Utopian Pasts and Futures in the Contemporary American Novel

Examines the connection between historical and speculative fiction to offer a new form of literary-genre fiction that registers the upheavals of the early twenty-first century Provides detailed critical readings of key writers of the early 21st century Theorizes a reading practice and its relation to the question of literature's political role in the 21st century Establishes a new form of literary-genre fiction that registers the upheavals of the early 21st century and potential literary answers to them Utopian Pasts and Futures in the Contemporary American Novel highlights the emergence of a literary mode, speculative historism, over the past two decades in U.S. literature. Discussing in depth novels by writers such as Ken Kalfus, Joyce Carol Oates, and Colson Whitehead, among others, it integrates questions of critical method, genre, form, and literary theory, all of which have some urgency today. Addressing itself to the question of how to read this mode through a form of utopian hermeneutics, this study explores the formal constitution, narrative choices, and place in the wider literary market of a mode that it believes to be constitutively important for understanding American literature's struggle with the possibility of imagining hopeful futures.