1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910465080903321

Autore

Trask Michael <1967->

Titolo

Camp sites [[electronic resource] ] : sex, politics, and academic style in postwar America / / Michael Trask

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Stanford, California, : Stanford University Press, c2013

ISBN

0-8047-8663-1

Descrizione fisica

xi, 259 p

Collana

Post 45

Disciplina

810.9/3587392

Soggetti

American literature - 20th century - History and criticism

Camp (Style) - United States - History - 20th century

Homosexuality and literature - United States - History - 20th century

Literature and society - United States - History - 20th century

Politics and culture - United States - History - 20th century

Politics and literature - United States - History - 20th century

Universities and colleges - Political aspects - United States - History - 20th century

Electronic books.

United States Social life and customs 1945-1970

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- Introduction -- 1 The Schooling of America -- 2 Campus Novels and Experimental Persons -- 3 Liberal Perversion and Countercultural Commitment -- 4 From Impression Management to Expressive Authenticity -- 5 Deviant Ethnographies -- 6 Feminism, Meritocracy, and the Postindustrial Economy -- Epilogue -- Notes -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

Reading across the disciplines of the mid-century university, this book argues that the political shift in postwar America from consensus liberalism to New Left radicalism entailed as many continuities as ruptures. Both Cold War liberals and radicals understood the university as a privileged site for "doing politics," and both exiled homosexuality from the political ideals each group favored. Liberals, who advanced a politics of style over substance, saw gay people as unable to separate the two, as incapable of maintaining the opportunistic suspension of



disbelief on which a tough-minded liberalism depended. Radicals, committed to a politics of authenticity, saw gay people as hopelessly beholden to the role-playing and duplicity that the radicals condemned in their liberal forebears. Camp Sites considers key themes of postwar culture, from the conflict between performance and authenticity to the rise of the meritocracy, through the lens of camp, the underground sensibility of pre-Stonewall gay life. In so doing, it argues that our basic assumptions about the social style of the postwar milieu are deeply informed by certain presuppositions about homosexual experience and identity, and that these presuppositions remain stubbornly entrenched despite our post-Stonewall consciousness-raising.