Shadowing the white man's burden : U.S. imperialism and the problem of the color line /

The publication of the influential Cultures of United States Imperialism, ed. by Amy Kaplan and Donald Pease (1993), inspired many Americanist scholars to revisit and complicate their ideas about US imperialism and nationalist cultures. Combining impressive archival research and readings of several popular and literary texts, Murphy (Univ. of Texas, Austin) furthers this project by examining how literature and popular culture channeled anxieties about race and nation but also offered a means by which multiethnic authors could challenge those conceptions of identity. She reads such authors as Thomas Dixon, Pauline Hopkins, Frank Steward, Winnifred Eaton, and Ranald MacDonald within the context of US imperialism, finding that their texts often served as compelling challenges to traditional ideals of national identity, distinct national borders, and the ubiquitous color line. These authors offered instead a vision of hybridity and fluidity against the reified notions of America at work in the late 19th century. Owing a clear debt to Kaplan and Pease's edited volume and building on the work of Andy Doolen, John Carlos Rowe, Laura Wexler, and Paul Giles among others, this volume brings an important vision to conversations about empire and its racial discontents. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. D. E. Magill Longwood University