It looks like you're offline.
Open Library logo
additional options menu

MARC Record from Library of Congress

Record ID marc_loc_2016/BooksAll.2016.part40.utf8:255141574:4088
Source Library of Congress
Download Link /show-records/marc_loc_2016/BooksAll.2016.part40.utf8:255141574:4088?format=raw

LEADER: 04088cam a2200349 i 4500
001 2013040900
003 DLC
005 20140805080104.0
008 131204s2014 nju b 001 0 eng
010 $a 2013040900
020 $a9780813565309 (hardback)
020 $a9780813565293 (pbk.)
020 $z9780813565392 (e-book)
040 $aDLC$beng$cDLC$erda
042 $apcc
050 00 $aPS169.A28$bW45 2014
082 00 $a810.9/355$223
084 $aSOC028000$2bisacsh
100 1 $aWeingarten, Karen,$d1980-$eauthor.
245 10 $aAbortion in the American imagination :$bbefore life and choice, 1880-1940 /$cKaren Weingarten.
264 1 $aNew Brunswick, New Jersey ;$aLondon :$bRutgers University Press,$c2014.
300 $axi, 188 pages ;$c24 cm
336 $atext$2rdacontent
337 $aunmediated$2rdamedia
338 $avolume$2rdacarrier
490 0 $aAmerican Literatures Initiative
520 $a" The public debate on abortion stretches back much further than Roe v. Wade, to long before the terms "pro-choice" and "pro-life" were ever invented. Yet the ways Americans discussed abortion in the early decades of the twentieth century had little in common with our now-entrenched debates about personal responsibility and individual autonomy. Abortion in the American Imagination returns to the moment when American writers first dared to broach the controversial subject of abortion. What was once a topic avoided by polite society, only discussed in vague euphemisms behind closed doors, suddenly became open to vigorous public debate as it was represented everywhere from sensationalistic melodramas to treatises on social reform. Literary scholar and cultural historian Karen Weingarten shows how these discussions were remarkably fluid and far-ranging, touching upon issues of eugenics, economics, race, and gender roles. Weingarten traces the discourses on abortion across a wide array of media, putting fiction by canonical writers like William Faulkner, Edith Wharton, and Langston Hughes into conversation with the era's films, newspaper articles, and activist rhetoric. By doing so, she exposes not only the ways that public perceptions of abortion changed over the course of the twentieth century, but also the ways in which these abortion debates shaped our very sense of what it means to be an American. "--$cProvided by publisher.
520 $a"Abortion is one of the most contentious issues in contemporary American politics, yet since Roe v. Wade the terms of the debate have remained fairly static. The early decades of the twentieth century, however, saw the emergence of a new rhetoric surrounding abortion and a proliferation of novels, short stories, plays, and films that dealt with the issue. Canonized writers like William Faulkner, Langston Hughes, and Edith Wharton, as well as many now forgotten popular writers, incorporated the possibility of abortion in their plots. Newspapers printed stories of abortion scandals, Hollywood obsessed over whether abortion should be represented in film, and abortion occupied the minds of clergy, doctors, and journalists. What had been spoken of only in euphemisms became the focus of a heated and often sensationalized debate, but the terms of that debate were still unstable. This book uses a wide archive of writings to explain the development of abortion rhetoric in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century, a period that crucially shaped the way we discuss the issue today. The book argues that as discussions about abortion entered the public sphere they became entangled with liberal American ideals of individuality, autonomy, and self-responsibility. By tracing how anti-abortion rhetoric was used to demarcate the contours of the American citizen, the author constructs a genealogy of abortion rhetoric in America"--$cProvided by publisher.
504 $aIncludes bibliographical references (pages 171-183) and index.
650 0 $aAmerican literature$xHistory and criticism.
650 0 $aAbortion in literature.
650 7 $aSOCIAL SCIENCE / Women's Studies.$2bisacsh