Joel Wendland-Liu

Associate Professor in Brooks College School of Interdisciplinary Studies (SIS)

Mythologies: A Political Economy of U.S. Literature in the Long Nineteenth-Century

Publisher: International Publishers, 2022

Four myths dominated U.S. ideology in the 19th century. Myths of white victimization, capitalist progress, the frontier, and the 3self-made man3 shaped how many Americans thought about themselves. These ideas lay at the heart of ruling class justification for settler colonialism, the expansion of racial slavery, and the development of the capitalist market system. They became the basis for the transition to U.S. global imperialism.

The Collectivity of Life: Spaces of Social Mobility and the Individualism Myth

Publisher: Lexington Books, 2016

The Collectivity of Life is a study of autobiographical writing and oral histories situated in the late twentieth century United States. The central thesis is that by studying how the authors of these narratives articulate space in their stories, we can uncover a recurring critique of meritocratic individualism and reconstruct a counter-mythology that locates social mobility in collectivist experiences.