Literary Interventions in the Campaign Biography
Literary Interventions in the Campaign Biography considers campaign biographies written by major authors including Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Dean Howells, Lew Wallace, Jacob Riis, and Rose Wilder Lane. Whereas a number of cultural historians have previously considered campaign biographies to be marginal or isolated from the fictional output of these figures, this volume revisits the biographies in order to understand better how they inform, and are informed by, seismic shifts in the literary landscape. The book illuminates the intersection of American literature and politics while charting how the Presidency has developed in the public imagination. In so doing, it poses questions of increasing significance about how we understand the office as well as its occupants today.
Michael J. Blouin, PhD, is an Associate Professor in English and the Humanities at Milligan University. His areas of interest include nineteenth-century American literature, politics, and popular culture. He and co-author Tony Magistrale were recently awarded the Carl Bode prize for best essay from the Journal of American Culture in 2019. He was also invited to serve as guest editor for a special issue of the Journal of Popular Culture entitled "Neoliberalism and Popular Culture" (2018). Blouin’s other works include Stephen King and American Politics (2021), as well as Mass-Market Fiction and the Crisis of American Liberalism, 1972–2017 (2018). He received his doctorate in American Studies from Michigan State University in 2012. He currently resides in East Tennessee with his wife and two daughters.