The goal of this special issue of American Literature is to encourage scholars in both the sciences and the humanities to estrange themselves from their regular ways of thinking. Committed to underst
September 11, the subway bombings in Europe, and Hurricane Katrina occurred in rapid succession. The outsized relationship between their historical significance and chronological span also marked thes
Throughout the era of the Cold War a consensus reigned as to what constituted the great works of American literature. Yet as scholars have increasingly shown, and as this volume unmistakably demonstr