Carson McCullers in the Twenty-First Century: (American Literature Readings in the 21st Century)

The contributors to this volume use diverse critical techniques to identify how Carson McCullers’ writing engages with and critiques modern social structures and how her work resonates with a twenty-first century audience. The collection includes chapters about McCullers’ fiction, autobiographical writing, and dramatic works, and is groundbreaking because it includes the first detailed scholarly examination of new archival material donated to Columbus State University after the 2013 death of Dr. Mary Mercer, McCullers’ psychiatrist and friend, including transcripts of the psychiatric sessions that took place between McCullers and Mercer in 1958. Further, the collection covers the scope of McCullers’ canon of work, such as The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1940), The Member of the Wedding (1946), and Ballad of the Sad Café (1943), through lenses that are of growing interest in contemporary literary studies, including comparative transatlantic readings, queer theory, disability studies, and critical animal theory, among others.

Table of Contents:
Preface.- Acknowledgments.- From Adaptation to Influence: Carson McCullers on the Stage, By Casey Kayser .- “Impromptu Journal of My Heart”: Carson McCullers’s Therapeutic Recordings, April – May 1958, By Carlos Dews.- Collaborative Life Writing: The Dialogical Subject of Carson McCullers’ Dictaphone ‘Experiments’ and Posthumously Published Autobiography, Illumination and Night Glare, By Melanie Sherazi.- Telling It “Slant”:  Carson McCullers, Harper Lee, and the Veil of Memory, By Jan Whitt.- Musings between the Marvelous and Strange: New Contexts and Correspondence about Carson McCullers and Mary Tucker, By Carmen Trammell Skaggs.- The Image of the String Quartet Lurking in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, By Kiyoko Magome.- Entering the Compound: Becoming with Carson McCullers’ Freaks, By renée c. hoogland.- “To be a good animal”: Toward a Queer-Posthumanist Reading of Reflections in a Golden Eye, By Temple Gowan.- Coming of Age in the Queer South: Queer Friendship in The Heart isa Lonely Hunter, By Kristen Proehl.- Queer Eyes: Cross-Gendering, Cross-Dressing, and Cross-Racing Miss Amelia, By Miho Matsui.- “Nature is not abnormal; only lifelessness is abnormal”: Paradigms of the In-valid in Reflections in a Golden Eye, By Alison Graham-Bertolini.- A Tale of “two mutes”: Cognitive Segregation and Productive Citizenship in Carson McCullers’ The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, By Stephanie Rountree.- Seeking the Meaning of Loneliness: Carson McCullers in China, By Lin Bin.- “The Ballad of Two Sad Cafés”:  Nicholasa Mohr’s Postwar Narrative as ‘Writing Back’ to Carson McCullers, By Barbara Roche Rico.-Jester’s Mercurial Nature and the Hermeneutics of Time in McCullers’ Clock Without Hands, By Craig Slaven.    

About the Author :
Alison Graham-Bertolini is Assistant Professor of English and Women’s Studies at North Dakota State University, USA. Casey Kayser is Clinical Assistant Professor of English at University of Arkansas, USA.