Date of Completion
5-4-2018
Embargo Period
4-29-2028
Keywords
Multiculturalism, PEN/Faulkner, PEN/Oakland, William Faulkner Foundation, John Edgar Wideman, David Bradley, Ha Jin, Luis J. Rodriguez, Julia Alvarez, Sabina Murray
Major Advisor
Dr. Cathy J. Schlund-Vials
Associate Advisor
Dr. Clare Eby
Associate Advisor
Dr. Kate Capshaw
Field of Study
English
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy
Open Access
Campus Access
Abstract
“Prizing Difference: PEN Awards and Multiculturalist Politics in American Fiction” considers the multivalent ways in which literary prizes – particularly the PEN/Faulkner prize – highlight a contested set of multiculturalist politics in the U.S. literary canon. Focusing on historical flashpoints such as the mid-century Civil Rights movement, the culture wars of the 1980s, and the 1992 L.A. Riots/Uprisings, I investigate the ways in which shifting understandings of ethnic difference generate competing ideas of what it might mean to successfully incorporate cultural diversity in the U.S. As a significant site of literary canon formation through the recognition and promotion of its prizewinners, the Poets, Essayists and Novelists (PEN) organization has increasingly engaged a multiculturalist agenda through its tactical recognition of ethnic American authors. “Prizing Difference” critically engages this agenda through an examination of how this preoccupation with racial difference in prizewinning novels intersects with competing notions of national identity and belonging. I examine the works of authors such as Luis J. Rodriguez, Julia Alvarez, Philip Roth, David Bradley, John Edgar Wideman, Julie Otsuka, Ha Jin, and Sabina Murray.
Recommended Citation
Wright, Laura, "Prizing Difference: PEN Awards and Multiculturalist Politics in American Fiction" (2018). Doctoral Dissertations. 1796.
https://digitalcommons.lib.uconn.edu/dissertations/1796