Routledge Research in American Literature and Culture
About the Book Series
This series is our home for cutting-edge, upper-level scholarly studies and edited collections. Titles are characterized by dynamic interventions into established subjects and innovative studies on emerging topics in American Literature and Culture.
Violent Sidekicks in American Crime Fiction Series: Hawk, Clete, Pike, Mouse, Bubba, Win
1st Edition
By Terry Keefe
October 31, 2026
Violent Sidekicks in American Crime Fiction Series: Hawk, Clete, Pike, Mouse, Bubba, Win examines six violent sidekicks in contemporary American novels authored by Robert Parker, James Lee Burke, Robert Crais, Walter Mosley, Dennis Lehane and Harlan Coben. These popular, award-winning series derive...
Colson Whitehead Beyond the Novel: Literary Authority, Authorial Performance, and Canonization
1st Edition
By Valentina López Liendo
August 31, 2026
Colson Whitehead Beyond the Novel: Literary Authority, Authorial Performance, and Canonization traces this author's remarkable trajectory from an acclaimed yet little-known writer to cultural force, examining the workings of contemporary literary authority. By 2026, Whitehead is a household name: ...
The Jew in the American War Novel: 1920s–2020s
1st Edition
By Ohad Reznick
July 20, 2026
This is the first book of its kind to provide an analysis of the representation of Jews in American war novels throughout the long twentieth century. This study delineates the intricate relationship between Jews and wars. Are Jews depicted as draft dodgers or heroes in American war fiction? How do ...
Zen, Meaning, and Craft in Jane Hirshfield's Poetry: Heartshoots
1st Edition
By Deirdre C. Byrne, Garth J. Mason
July 20, 2026
Zen, Meaning, and Craft in Jane Hirshfield’s Poetry: Heartshoots is the first scholarly volume to be dedicated to the large body of work produced by North American Zen poet, Jane Hirshfield. The volume is co-authored by a Zen Buddhist scholar and a poetry scholar, who are both practising poets. Its...
Reimagining the Madame Butterfly Narrative: Asian American Literary Critique
1st Edition
By Huining Ouyang
July 01, 2026
Huining Ouyang’s Reimagining the Madame Butterfly Narrative examines Asian American literary revisions of the Butterfly story since the beginning of American expansionism in Asia. Through textual, intertextual, and contextual analyses, Ouyang demonstrates the ways in which Asian American retellings...
Ben Lerner, Edges of Genre: Poetry, Fiction, Artistic Collaborations
1st Edition
Edited
By Yannicke Chupin, Karim Daanoune
May 29, 2026
Ben Lerner, Edges of Genre: Poetry, Fiction, Artistic Collaborations is the first comprehensive academic study of a major contemporary author. Praised by The New York Times as “the most talented writer of his generation,” Lerner has often been read separately as poet or novelist, yet his work ...
Daisaku Ikeda, Transnationalism, and American Literature: Dialogues of the Heart
1st Edition
Edited
By Anita Patterson
May 29, 2026
Daisaku Ikeda, Transnationalism, and American Literature: Dialogues of the Heart examines the writings of Nichiren Buddhist philosopher, poet, and peacebuilder Daisaku Ikeda (1928–2023), focusing on how American literature and transnationalism are integral to the development of his Buddhist ...
Humor and Masculinity in U.S. Fiction: Intersections, Performances, and Functions
1st Edition
By Joseph L. Coulombe
May 21, 2026
Humor and Masculinity in U.S. Fiction offers a pragmatic and theoretically informed model for analyzing how humor and gender intersect in key U.S. texts, bringing much-needed attention to the complex ways that humor can support and/or subvert reductive masculine codes and behaviors. Its argument ...
From Experimental Poetics to Creative Legacies: Language Poetry and its American Avant-Garde Aesthetics
1st Edition
By Amrita Sharma
May 13, 2026
From Experimental Poetics to Creative Legacies: Language Poetry and its American Avant-Garde Aesthetics offers a comprehensive account of Language Poetry, tracing its origins, evolution, and enduring influence. It demonstrates how a movement that emerged from American experimental writing in the ...
Don DeLillo and the Visual
1st Edition
By Brian Jarvis
January 29, 2026
Over the course of a prodigious literary career which now spans seven decades, DeLillo has engaged with the problem and the promise of vision. Don DeLillo and the Visual offers a fresh perspective on the lead writer for the Age of the Image. Whilst the author is sometimes characterised and even ...
Nineteenth-Century American Literature, Religion, and the Search for Grace
1st Edition
By Heather Ostman
December 31, 2025
Nineteenth-Century American Literature, Religion, and the Search for Grace explores selected texts by four major American authors: Walt Whitman, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Sojourner Truth, and Kate Chopin. This monograph presents a nuanced analysis of the relationship between these authors and religion. ...
Norman Maclean’s “A River Runs through It”: The Search for Beauty
1st Edition
By George H. Jensen, Heidi Skurat Harris
December 26, 2025
Norman Maclean’s “A River Runs through It”: The Search for Beauty is the first book-length study of Norman Maclean or any of his works. Since the publication of “A River Runs through It” in 1976, readers and critics have considered it to be one of the most carefully crafted stories in American ...