{"product_id":"bodies-of-reform-the-rhetoric-of-character-in-gilded-age-america-9780814741306","title":"Bodies of Reform: The Rhetoric of Character in Gilded Age America","description":"\u003cp\u003e • Author(s): James B. Salazar\u003cbr\u003e • Publisher: New York University Press\u003cbr\u003e • Publisher Imprint: New York University Press\u003cbr\u003e • BISAC: American - General\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePart of the American Literatures Initiative Series \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFrom the patricians of the early republic to post-Reconstruction racial scientists, from fin de siècle progressivist social reformers to post-war sociologists, character, that curiously formable yet equally formidable \"stuff,\" has had a long and checkered history giving shape to the American national identity. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eBodies of Reform reconceives this pivotal category of nineteenth-century literature and culture by charting the development of the concept of \"character\" in the fictional genres, social reform movements, and political cultures of the United States from the mid-nineteenth to the early-twentieth century. By reading novelists such as Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Pauline Hopkins, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman alongside a diverse collection of texts concerned with the mission of building character, including child-rearing guides, muscle-building magazines, libel and naturalization law, Scout handbooks, and success manuals, James B. Salazar uncovers how the cultural practices of representing character operated in tandem with the character-building strategies of social reformers. His innovative reading of this archive offers a radical revision of this defining category in U.S. literature and culture, arguing that character was the keystone of a cultural politics of embodiment, a politics that played a critical role in determining-and contesting-the social mobility, political authority, and cultural meaning of the raced and gendered body.","brand":"New York University Press","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":47603784056983,"sku":"9780814741306","price":11451.0,"currency_code":"INR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0666\/3471\/1191\/files\/9780814741306.webp?v=1775017330","url":"https:\/\/atlanticbooks.com\/products\/bodies-of-reform-the-rhetoric-of-character-in-gilded-age-america-9780814741306","provider":"Atlantic Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}