Making America: The Cultural Work of Literature

Making America tackles issues crucial to the formation and continuing re-imagination of American identity - and accordingly crucial to the field of American Studies - from contemporary theoretical positions. The essays collected in this volume are based on the premise that literature and other cultural artifacts make culture work and thus make culture. Hence they explore, from various critical angles, the interdependencies of this process whereby American cultural and national identity has been - and still is - shaped and challenged at the same time. Consequently, the volume foregrounds the rhetorical strategies which, orchestrating various conflicting cultural forces, locations, and voices, produce the multi-faceted phenomenon 'America'. The central interest which animates the critical work of the collaborative project of Making America is the dialogue between text and theory.