The Cambridge Companion to American Literature and the Body

This volume offers a rigorous yet accessible overview of the key questions and intersectional approaches pertaining to American literature and the body. The chapters have been written in an accessible style, making them useful for undergraduates as well as for more experienced researchers.

Introduction: Travis M. Foster; I. Genres: 1. Bodies in early US-Atlantic theater Marvin McAllister; 2. Sentimentalism and the feeling body Claudia Stokes; 3. Slavery, disability and the Black body/White body complex in the American slave narrative Maurice Wallace; 4. Monstrous bodies of the American gothic Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet; 5. Bodies at war Colleen Glenney Boggs; 6. Decolonizing the body in multiethnic American fiction Sony Coráñez Bolton; 7. Science fiction's humanoid bodies of the future Frances Tran; 8. Contemporary North American transgender literature: realness, fantasy, and the body Stephanie Clare; II. Critical Methodologies: 9. Feminist theory, feminist criticism, and the sex/gender distinction Christine 'Xine' Yao; 10. Reading bodies and textual materialities Thomas Constantinesco; 11. How to read disabled bodies in history Erica Fretwell; 12. How to read disabled bodies now: crip of color critique Anna Hinton; 13. Health humanities, illness, and the body in American literature Lindsey Grubbs; 14. The Indigenous body in American literature Sean Teuton; 15. The Black Body and the reading of race Christine Okoth; 16. Ecocriticism and the body Delia Byrnes.