Conflict and Democracy in Classic American Fiction

FAIN: FA-57141-13

Sandra M. Gustafson
University of Notre Dame (Notre Dame, IN 46556-4635)

"Conflict and Democracy in Classic American Fiction" analyzes major conflicts in American history and the quest for democratic means to resolve those conflicts as portrayed in classic works of American fiction. This project builds on my previous studies of civic discourse and deliberative democracy, is informed by recent work in peace studies, and responds to the Bridging Cultures initiative. "Conflict and Democracy" begins with an introduction titled "Regeneration through Nonviolence," which deconstructs today's culture of conflict and presents a counter narrative about American fiction and culture. There are chapters on Cooper, Stowe, and the early peace movement; Adams, Sinclair and Progressivism; the war novels of Hemingway and Mailer; Ellison and Bellow on Tocquevillean democracy; and postmodern democracy in Silko and Didion. I conclude with the Bengali-American writers Bharati Mukherjee and Jumpha Lahiri, who rewrite "The Scarlet Letter" and respond to "Midnight's Children."

Associated Products

"Equality as Singularity: Rethinking Literature and Democracy" (Article)
Title: "Equality as Singularity: Rethinking Literature and Democracy"
Author: Sandra M. Gustafson
Abstract: This article considers the work of political theorists Pierre Rosanvallon and Danielle Allen in relation to evolving meanings of democracy. It then draws on their theories in readings of novels by Saul Bellow, Upton Sinclair, and Orhan Pamuk.
Year: 2015
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: New Literary History
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press

"Henry Adams, political reform, and the legacy of the Republican Roman Senate" (Article)
Title: "Henry Adams, political reform, and the legacy of the Republican Roman Senate"
Author: Sandra M. Gustafson
Abstract: This essay examines references to the Senate of the Roman Republic in several of the early writings of Henry Adams. It looks particularly at his journalism and reform writings of the 1860s and 70s, and culminates in an analysis of his novel Democracy from 1880. Adams’ great-grandfather John was a leading proponent of a senate in the deliberations over the U.S. Constitution. For Henry, the intellectual and political legacy represented by the Senate crystallized political problems including the appropriate balance of power, the nature of representation, the threat of tyranny, and the dangers of party and personal corruption. Adams was closely engaged with historiographical debates in England and Germany over ancient republics and the lessons they held for modern ones such as the United States. His portrait of the corrupt senator Silas Ratcliffe in Democracy resonates in particular with Theodore Mommsen’s treatment of Cicero. In The History of Rome, Mommsen rejected the heroic image of Cicero as the father of his country and presented instead a portrait in which the Roman senator’s self-interest predominated. At the same time he burnished Caesar’s image as a dictator who loved the people. Mommsen’s critique of Cicero echoes through Democracy, which concludes in some despair over the prospects of the American democratic system while offering no compensatory, heroic Caesar-figure.
Year: 2015
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Classical Receptions Journal
Publisher: Oxford University Press

"Literature and Peace Studies" (Article)
Title: "Literature and Peace Studies"
Author: Sandra M. Gustafson
Abstract: This article draws on concepts from the field of peace studies and relates them to novels about the Iraq War. It will appear in a collection in a volume slated to appear with Oxford University Press.
Year: 2015

"Democracy and Discussion: Albion Tourgée on Race and the Town Meeting Ideal," J19: The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists, Vol. 5.2 (Fall 2017): 389-96 (Article)
Title: "Democracy and Discussion: Albion Tourgée on Race and the Town Meeting Ideal," J19: The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists, Vol. 5.2 (Fall 2017): 389-96
Author: Sandra M. Gustafson
Abstract: This article examines the place of the town meeting ideal as a means to address post-slavery race relations in the novel Bricks into Straw, by the civil rights lawyer Albion Tourgee.
Year: 2017
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: J19
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

"Town meeting et race en Amerique," in a special issue of Participations on the idea of the town meeting, ed. Paula Cossart and Andrea Felicetti (2/2016): 149-73 (Article)
Title: "Town meeting et race en Amerique," in a special issue of Participations on the idea of the town meeting, ed. Paula Cossart and Andrea Felicetti (2/2016): 149-73
Author: Sandra M. Gustafson
Abstract: This essay explores the development of the New England town meeting ideal in connection with matters of race and considers the place of that ideal in post-slavery America. In particular, the essay focuses on how the black abolitionists David Walker and Maria Stewart used the jeremiad to expand the deliberative rhetoric associated with the town meeting, and it considers Albion Tourgée's efforts to implement the town meeting system in the post-bellum South. The essay further considers the place of the lyceum system and the Chautauqua phenomenon, and it addresses how John Dewey's efforts to reinvent the town meeting for a much larger and more diverse nation bore fruit in media forums described as town meetings. Eventually, the town meeting was reinvented yet again as a national political venue that could be used to address persistent racial tensions. The essay closes with a discussion of how the American university could help close the gap between the town meeting-style forum as a place for discussion and the historical town meeting's value as a site of consequential decision-making.
Year: 2016
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Participations
Publisher: De Boeck Supérieur

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