{"product_id":"9780814741320","title":"Bodies of Reform: The Rhetoric of Character in Gilded Age America","description":"\u003cp\u003eFrom the patricians of the early republic to post-Reconstruction racial scientists, from fin de siècle progressivist social reformers to post-war sociologists, character, that curiously formable yet equally formidable “stuff,” has had a long and checkered history giving shape to the American national identity.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eBodies of Reform\u003c\/b\u003e reconceives this pivotal category of nineteenth-century literature and culture by charting the development of the concept of “character” in the fictional genres, social reform movements, and political cultures of the United States from the mid-nineteenth to the early-twentieth century. By reading novelists such as Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Pauline Hopkins, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman alongside a diverse collection of texts concerned with the mission of building character, including child-rearing guides, muscle-building magazines, libel and naturalization law, Scout handbooks, and success manuals, James B. Salazar uncovers how the cultural practices of representing character operated in tandem with the character-building strategies of social reformers. His innovative reading of this archive offers a radical revision of this defining category in U.S. literature and culture, arguing that character was the keystone of a cultural politics of embodiment, a politics that played a critical role in determining-and contesting-the social mobility, political authority, and cultural meaning of the raced and gendered body.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"New York University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47118661353712,"sku":"9780814741320","price":28.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780814741320_p0.jpg?v=1763744753","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780814741320","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}