Consuming Empire in U.S. Fiction, 1865-1930

Traces authors' attitudes toward US economic expansionism through their fictional allusions to internationally-traded commodities Offering an interdisciplinary study of references to internationally-traded commodities in US fiction, Consuming Empire assembles an integrated geopolitical analysis of Americans' material, gendered and aesthetic experiences of empire at the turn of the twentieth century. Examining allusions to contested goods like cochineal, cotton, oranges, fur, gold, pearls, porcelain and wheat, Consuming Empire reveals a linked global imagination among authors who were often directly or indirectly critical of US imperial ambitions. Furthermore, Consuming Empire considers the commodification of art itself, interpreting writers' allusions to paintings, sculptures and artists as self-aware acknowledgements of their own complicity in global capitalism. As Consuming Empire demonstrates, literary texts have long trained consumers to imagine their relationship to the world through the things they own. Heather Wayne is a teacher of English and independent scholar living in Massachusetts. Her research focuses on nineteenth-century US literature, material culture, feminism, visual culture, empire and global history.