A History of American Literature and Culture of the First World War

In the years of and around the First World War, American poets, fiction writers, and dramatists came to the forefront of the international movement we call Modernism. At the same time a vast amount of non- and anti-Modernist culture was produced, mostly supporting, but also critical of, the US war effort. A History of American Literature and Culture of the First World War explores this fraught cultural moment, teasing out the multiple and intricate relationships between an insurgent Modernism, a still-powerful traditional culture, and a variety of cultural and social forces that interacted with and influenced them. Including genre studies, focused analyses of important wartime movements and groups, and broad historical assessments of the significance of the war as prosecuted by the United States on the world stage, this book presents original essays defining the state of scholarship on the American culture of the First World War.

Introduction. America's Great War at one hundred (and counting) Tim Dayton and Mark W. Van Wienen; Part I. Genre and Medium: 1. Poetry: hegemonic vistas Tim Dayton; 2. Fiction: a war remembered Scott D. Emmert; 3. Film: mostly classical Hollywood cinema goes to war and sometimes brings it home Leslie DeBauche; 4. Drama: from literary fantasy to gritty realism Brenda Murphy; 5. Popular music: tin pan alley as national barometer John Roger Paas; 6. Journalism: adventure and reckoning Joe Hayden; 7. Memoirs: negotiating the great war's social memory Ian Andrew Isherwood; 8. Art and illustration: modes of visual persuasion David M. Lubin; Part II. Settings and Subjects: 9. The peace movement: rapid development, women's leadership, regional diversity Kathleen Brown; 10. Americans in France: women writers and international responsibility Jennifer Haytock; 11. German Americans: dual loyalties and poetic adaptations of 'The watch on the Rhine' Lorie Vanchena; 12. The English in America: cultural propaganda and its agents Alisa Miller; 13. Preparedness: Theodore Roosevelt, Leonard Wood, and rookie rhymes Adam Szetela; 14. Propaganda: martialing media Pearl James; 15. Conscientious objectors: conscience, courage, and resistance Scott H. Bennett; 16. Volunteers: ambulance and nursing narratives Hazel Hutchison; 17. African Americans: defining freedom, citizenship, and patriotism Françoise N. Hamlin; 18. In the Midwest: 'Borne back ceaselessly into the past' David Rennie; 19. In the south: three Mississippi writers and the Great War mobilization David A. Davis; 20. Revolution: winning the world, losing the (middle) way Mark W. Van Wienen; 21. Monuments and memorials: memory dissipated Mark Levitch; Part III. Transformations: 22. The nation: forging one, finding many Jonathan Vincent; 23. Free speech: 'clear and present danger' Ernest Freeberg; 24. Labour: from replaceable cogs to corporate citizens Thomas Mackaman; 25. The veteran: parades, bitter homecomings, and fictions of the doughboy's return Steven Trout; 26. The military-industrial complex: practices, precedents, and literary engagements Mark Whalan; 27. The world: race, red-baiting, and the Wilsonian century Alexander Anievas.

Tim Dayton is Professor of English at Kansas State University. He is the author of Muriel Rukeyser's The Book of the Dead (2003), American Poetry and the First World War (2018), and numerous articles on American poetry and crime fiction, and historical materialist literary theory and criticism. He is leading a project to develop a digital archive of American First World War poetry.
Mark W. Van Wienen is Professor of English at Northern Illinois University. He is the author of The Political Work of American Poetry in the Great War (1997) and American Socialist Triptych (2012), the latter supported by an NEH fellowship. He has edited Rendezvous with Death: American Poems of the Great War (2002) and American Literature in Transition, 1910-1920 (2018).