{"product_id":"bodies-of-reform","title":"Bodies of Reform","description":"\u003cp\u003ePart of the American Literatures Initiative Series \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\nFrom 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.\u003cbr\u003e\nBodies 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n","brand":"James B. Salazar","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53615493087612,"sku":"9780814741306","price":70.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0251\/4980\/0541\/files\/9780814741306_ab606c9b-a941-4d51-a7ba-d22bc19ba3e2.jpg?v=1726664157","url":"https:\/\/combined-academic.myshopify.com\/products\/bodies-of-reform","provider":"Combined Academic Publishers - Mare Nostrum Group","version":"1.0","type":"link"}