Books by "J. Barton Scott"
4 books found
Co-winner of the Perkins Prize from the Society for the Study of Narrative Literature Has twentieth-century political violence destroyed faith in historical knowledge? What happens to historical fiction when history is seen as either a form of Western imperialism or a form of postmodern simulation? In Sublime Desire, Amy Elias examines our changing relationship to history and how fiction since 1960 reflects that change. She contends that postmodernism is a post-traumatic imagination that is pulled between two desires: the political desire to acknowledge the physical violence of twentieth-century history, and the yearning for an escape from that history into a ravishing realm of historical certainty. Torn between these desires, both historical fiction and historiography after 1960 redefine history as the "sublime," a territory beyond lived experience that is both unknowable and seductive. In the face of a failure of Enlightenment ideals about knowledge and the West's own history of violence, post-World War II history becomes a desire for the "secular sacred" sublime—for awe, certainty, and belief. Sublime Desire is an eloquent melding of theory and practice. Mixing the canonical with the unexpected, Elias analyzes developments in the historical romance genre from Walter Scott's novels to novels written today. She correlates developments in the historical romance to similar changes in historiography and philosophy. Sublime Desire draws engagingly on more than thirty relevant texts, from Tolstoy's War and Peace to Jeanette Winterson's Sexing the Cherry, Charles Johnson's Dreamer, and Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain. But the book also examines theories of postmodern space and time and defines the difference between postmodern and postcolonial historical perspectives. The final chapter draws from trauma theory in Holocaust studies to define how fiction can pose an ethical alternative to aestheticized history while remaining open to pluralism and democratic values. In its range and sophistication, Sublime Desire is a valuable addition to postmodernist studies as well as to studies of the historical romance novel.
“Lays out a novel and provocative argument . . . Essential reading for those concerned with the future of comparative literature and the world.” ―Natalie Melas, Cornell University World Literature for the Wretched of the Earth recovers a genealogy of anticolonial thought that advocated collective inexpertise, unknowing, and unrecognizability. Early-twentieth-century anticolonial thinkers endeavored to imagine a world emancipated from colonial rule, but it was a world they knew they would likely not live to see. Written in exile, in abjection, or in the face of death, anticolonial thought could not afford to base its politics on the hope of eventual success, mastery, or national sovereignty. J. Daniel Elam shows how anticolonial thinkers theorized inconsequential practices of egalitarianism in the service of an impossibility: a world without colonialism. Framed by a suggestive reading of the surprising affinities between Frantz Fanon’s political writings and Erich Auerbach’s philological project, World Literature for the Wretched of the Earth foregrounds anticolonial theories of reading and critique in the writing of Lala Har Dayal, B.R. Ambedkar, M.K. Gandhi, and Bhagat Singh. These anticolonial activists theorized reading not as a way to cultivate mastery and expertise but as a way, rather, to disavow mastery altogether. To become or remain an inexpert reader, divesting oneself of authorial claims, was to fundamentally challenge the logic of the British Empire and European fascism, which prized self-mastery, authority, and national sovereignty. Bringing together the histories of comparative literature and anticolonial thought, Elam demonstrates how these early-twentieth-century theories of reading force us to reconsider the commitments of humanistic critique and egalitarian politics in the still-colonial present.
"Here is an extensive review and bibliographic essay, backed by 5,000 citations, about developments in information technology since the advent of personal computing and the convergence of the disciplines. Its focus is on the access, preservation, and analysis of historical information (primarily in electronic form), and the relationships between new methodology and instructional media, technique, and research trends in library special collections, digital libraries, electronic and data archives, and museums."--
Covering a span of almost two centuries, Railroad History on American Postage Stamps tells the stories behind the many United States postage stamps that portray railroad history. Almost 200 stamps depicting railroading highlights including land grants, the completion of the transcontinental railroad, railroad heroes (from John Henry to Casey Jones), and equipment from famous locomotives to workaday freight cars are described in fascinating vignettes. In addition, a major chapter covers railroad issues, labor and the law. There is even a section identifying many famous individuals with surprising railroad associations including Irving Berlin, Nelly Bly, John Wayne, Samuel Clemens, Emily Dickinson, Will Rogers and Cary Grant. Extensively researched by the author over a period of more than two years, the book treats the reader to a treasure trove of little-known yet interesting facts that capture the reader?s attention from the first page to last. Includes an extensive bibliography and Scott Number index.