Routledge Mixed Media in Contemporary American Literature: Voices Gone Viral (Routledge Research in American Literature and Culture)

Mixed Media in Contemporary American Literature: Voices Gone Viral investigates the formation and formulation of the contemporary novel through a historical analysis of voice studies and media studies. After situating research through voices of nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature, this book examines the expressions of a multi-media vocality, examining the interactions among cultural polemics, aesthetic forms, and changing media in the twenty-first century. The novel studies shown here trace the ways in which the viral aesthetics of the contemporary novel move language out of context, recontextualizing human testimony by galvanizing mixed media forms that shape contemporary literature in our age of networks. Through readings of American authors such as Claudia Rankine, David Foster Wallace, Jennifer Egan, Junot Díaz, Michael Chabon, Joseph O’Neill, Michael Cunningham, and Colum McCann, the book considers how voice acts as a site where identities combine, conform, and are questioned relationally. By listening to and tracing the spoken and unspoken voices of the novel, the author identifies a politics of listening and speaking in our mediated, informational society. About the Author Joelle Mann is faculty in the Writing Initiative at Binghamton University, where she teaches courses on composition, rhetoric, technical writing, and digital writing. Joelle’s research investigates changing medial tropes and their sociopolitical implications in multimodal literature and writing. Aside from earning her doctorate from Stony Brook University, Joelle also has advanced teaching certifications in Media, Art, and Technology as well as in Cultural Studies. She is on the executive board for the SUNY Council on Writing, and she has published articles in a variety of literary journals, including Critique: Contemporary Studies in Fiction, Children’s Literature, The American Encyclopedia of Contemporary Literature, and Pedagogy and Literary Studies.