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Regional Consciousness In American Literature, 1860-1930, Kelsey Louise Squire

Dissertations (1934 -)

This study establishes a conversation between regional literary theory, ecocriticism, and places studies as a necessary component of a more nuanced understanding of regionalism as depicted by mobile American authors in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Between 1860 and 1930, regional writers faced the challenge of making place relevant in an increasingly mobile world. In contrast to scholarly studies that situate the relevance of regionalism as a vehicle for a larger cause (for example, nationalism or feminism), or conversely, studies that focus on articulating an overly rigid "regional identity" of places or authors, I employ the term "regional …