The New Walt Whitman Studies

Highlights the latest currents in Whitman scholarship and demonstrates how Whitman's work transforms discussions in literary studies.

This book is for students and scholars of American literature. Asking how Whitman can be relevant in the era of electronic communication and global political upheaval, it features essays from a variety of literary and historical approaches. It includes revelatory new work from both established and emerging Whitman scholars.This book highlights some of the latest currents in Whitman scholarship and demonstrates how Whitman's work can speak to and transform discussions in literary studies during a time of great intellectual ferment. It is organized into three sections, addressing aesthetics and politics, new reading methods, and histories of the critical imagination. This volume contains innovative work on Whitman in a range of fields. With the explosion of the digitization of books and periodicals in the past few years, the entire sense of Whitman's career is changing, and these essays are informed by the latest revelations among primary sources. The New Walt Whitman Studies shows how the latest concerns of literary analysis, from surface reading to ecocriticism to the digital humanities, emerged from an engagement with Whitman's work.