Whiteness and American Literature

Essays in this volume explore the pivotal roles that ideas about whiteness have played in US literature and culture.

Jolene Hubbs (Edited by)

9781009522793, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 3 July 2025

344 pages
23.5 x 16 x 2.5 cm, 0.66 kg

This volume provides an illuminating exploration of how ideas about whiteness have shaped the literature and culture of the United States. Covering nearly 250 years – from the 1790 Naturalization Act, which limited access to citizenship to immigrants who were 'free white person[s],' to the present – Whiteness and American Literature considers how a broad spectrum of novels, movies, short stories, television shows, poems, songs, and other works depict whiteness. The collection's twenty accessible and engaging chapters by renowned scholars analyze representations of whiteness in a variety of historical periods, literary genres, and aesthetic forms. Chapters also survey scholarly work at the crossroads of whiteness studies and disability studies, food studies, and other academic disciplines. Designed for scholars, students, and general readers, this book is essential reading for anyone interested in gaining a deeper understanding of the role whiteness plays in the US imagination.

Introduction Jolene Hubbs
Part I. Whiteness and National Identity: 1. The imperial sounds of whiteness Harilaos Stecopoulos
2. Whiteness in late-nineteenth-century literature and law Mita Banerjee
3. Poor white people in the eugenic imagination Matt Wray
4. White nationalism Edward K. Chan
5. Whiteness and the US-Mexico border Lee Bebout
6. How Hollywood pictures whiteness Justin Gomer
7. Whiteface minstrels, stage Europeans, and twenty-first-century television dramas Marvin McAllister
Part II. Whiteness in the American literary imagination: 8. Whiteness in nineteenth-century speculative writing Hannah Lauren Murray
9. Whiteness and the slave narrative John Ernest
10. Passing in modernist literature Masami Sugimori
11. Whiteness in African American writers' nonfictional works Veronica T. Watson
12. The historical novel of whiteness T. Austin Graham
13. The unbearable whiteness of contemporary US climate fiction Teresa A. Goddu
14. The twenty-first-century white life novel Stephanie Li
Part III. Approaches to Whiteness: 15. Whiteness and food studies Catherine Keyser
16. Whiteness and queer studies Andrew Donnelly
17. Whiteness and legal studies Eden Osucha
18. Whiteness and working-class studies Timothy Helwig
19. Whiteness and feminism Taylor Nygaard and Jorie Lagerwey
20. Whiteness and disability studies Stephen Knadler.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB]