Early America and the Modern Imagination: Rewriting the Past in the Present
(Hardback)
Publishing Details
Early America and the Modern Imagination: Rewriting the Past in the Present
By (Author) Patrick M. Erben
Edited by Rebecca L. Harrison
Edinburgh University Press
Edinburgh University Press
7th November 2025
United Kingdom
Classifications
General
Non Fiction
Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000
Literary studies: from c 2000
Literary studies: fiction, novelists and prose writers
Physical Properties
Hardback
336
Width 156mm, Height 234mm
Description
Recurring culture war controversies in the US-ranging from reproductive freedom and gender identity to racial inequality and immigration-often turn public attention to early American precedents. At the same time, early American figures and tropes enjoy a stunning cachet in popular culture. Early America and the Modern Imagination squarely interprets the significance and cultural uses of these transhistorical re-imaginings of the early American past. While drawing productively on public memory scholarship, this volume augments its neglect of early American studies. The collection's critical and pedagogical essays investigate how a variety of modalities-including literature, film, television, theatre, video games and graphic novels-rescript early America as a usable past for contemporary audiences. Early America and the Modern Imagination, therefore, interprets early American themes and their present-day echoes to grapple with the evolving and highly contested import of the American nation's past in the present cultural moment.
Author Bio
Patrick M. Erben is Professor of English at the University of West Georgia, USA. He is the author of A Harmony of the Spirits: Translation and the Language of Community in Early Pennsylvania (2013) and co-edited The Francis Daniel Pastorius Reader (2019). Erben is a past president of the Society of Early Americanists and currently serves on the editorial board for Early American Literature. Rebecca L. Harrison is Professor of English at the University of West Georgia, USA. She is the co-editor of the Eudora Welty Review and President of the Eudora Welty Society. Her books include Inhabiting La Patria: Identity, Agency, and Antojo in the Work of Julia Alvarez (2013), Teaching, Pedagogy, and Learning: Fertile Ground for Campus and Community Innovations (2017) and Revitalizing Classrooms: Innovations and Inquiry Pedagogies in Practice (2017).
