Date of Submission
Spring 2019
Academic Programs and Concentrations
Literature
Project Advisor 1
Alex Benson
Abstract/Artist's Statement
My senior project focuses on three works of American literature, starting from 1896 and ending in 1935. During this time period, the United States was undergoing drastic cultural and industrial changes, both of which indefinitely reshaped the American landscape. My project seeks to understand these changes through Sarah Orne Jewett’s The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896), Willa Cather’s My Ántonia (1918), and Zora Neale Hurston’s Mules and Men (1935). All three works look beyond the city, and instead look inward toward small regional communities in Maine, Nebraska, and Florida. With the regional focus placed on the narratives, my project stands as a way to explore the intersection of landscape, nostalgia, and preservation– while each protagonist tells a separate narrative on the complexity and triumphs of being an outsider.
Open Access Agreement
Open Access
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Russian, Anna L., "A Return to the Region:
Reconstructing the Past in Jewett, Cather, and Hurston
(1896-1935)" (2019). Senior Projects Spring 2019. 128.
https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_s2019/128
This work is protected by a Creative Commons license. Any use not permitted under that license is prohibited.