{"product_id":"surveyors-of-customs-american-literature-as-cultural-analysis-9780190276157","title":"Surveyors of Customs: American Literature as Cultural Analysis","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn 1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne, fired from Salem's Custom House and returning to writing, reconceived his old job title, Surveyor of Customs, as his new one. Taking seriously this naming of the American author's project, Joel Pfister argues that writers from Benjamin Franklin to Louise Erdrich can be read as critical \"surveyors\" of customs, culture, hegemony, capitalism's emotional logic, and much else.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLiterary surveyors have helped make possible and can advance what we now call cultural analysis. In recent decades cultural theory and history have changed how we read literature. Literature can return the favor. America's achievement as a literary nation has contributed creatively to its accomplishment as a self-critical nation. The surveyors convened herein wrote novels, stories, plays, poetry, essays, autobiography, journals, and cultural criticism. \u003cem\u003eSurveyors of Customs\u003c\/em\u003e explores literature's insights into how America--its soft capitalism, its \"democratized\" inequality, its Americanization of power--\"ticks.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHistorical--and timely--questions abound. When and why did capitalism invest in the secular \"soul-making\" business and what roles did literature play in this? What does literature teach us about its relationship to the establishment of a personnel culture that moved beyond self-help incentive-making and intensified Americans' preoccupations with personal life to turn them into personnel? How did literature contribute to the reproduction of \"classless\" class relations and what does this say about dress-down politics and class formation in our Second Gilded Age?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Joel Pfister\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Oxford University Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 12\/28\/2015\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSeries:\u003c\/b\u003e Oxford Studies in American Literary History\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 288\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1.1lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.30h x 6.30w x 1.00d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780190276157","brand":"Oxford University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45198999847049,"sku":"9780190276157","price":120.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0636\/9240\/6921\/files\/img_a986dfc5-551f-400f-bc9e-87599950d9a6.jpg?v=1769493526","url":"https:\/\/sonsanddaughtersbooks.com\/products\/surveyors-of-customs-american-literature-as-cultural-analysis-9780190276157","provider":"Sons and Daughters Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}