Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002
Includes bibliographical references (pages 183-205) and index
From Uncle Tom's cabin to Gone with the wind : writing for a nation in crisis -- The road : in search of America -- Dos Passos issues a challenge : can language make a revolution? -- Boys will be boys : Farrell examines working-class manhood -- Family history and political identity in Herbst's Trexler trilogy -- Finding a collective solution : the living newspaper experiment -- One-third of a nation : the living newspaper comes to Hollywood -- The search abandoned
This interdisciplinary study blends textual analysis with social history to chart the intellectual and artistic ferment of Depression-era America. In Rousing the Nation, Laura Browder explores the fiction, drama, and film produced during the decade by socially conscious intellectuals who struggled to create a uniquely American art. Browder first considers authors James T. Farrell, Josephine Herbst, and John Dos Passos, arguing that their work successfully sparked a discussion about what it meant to be American at a time when the country's very future seemed in doubt. She then examines the Living Newspaper productions of the Federal Theatre Project, which brought politically and aesthetically provocative drama to twenty-five million Americans. In a final chapter, she examines social films of the period, focusing on Paramount's 1939 production of One-Third of a Nation
