This author explores the connections among literature, medicine, and social reform in antebellum American literature. Their work focuses on how these fields intertwined and influenced one another during a pivotal period of American history. Through careful analysis, they delve into the complexities of contemporary thought and its literary manifestations. This scholarship offers readers a fresh perspective on the formation of American identity and society.
Explores antebellum American conceptions of bioplasticity - the body's ability to react and change from interior and exterior forces - and argues that literature helped to shape the cultural reception of these ideas.