American Cultural Critics

This collection of essays assesses the work of a number of American intellectuals, including Susan Sontag, F.O. Mathieson, Daniel Bell and Hannah Arendt, who have addressed issues of culture and its multifaceted relations to politics, history, sociology and literary criticism. Concentrating on writing since 1940, the essays examine the central themes of American postwar intellectual history, including the continuing reaction to (or against) modernity and technology, the legacies of Marxism and psychoanalysis, and the re-examination of American founding principles and figures in conservative or liberal terms.

Contributions by
Richard Bradbury, Clive Bush, Helen Carr, Laurence J. Friedman, Nick Heffernan, Liam Kennedy, Richard H. King, Michael Kreyling, Jerry Z. Muller, David Murray, Ross Posnock, Stephen J. Whitfield, Hugh Wilford and Michael Wood

Contents: Introduction, David Murray; Susan Sontag - the intellectual and cultural criticism, Liam Kennedy; Southern literary and intellectual history in the 20th century - the agrarians to Richard Weaver, Michael Kreyling; the agony of the avant-garde - Philip Rahv and the New York intellectuals, Hugh Wilford; F.O. Matthiessen, Richard Bradbury; Stanley Cavell, Michael Wood; coming of age in America - Margaret Mead and Karen Horney, Helen Carr; the person in place - Lewis Mumford, pioneer of cultural criticism, Clive Bush; Erik H. Erikson's critical and cultural themes - the task of synthesis, Lawrence J. Friedman; Philip Rieff, Jerry Z. Muller; Hannah Arendt, Richard King; Garry Wills, Steve Whitfield; black intellectuals past and present, Ross Posnock; culture at modernity's end - Daniel Bell and Frederic Jameson, Nick Heffernan.

David Murray teaches American Studies at the University of Nottingham.