{"title":"D Berton Emerson","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"american-literary-misfits-book-d-berton-emerson-9781469678405","title":"American Literary Misfits","description":"The study of nineteenth-century American literature has long been tied up with the study of American democracy. Just as some regions in the United States are elevated to stand in for the whole nation—New England is a good example—D. Berton Emerson argues, the same is true for American literature of the nineteenth century; a few canonical texts overrepresent the more motley history of American letters. Emerson examines an eclectic group of literary texts that have rarely, if ever, been considered representative of \"the nation\" because of their unseemly characters or plots, divergence from dominant literary trends of the era, or  local particularity. These are his \"literary misfits,\" authors and texts that show different forms of egalitarianism in action that existed outside and even against the dominant liberal narratives of American democracy.  Emerson's unique contribution is revealing these texts, and the people they represent, as rich with political knowledge. This knowledge, he argues, finds its most potent expression in the local. Such texts show us a different kind of democratic politics: one that is egalitarian, disorderly, and radical rather than homogeneous.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49748181188881,"sku":"NGR9781469678405","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51028285817105,"sku":"NIN9781469678405","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1469678403.jpg?v=1757416819"},{"product_id":"democracies-in-america-book-d-berton-emerson-9780192871879","title":"Democracies in America","description":"Ask someone their thoughts about \"democracy\" and you'll get many different responses. Some may presume it a thing once established yet now under threat. Others may believe that democracy has always been compromised by the empowered few. In the contemporary United States, marked by constituencies across the political spectrum believing that their voices have gone unheard, \"democracy\" gets wielded in so many divergent directions as to be rendered nearly incoherent.   Democracies in America reminds us that this reality is nothing new. Focusing on the various meanings of \"democracy\" that circulated in the long nineteenth century, the book collects twenty-five essays, each taking up a keyword in the language we use to talk about democracy. Penned by a group of diverse intellectuals, the entries tackle terms both commonplace (citizenship and representation) and paradigm-stretching (disgust and sham). The essays thus consider the relationship between \"America\" and \"democracy\" from multiple disciplinary angles and from different moments in a major historical period-amidst the vitality of the revolutionary epoch, in the contentious lead-up to the Civil War, and through the triumphs and failures of Reconstruction and the early reforms of the Progressive Era-while making both forward and backward glances in time.  The book frames its keywords around a series of enduring democratic dilemmas and questions, and provides extensive resources for further study. Ultimately the volume cultivates, for students and teachers in classrooms, as well as citizens in libraries and cafés, a language to deliberate about the possibilities and problems of democracy in America.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":50999753277713,"sku":"NIN9780192871879","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0192871870.jpg?v=1750843195"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-d-berton-emerson.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}