Carson McCullers in the Twenty-First Century

by Alison Graham-Bertolini (Editor), Casey Kayser (Editor)

Overview

The contributors to this volume use diverse critical techniques to identify how Carson McCullers’ writing engages with and critiques modern social structures and how her work resonates with a twenty-first century audience. The collection includes chapters about McCullers’ fiction, autobiographical writing, and dramatic works, and is groundbreaking because it includes the first detailed scholarly examination of new archival material donated to Columbus State University after the 2013 death of Dr. Mary Mercer, McCullers’ psychiatrist and friend, including transcripts of the psychiatric sessions that took place between McCullers and Mercer in 1958. Further, the collection covers the scope of McCullers’ canon of work, such as The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1940), The Member of the Wedding (1946), and Ballad of the Sad Café (1943), through lenses that are of growing interest in contemporary literary studies, including comparative transatlantic readings, queer theory, disability studies, and critical animal theory, among others.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783319820705
Publisher:	Springer International Publishing
Publication date:	05/04/2018
Series:	American Literature Readings in the 21st Century
Edition description:	Softcover reprint of the original 1st ed. 2016
Pages:	279
Product dimensions:	5.83(w) x 8.27(h) x (d)

About the Author

Alison Graham-Bertolini is Assistant Professor of English and Women’s Studies at North Dakota State University, USA.

Casey Kayser is Clinical Assistant Professor of English at University of Arkansas, USA.

Table of Contents

Preface.- Acknowledgments.- From Adaptation to Influence: Carson McCullers on the Stage, By Casey Kayser .- “Impromptu Journal of My Heart”: Carson McCullers’s Therapeutic Recordings, April – May 1958, By Carlos Dews.- Collaborative Life Writing: The Dialogical Subject of Carson McCullers’ Dictaphone ‘Experiments’ and Posthumously Published Autobiography, Illumination and Night Glare, By Melanie Sherazi.- Telling It “Slant”: Carson McCullers, Harper Lee, and the Veil of Memory, By Jan Whitt.- Musings between the Marvelous and Strange: New Contexts and Correspondence about Carson McCullers and Mary Tucker, By Carmen Trammell Skaggs.- The Image of the String Quartet Lurking in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, By Kiyoko Magome.- Entering the Compound: Becoming with Carson McCullers’ Freaks, By renée c. hoogland.- “To be a good animal”: Toward a Queer-Posthumanist Reading of Reflections in a Golden Eye, By Temple Gowan.- Coming of Age in the Queer South: Queer Friendship in The Heart isa Lonely Hunter, By Kristen Proehl.- Queer Eyes: Cross-Gendering, Cross-Dressing, and Cross-Racing Miss Amelia, By Miho Matsui.- “Nature is not abnormal; only lifelessness is abnormal”: Paradigms of the In-valid in Reflections in a Golden Eye, By Alison Graham-Bertolini.- A Tale of “two mutes”: Cognitive Segregation and Productive Citizenship in Carson McCullers’ The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, By Stephanie Rountree.- Seeking the Meaning of Loneliness: Carson McCullers in China, By Lin Bin.- “The Ballad of Two Sad Cafés”: Nicholasa Mohr’s Postwar Narrative as ‘Writing Back’ to Carson McCullers, By Barbara Roche Rico.-Jester’s Mercurial Nature and the Hermeneutics of Time in McCullers’ Clock Without Hands, By Craig Slaven.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“By highlighting twenty-first-century additions to McCullers’ archival materials and connecting her novels with recent history, the essays provide new perspectives on McCullers and gender, race, and sexuality. A timeless contribution to Carson McCullers studies.” (Courtney George, Assistant Professor of English, Columbus State University, USA, and Former Director of the Carson McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians)

“Alison Graham-Bertolini and Casey Kayser have brought together an impressive group of both established and emerging scholars to move McCullers studies into the twenty-first century. Some essays return with fresh eyes to familiar topics, as othersmap out new terrain altogether by drawing on psychiatric discourse, disability studies, or animal studies. This book reminds us why McCullers still matters.” (Sarah Gleeson-White, Senior Lecturer in American Literature, University of Sydney, Australia, and author of “Strange Bodies: Gender and Identity in the Novels of Carson McCullers”)

“This book is both timely and necessary—timely because it views McCullers’ work through the most contemporary, useful, and penetrating lenses available at this moment, the centennial of her birth; necessary for precisely those same reasons.” (Nick Norwood, Professor of Creative Writing, Columbus State University, USA, Director of the Carson McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians,and author of “Gravel and Hawk, A Palace for the Heart, and The Soft Blare”)