralistic version of culture I use the writings of Stephen Crane to resurrect the progressive potential of a version of cosmopolitan "high culture" and aestheticism.

Read the Original

This page is a summary of: Manacled to Identity: Cosmopolitanism, Class, and ‘The Culture Concept’ in Stephen Crane, Comparative American Studies An International Journal, December 2013, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1179/1477570013z.00000000053.
You can read the full text:

Read

Contributors

The following have contributed to this page