{"product_id":"bodies-of-reform","title":"Bodies of Reform","description":"\u003cp\u003ePart of the American Literatures Initiative Series \u003cbr\u003e\n\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","brand":"New York University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Product","offer_id":54222634090840,"sku":"9780814741306","price":82.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0278\/1295\/4195\/files\/9780814741306__67655a5e53991.jpg?v=1741160453","url":"https:\/\/agendabookshop.com\/products\/bodies-of-reform","provider":"Agenda Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}