MACMILLAN Liminality, Hybridity, and American Women's Literature: Thresholds in Women's Writing

This book highlights the multiplicity of American women’s writing related to liminality and hybridity from its beginnings to the contemporary moment. Often informed by notions of crossing, intersectionality, transition, and transformation, these concepts as they appear in American women’s writing contest as well as perpetuate exclusionary practices involving class, ethnicity, gender, race, religion, and sex, among other variables. The collection’s introduction, three unit introductions, fourteen individual essays, and afterward facilitate a process of encounters, engagements, and conversations within, between, among, and across the rich polyphony that constitutes the creative acts of American women writers. The contributors offer fresh perspectives on canonical writers as well as introduce readers to new authors. As a whole, the collection demonstrates American women’s writing is “threshold writing,” or writing that occupies a liminal, hybrid space that both delimits borders and offers enticing openings. Review “This collection introduces new and important authors and scholars into an expanded canon of American literature, and it puts more familiar authors and scholars into conversation with them and with each other. All benefit, as will students, teachers, scholars, and other readers.” (Robert Daly, Distinguished Teaching Professor, State University of New York at Buffalo, USA) From the Back Cover This book highlights the multiplicity of American women’s writing related to liminality and hybridity from its beginnings to the contemporary moment. Often informed by notions of crossing, intersectionality, transition, and transformation, these concepts as they appear in American women’s writing contest as well as perpetuate exclusionary practices involving class, ethnicity, gender, race, religion, and sex, among other variables. The collection’s introduction, three unit introductions, fourteen individual essays, and afterward facilitate a process of encounters, engagements, and conversations within, between, among, and across the rich polyphony that constitutes the creative acts of American women writers. The contributors offer fresh perspectives on canonical writers as well as introduce readers to new authors. As a whole, the collection demonstrates American women’s writing is “threshold writing,” or writing that occupies a liminal, hybrid space that both delimits borders and offers enticing openings. About the Author Kristin J. Jacobson is Professor of American Literature, Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and American Studies at Stockton University, USA. Her book, Neodomestic American Fiction, examines contemporary domestic novels. She has published in Genre, Legacy, Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, and edited collections. Her current book analyzes the American adrenaline narrative.  Kristin Allukian is Assistant Professor of American Literature at the University of South Florida, USA. Her research areas include American literature to 1900, women's literature, and feminist digital humanities. Her current book project examines the relationship between women, work, and labor systems in postbellum American literature.  Rickie-Ann Legleitner is Assistant Professor of English and Co-Coordinator of Women and Gender Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Stout, USA. Her research and teaching interests include American literature and culture, women writers, and identity and disability studies. Her current book project examines intersectionality in Künstlerromane by American women writers (1850-1930).  Leslie Allison is Assistant Director of the Temple University Writing Center, USA. Her primary research and teaching areas include twentieth-century American literature and women’s literature, and her work has appeared in Studies in the Novel. She is currently working on a monograph about postwar women writers’ representations of adolescent girlhood