Synopses & Reviews
In When Sex Changed, Layne Parish Craig analyzes the ways literary texts responded to the political, economic, sexual, and social values put forward by the birth control movements of the 1910s to the 1930s in the United States and Great Britain.
Discussion of contraception and related topics (including feminism, religion, and eugenics) changed the way that writers depicted women, marriage, and family life. Tracing this shift, Craig compares disparate responses to the birth control controversy, from early skepticism by mainstream feminists, reflected in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland, to concern about the movement’s race and class implications suggested in Nella Larsen’s Quicksand, to enthusiastic speculation about contraception’s political implications, as in Virginia Woolf’s Three Guineas.
While these texts emphasized birth control’s potential to transform marriage and family life and emancipate women from the “slavery” of constant childbearing, birth control advocates also used less-than-liberatory language that excluded the poor, the mentally ill, non-whites, and others. Ultimately, Craig argues, the debates that began in these early political and literary texts—texts that document both the birth control movement’s idealism and its exclusionary rhetoric—helped shape the complex legacy of family planning and women’s rights with which the United States and the United Kingdom still struggle.
Review
“With a transatlantic approach that yields fascinating results, Layne Craig’s
When Sex Changed adds nuance, new insight, and fresh ideas to previous historical and literary studies of the birth control movement.”
Review
andldquo;Elegantly written, Main Street and Empire is of the utmost importance to the reconceptualization of American exceptionalism within a transnational geography. This book is certain to exert a major influence on accounts of global American modernity for many years to come.andrdquo;
Review
andquot;The most incisive analysis available about representational discourses of small towns U.S.A. From classic texts to corporate advertising, Poll reveals a small town imaginary shaping an age of globalization.andquot;
Review
andquot;Using broad cultural analysis, Poll investigates the centrality of the small town, as represented in literature, to the cultural imagination of the US. An impressive, multifaceted exploration of the small town as a symbol. Readers with some background in literary theory will find this book most compelling. Recommended.andquot;
Review
"In
When Sex Changed, Craig breaks new ground by establishing the transnational nature of the 'political ascendance and gradual institutionalization of birth control as a family planning model' with a well-researched history of birth control politics. She succeeds in bringing to light new meanings buried in texts well combed-over by literary scholars."
Synopsis
When Sex Changed analyzes the ways literary texts responded to the political, economic, sexual, and social values put forward by the birth control movements of the 1910s to the 1930s in the United States and Great Britain. The book compares disparate responses to the birth control controversy, from early skepticism by mainstream feminists, to concerns about the movement’s race and class implications, to enthusiastic speculation about contraception’s political implications.
Synopsis
In
When Sex Changed, Layne Parish Craig analyzes the ways literary texts responded to the political, economic, sexual, and social values put forward by the birth control movements of the 1910s to the 1930s in the United States and Great Britain.
Discussion of contraception and related topics (including feminism, religion, and eugenics) changed the way that writers depicted women, marriage, and family life. Tracing this shift, Craig compares disparate responses to the birth control controversy, from early skepticism by mainstream feminists, reflected in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland, to concern about the movement's race and class implications suggested in Nella Larsen's Quicksand, to enthusiastic speculation about contraception's political implications, as in Virginia Woolf's Three Guineas.
While these texts emphasized birth control's potential to transform marriage and family life and emancipate women from the -slavery- of constant childbearing, birth control advocates also used less-than-liberatory language that excluded the poor, the mentally ill, non-whites, and others. Ultimately, Craig argues, the debates that began in these early political and literary texts--texts that document both the birth control movement's idealism and its exclusionary rhetoric--helped shape the complex legacy of family planning and women's rights with which the United States and the United Kingdom still struggle.
Synopsis
In Main Street and Empire, Ryan Poll argues that the small town, as evoked by the image of andldquo;Main Street,andrdquo; is not a relic of the past but rather a metaphorical screen upon which the nationandrsquo;s andldquo;everydayandrdquo; stories and subjects are projected on both a national and global level. It brings together a wide range of literary, cultural, and political texts to examine how the small town is used to imagine and reproduce the nation throughout the twentieth- and into the twenty-first century.
Synopsis
The small town has become a national icon that circulates widely in literature, culture, and politics as an authentic American space and community. Yet there are surprisingly few critical studies that analyze the small townandrsquo;s centrality to the United Statesandrsquo; identity and imagination.
In Main Street and Empire, Ryan Poll addresses this need, arguing that the small town, as evoked by the image of andldquo;Main Street,andrdquo; is not a relic of the past but rather a metaphorical screen upon which Americaandrsquo;s andldquo;everydayandrdquo; stories and subjects are projected on both a national and global scale.
Bringing together a broad selection of textsandmdash;from Thornton Wilderandrsquo;s Our Town, Grace Metaliousandrsquo;s Peyton Place, and Peter Weirandrsquo;s The Truman Show to the speeches of William McKinley, Ronald Reagan, Sarah Palin, and Barack Obamaandmdash;Poll examines how the small town is used to imagine and reproduce the nation throughout the twentieth- and into the twenty-first century. He contends that the dominant small town, despite its innocent, nostalgic appearance, is central to the development of the U.S. empire and global capitalism.
and#160;
About the Author
Ryan Poll is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Northeastern Illinois University. This will be his first book. See andquot;Author Backgroundandquot; for more info.
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Small Town as Modern Nation Form
1. Sacred Islands in Modernity: The Prehistory of the Dominant Small Town
2. An Unfinished Revolution: andquot;The Revolt from the Villageandquot; Reconsidered
3. Mapping the Modern Small Town: A Circular Imaginary
4. A New Machine in the Small-Town Garden: Periodizing an Automodernity
5. The Formation of a U.S. Fascist Aesthetics; or, Welcome to Main Street
6. Staging and Archiving the Nation: Pedagogical Theater, Thornton Wilder's Our Town, and U.S. Imperialism
7. andquot;One Happy Worldandquot;: The Postmodern Small Town and the Small-Town Postmodern
8. Global Belonging: The Small Town as the World's Home
Afterword: The Global Village
Notes
Bibliography
Index