American Modernism and Depression Documentary

American Modernism and Depression Documentary
Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Total Pages : 283
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780199324002
ISBN-13 : 019932400X
Rating : 4/5 (00X Downloads)

Book Synopsis American Modernism and Depression Documentary by : Jeff Allred

Download or read book American Modernism and Depression Documentary written by Jeff Allred and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-11-01 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Photos filled with the forlorn faces of hungry and impoverished Americans that came to characterize the desolation of the Great Depression are among the best known artworks of the twentieth century. Captured by the camera's eye, these stark depictions of suffering became iconic markers of a formative period in U.S. history. Although there has been an ample amount of critical inquiry on Depression-era photographs, the bulk of scholarship treats them as isolated art objects. And yet they were often joined together with evocative writing in a genre that flourished amid the period, the documentary book. American Modernism and Depression Documentary looks at the tradition of the hybrid, verbal-visual texts that flourished during a time when U.S. citizens were becoming increasingly conscious of the life of a larger nation. Jeff Allred draws on a range of seminal works to illustrate the convergence of modernism and documentary, two forms often regarded as unrelated. Whereas critics routinely look to James Agee and Walker Evans' Let Us Now Praise Famous Men as the sole instance of the modernist documentary book, Allred turns to such works as Richard Wright's scathing 12 Million Black Voices, and the oft-neglected You Have Seen Their Faces by Erskine Caldwell and Margaret Bourke-White to open up the critical playing field. And rather than focusing on the ethos of Progressivism and/or the politics and aesthetics of the New Deal, Allred emphasizes the centrality of Life magazine to the consolidation of a novel cultural form.


American Modernism and Depression Documentary Related Books

American Modernism and Depression Documentary
Language: en
Pages: 283
Authors: Jeff Allred
Categories: Literary Criticism
Type: BOOK - Published: 2012-11-01 - Publisher: Oxford University Press

GET EBOOK

Photos filled with the forlorn faces of hungry and impoverished Americans that came to characterize the desolation of the Great Depression are among the best kn
The Cambridge History of American Modernism
Language: en
Pages: 948
Authors: Mark Whalan
Categories: Literary Criticism
Type: BOOK - Published: 2023-06-30 - Publisher: Cambridge University Press

GET EBOOK

The Cambridge History of American Modernism examines one of the most innovative periods of American literary history. It offers a comprehensive account of the f
Poetry and the Limits of Modernity in Depression America
Language: en
Pages: 239
Authors: Justin Parks
Categories: Literary Criticism
Type: BOOK - Published: 2023-09-30 - Publisher: Cambridge University Press

GET EBOOK

Furnishing a novel take on the poetry of the 1930s within the context of the cultural history of the Depression, this book argues that the period's economic and
Classical Hollywood, American Modernism
Language: en
Pages: 261
Authors: Jordan Brower
Categories: Literary Criticism
Type: BOOK - Published: 2024-01-18 - Publisher: Cambridge University Press

GET EBOOK

This book charts the Hollywood studio system's genesis, international dominance, and self-understood demise by way of its influences on modernist literature in
The Cambridge Companion to American Literature of the 1930s
Language: en
Pages:
Authors: William Solomon
Categories: Literary Criticism
Type: BOOK - Published: 2018-09-20 - Publisher: Cambridge University Press

GET EBOOK

This Companion offers a compelling survey of American literature in the 1930s. These thirteen new essays by accomplished scholars in the field provide re-examin