Early America and the Modern Imagination : Rewriting the Past in the Present

Recurring culture war controversies in the US-ranging from reproductive freedom and gender identity to racial inequality and immigration-often turn public attention to early American precedents.

At the same time, early American figures and tropes enjoy a stunning cachet in popular culture.

Early America and the Modern Imagination squarely interprets the significance and cultural uses of these transhistorical re-imaginings of the early American past.

While drawing productively on public memory scholarship, this volume augments its neglect of early American studies.

The collection's critical and pedagogical essays investigate how a variety of modalities-including literature, film, television, theatre, video games and graphic novels-rescript early America as a usable past for contemporary audiences.

Early America and the Modern Imagination, therefore, interprets early American themes and their present-day echoes to grapple with the evolving and highly contested import of the American nation's past in the present cultural moment.