Exoteric Modernisms: Progressive Era Realism and the Aesthetics of Everyday Life

This book is an account of how American realism in the Progressive Era contributed to debates about modernity. It uses the anthropological theories of Franz Boas, and Jacques Ranciere’s work on aesthetics and politics to develop a mode of reading class and culture that challenges conventional interpretations that pit the two modes of representation in opposition. It paints a picture of the late—nineteenth century, prior to modernism, as an aesthetically exciting, original, and politically r...