College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Theses and Dissertations

Graduation Date

6-2017

Document Type

Thesis

Department/Program Conferring Degree

English

Keywords

Ambrose Bierce, reconstruction, whiteness, race, American literature

Abstract

This essay analyzes the works of American author, journalist, and satirist Ambrose Bierce through the lens of whiteness studies. It compares Bierce's work to the popular literature. Its primary investigation is into the ideological project of white-identity and national reunion as it is played out in sentimentalist war memoirs and plantation romances that flooded the market at the end of the 19th century. Analyzing Bierce's war writing, horror fiction, and journalism it tracks a formation of whiteness counter to the popular narratives of the era.

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