Tuesday, October 25, 2016

"Sensational Internationalism"

New from Edinburgh University Press: Sensational Internationalism: The Paris Commune and the Remapping of American Memory in the Long Nineteenth Century by J. Michelle Coghlan.

About the book,from the publisher:
"Skillfully researched and beautifully written, Sensational Internationalism broadens the contours of American cultural and political memory by bringing to life the profound reverberations produced in the States by what was on one level just a very brief moment in someone else's history: the Paris Commune. Michelle Coghlan's stunning archive lends her account breadth and authority missing in those that would minimize those effects or limit them to a solely labor phenomenon." - Kristin Ross, New York University

In refocusing attention on the Paris Commune as a key event in American political and cultural memory, Sensational Internationalism radically changes our understanding of the relationship between France and the United States in the long nineteenth century. It offers fascinating, remarkably accessible readings of a range of literary works, from periodical poetry and boys' adventure fiction to radical pulp and the writings of Henry James, as well as a rich analysis of visual, print, and performance culture, from post-bellum illustrated weeklies and panoramas to agit-prop pamphlets and Coney Island pyrotechnic shows. Throughout, it uncovers how a foreign revolution came back to life as a domestic commodity, and why for decades another nation's memory came to feel so much our own. This book will speak to readers looking to understand the affective, cultural, and aesthetic afterlives of revolt and revolution pre-and-post Occupy Wall Street, as well as those interested in space, gender, performance, and transatlantic print culture.
--Marshal Zeringue