American Literary-Political Engagements: From Poe to James examines how authors in the nineteenth-century United States often engaged the politics of their times through literature as they conceptualized political issues in literary terms. Concerns over Jacksonian democracy, social reform in a rapidly industrializing American economy, African-American familial cooperation in the post-Civil War era, changing conceptions of culpability with respect to the law, and marginalized individuals’ involvement in political agitation near the close of the century were made the central subjects of diverse literary works which, though not often characterized as overtly “political,” nevertheless made these political concerns a matter of and for literary art. Through examinations of Edgar Allan Poe’s comedic tales “How to Write a Blackwood Article” and “A Predicament,” Rebecca Harding Davis’ novel Margret Howth, Mattie J. Jackson’s postbellum slave narrative, William Dean Howells’ A Modern Instance, and Henry James’ The Princess Casamassima, this book considers how these texts enrich our understanding of nineteenth-century America’s conceptions of the possibilities and responsibilities of literature and of popular democracy, industrialization, African-American women, the law, political agitation, and disability.

Modernist Women Writers and American Social Engagement explores the role of social and political engagement by women writers in the development of American modernism. Examining a diverse array of genres by both canonical modernists and underrepresented writers, this collection uncovers an obscured strain of modernist activism. Each chapter provides a detailed cultural and literary analysis, revealing the ways in which modernists’ politically and socially engaged interventions shaped their writing. Considering issues such as working class women’s advocacy, educational reform, political radicalism, and the global implications for American literary production, this book examines the complexity of the relationship between creating art and fostering social change. Ultimately, this collection redefines the parameters of modernism while also broadening the conception of social engagement to include both readily acknowledged social movements as well as less recognizable forms of advocacy for social change.

In searching for answers as to why young people differ vastly from their parents and grandparents when it comes to turning out the vote, A New Engagement challenges the conventional wisdom that today's youth is plagued by a severe case of political apathy. In order to understand the current nature of citizen engagement, it is critical to separate political from civic engagement. Using the results from an original set of surveys and the authors' own primary research, they conclude that while older citizens participate by voting, young people engage by volunteering and being active in their communities.

This book focuses on the impact of digital media use for political engagement across varied geographic and political contexts, using a diversity of methodological approaches and datasets. The book addresses an important gap in the contemporary literature on digital politics, identifying context dependent and transcendent political consequences of digital media use. While the majority of the empirical work in this field has been based on studies from the United States and United Kingdom, this volume seeks to place those results into comparative relief with other regions of the world. It moves debates in this field of study forward by identifying system-level attributes that shape digital political engagement across a wide variety of contexts. The evidence analyzed across the fifteen cases considered in the book suggests that engagement with digital environments influences users' political orientations and that contextual features play a significant role in shaping digital politics.

The political value of African American literature has long been a topic of great debate among American writers, both black and white, from Thomas Jefferson to Barack Obama. In his compelling new book, Representing the Race, Gene Andrew Jarrett traces the genealogy of this topic in order to develop an innovative political history of African American literature. Jarrett examines texts of every sort—pamphlets, autobiographies, cultural criticism, poems, short stories, and novels—to parse the myths of authenticity, popular culture, nationalism, and militancy that have come to define African American political activism in recent decades. He argues that unless we show the diverse and complex ways that African American literature has transformed society, political myths will continue to limit our understanding of this intellectual tradition. Cultural forums ranging from the printing press, schools, and conventions, to parlors, railroad cars, and courtrooms provide the backdrop to this African American literary history, while the foreground is replete with compelling stories, from the debate over racial genius in early American history and the intellectual culture of racial politics after slavery, to the tension between copyright law and free speech in contemporary African American culture, to the political audacity of Barack Obama’s creative writing. Erudite yet accessible, Representing the Race is a bold explanation of what’s at stake in continuing to politicize African American literature in the new millennium.

What Politics? Youth and Political Engagement in Africa examines the diverse experiences of being young in today’s Africa. It offers new perspectives to the roles and positions young people take to change their life conditions both within and beyond the formal political structures and institutions. The contributors represent several social science disciplines, and provide well-grounded qualitative analyses of young people’s everyday engagements by critically examining dominant discourses of youth, politics and ideology. Despite focusing on Africa, the book is a collective effort to better understand what it is like to be young today, and what the making of tomorrow’s yesterday means for them in personal and political terms. Contributors are: Ehaab Abdou, Abebaw Yirga Adamu, Henni Alava, Päivi Armila, Randi Rønning Balsvik, Jesper Bjarnesen, Þóra Björnsdóttir, Jónína Einarsdóttir, Tilo Grätz, Nanna Jordt Jørgensen, Marko Kananen, Sofia Laine, Naydene de Lange, Afifa Ltifi, Ivo Mhike, Claudia Mitchell, Relebohile Moletsane, Danai S. Mupotsa, Elina Oinas, Henri Onodera, Eija Ranta, Mounir Saidani, Mariko Sato, Loubna H. Skalli, Tiina Sotkasiira, Abdoulaye Sounaye, Leena Suurpää, and Mulumebet Zenebe. What Politics? Youth and Political Engagement in Africa is now available in paperback for individual customers.

This book examines young people's political engagement in the Anglo-American democracies. It is often alleged that young people are disengaged from politics on a number of levels. The commonly held view is that young people don't vote, they do not trust politicians and have low levels of political interest. But is this true, where is it true and to what extent? Examining voter turnout, political trust, political interest, electoral and non-electoral forms of participation and Internet use, this book provides a comprehensive account of young people's political engagement in the US, Britain, Canada and Australia. In doing so this book challenges the conventional wisdom on a number of fronts by showing young people's political engagement to be much more complicated than many of the stereotypes suggest (in both good and bad ways).In this way, this book provides a report card on young people's political engagement in the twenty-first century. Young People and Politics will be of interest to students and scholars of political science, comparative politics, public policy and sociology, particularly those with a focus on young people and politics, political participation and public opinion.