Browsing by Author "Grant, David"

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    State of the Union: the play, the film, and the progress of the isolationist bogey
    (2016) Grant, David
    This article argues that the adaptation of the play State of the Union into a film made the changes to the original that were necessary in a rapidly developing Cold War political culture. Helpful in this project was the way in which a Cold War culture had borrowed from an earlier form of postwar internationalism. In particular, it appropriated the demonization of isolationists as breeders of a corrupt domestic American political system that threatened republicanism and world peace alike. Indeed, the continuity in the representation of isolationists in the immediate postwar period of the play and the very different period of the film helped to lend legitimacy to the otherwise new Cold War rhetoric. The film, therefore, was able to make only minor revisions to the play and yet serve entirely different ideological purposes.
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    Trusting America: Undine Spragg's revolutionary break in the custom of the country
    (2016) Grant, David
    This article claims that Undine Spragg’s ascent in Wharton’s The Custom of the Country represents a victory over the traditional American faith in historical continuity as a model for personal progress. In Undine’s recovered memory, oratory suffers a comic debunking that frees Undine to untie the bonds of generational rededication.