Working-Class Literature(s): Historical and International Perspectives

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John Lennon, Magnus Nilsson
Stockholm University Press, 2017 - Literary Criticism - 248 pages

The aim of this collection is to make possible the forging of a more robust, politically useful, and theoretically elaborate understanding of working-class literature(s).

These essays map a substantial terrain: the history of working-class literature(s) in Russia/The Soviet Union, The USA, Finland, Sweden, The UK, and Mexico. Together they give a complex and comparative - albeit far from comprehensive - picture of working-class literature(s) from an international perspective, without losing sight of national specificities.

By capturing a wide range of definitions and literatures, this collection gives a broad and rich picture of the many-facetted phenomenon of working-class literature(s), disrupts narrow understandings of the concept and phenomenon, as well as identifies and discusses some of the most important theoretical and historical questions brought to the fore by the study of this literature.

If read as stand-alone chapters, each contribution gives an overview of the history and research of a particular nation's working-class literature. If read as an edited collection (which we hope you do), they contribute toward a more complex understanding of the global phenomenon of working-class literature(s).

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About the author (2017)

John Lennon is an Associate Professor of English at the University of South Florida. His research is principally concerned with how marginalized individuals exert a politicized voice in collectivized actions. Dr. Lennon's monograph, Boxcar Politics: The Hobo in Literature and Culture 1869-1956 examines the hobo as a resistive working-class figure. His work has appeared in various edited volumes and journals including Cultural Studies Review, New Proposals: Journal of Marxism and Interdisciplinary Inquiry, American Studies, Rhizomes, and Acoma. He is currently at work on a new book length project examining conflict graffiti from a global perspective. For this project he has received various grants to travel to Egypt, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, England, Sweden, Brazil and Germany. Follow him at @hoboacademic. ORCID: 0000-0002-6472-98 Magnus Nilsson is Professor of Comparative Literature at Malmö University, Sweden. He has published a large number of books, book chapters and articles on working-class literature and on questions regarding the relationship between literature and class, including the monographs Den föreställda mångkulturen: Klass och etnicitet i svensk samtidsprosa [Imagined Cultural Diversity: Class and Ethnicity in Contemporary Swedish Prose Fiction] (2010) and Literature and Class: Aesthetical-Political Strategies in Modern Swedish Working-Class Literature (2014). He is coordinating a Nordic network for research on working-class literature, which since 2010 has organized five conferences and published four edited collections. His other research interests include comics and heavy metal. ORCID: 0000-0001-5848-2231

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