Books in the Commonwealth Center Studies in American Culture series

Essays on California's economy, culture, and literature from the 1880s to the 1920s, showing how rural places were made over in the image of capital. They examine the geography and political economy of agrarian capitalism and literature before John Steinbeck redefined the scene in the 1930s.

As Mark Twain, Samuel Clemens became one of America's first modern celebrities. This work examines Twain's writings to show how the writer strove to establish his authority over the course of his career and argues that Samuel Clemens' supreme fiction performance was Mark Twain.

This text looks at the roots of African-American reading and writing from the perspective of vernacular activities and creolization. It demonstrates that African-Americans, while utilizing the conventions and canons of Euro-America, drew on knowledge of their own to make oppositional meanings.