Kevin D'Abramo

My dissertation project examines contemporary novels that draw on the genre of proletarian fiction popular in the nineteen thirties.  In addition to being compelling dramatic narratives these novels also play the role of re-presenting the class struggle of that period to contemporary audiences.  In so doing, these novels re-familiarize contemporary audiences with the leftist aesthetics and militant class politics prevalent in the early decades of the twentieth century.  My contribution to the fields of American and Canadian Literary Studies will be to illustrate through my interpretation of the novels under study how the complex mechanisms of social class as an identarian category as well as a source for literary invention are relevant to contemporary society.  In addition, my project will add to the body of scholarly work that is already beginning to emerge (or re-emerge) on class-related issues, with a particular engagement with contemporary Marxian, postmodernist, and Freudian theory to illustrate the links between class and subjectivity.
Supervisors: Dr. Robert Schwartzwald