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Events
Jun. 30 | 2012 Bode-Pearson Prize
Nominations for the 2012 Bode-Pearson Prize for Outstanding Contributions to American Studies due
Jun. 30 | 2012 Mary C. Turpie Prize
Nominations for the 2012 Mary C. Turpie Prize for Outstanding Contributions to American Studies Teaching, Advising, and Program Development due
Oct. 1 | Travel Grants for Graduate Students
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Resources: Abstracts of American Studies Dissertations
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Veitch, Jonathan. "Avant-Garde and Kitsch: Nathanael West in an Age of 'Mass Culture.'," Harvard University, May 1992. Advisor: Sacvan Bercovitch (2, 12, 14)
This dissertation explores the cultural history of Depression era America through the novels, letters, and screenplays of Nathanael West. Each chapter is structured around a distinct mode of cultural production: i.e. the newspaper (Miss Lonelyhearts), the Horatio Alger-style rags-to-riches novel (A Cool Million), Hollywood itself (The Day of the Locust). Despite the claim of these media to be dispensing nothing more than “advice” or “entertainment,” I argue that West takes them as the loci for a persuasive ideological authority during the thirties and the sites upon which some of the decade’s major issues were contested: i.e. the imbrication of mass media and fascism, therapeutic culture and commodity fetishism.
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