American Culture in the 1910s

This series provides accessible but challenging studies of American culture in the twentieth century. Each title covers a specific decade and offers a clear overview of its dominant cultural forms and influential texts, discussing their historical impact and cltural legacy. Collectively the series reframes the notion of `decade studies'' through the prism of cultural production and rethinks the ways in which decades are usually periodised. Broad contextual approaches to the particular decade are combined with textual case studies, focusing on themes of modernity, commerece, freedom, power, resistance, community, race, class, gender, sexuality, internationalism, war, technology and popular culture.

`Mark Whalan''s richly multifaceted account of the 1910s offers vivid new perspectives on a decade generally overshadowed by its successor. An excellent contribution to an excellent series.'' Peter Nicholls, Professor of English, New York University

This book provides a fresh account of the major cultural and intellectual trends of the United States in the 1910s, a decade characterised by war, the flowering of modernism, the birth of Hollywood and Progressive interpretations of culture and society. Chapters on fiction and poetry, art and photography, film and vaudeville, and music, theatre and dance explore these developments, linking detailed commentary with focused case studies of influential texts and events. These range from Tarzan of the Apes to The Birth of a Nation, from the radical modernism of Gertrude Stein and the Provincetown Players to the earliest jazz recordings. The final chapter explores the huge impact of the First World War on cultural understandings of nationalism, citizenship and propaganda.