Weak Nationalisms: Affect and Nonfiction in Postwar America (Book Announcement)

 Dear Colleagues,

I'm writing to announce that my book, *Weak Nationalisms: Affect and
Nonfiction in Postwar America*, will be coming out this month through the
University of Nebraska Press.

The question “What is America?” has taken on new urgency. *Weak
Nationalisms* explores the emotional dynamics behind that question by
examining how a range of authors have attempted to answer it through
nonfiction since the Second World War, revealing the complex and dynamic
ways in which affects shape the literary construction of everyday
experience in the United States.

In the book, I explore these attempts to define the nation in an eclectic
selection of texts from writers such as Simone de Beauvoir, John Steinbeck,
Charles Kuralt, Jane Smiley, and Sarah Vowell. Each of these texts makes
use of synecdoche, and *Weak Nationalisms* shows how this rhetorical
technique is variously driven by affects including curiosity, discontent,
hopefulness, and incredulity. In exploring the function of synecdoche in
the creative construction of the United States, I draw attention to the
evocative politics and literary richness of nationalism and connects
critical literary practices to broader discussions of affect theory and
cultural representation.

You can read more about the book, including praise from scholars including
Priscilla Wald, Rachel Greenwald Smith, and Daniel Worden, and preview a
chapter at:
https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/university-of-nebraska-press/9781496200501/.


There is currently a pre-release discount of 40% if you order the book
through the UNP website with the promotion code 6AS19.

Best,
Douglas

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