Pursuing Privacy in Cold War America

Fiction & Literature, Literary Theory & Criticism, American, Nonfiction, History, Americas, United States, 20th Century
Cover of the book Pursuing Privacy in Cold War America by Deborah Nelson, Columbia University Press
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: Deborah Nelson ISBN: 9780231528696
Publisher: Columbia University Press Publication: December 26, 2001
Imprint: Columbia University Press Language: English
Author: Deborah Nelson
ISBN: 9780231528696
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Publication: December 26, 2001
Imprint: Columbia University Press
Language: English

Pursuing Privacy in Cold War America explores the relationship between confessional poetry and constitutional privacy doctrine, both of which emerged at the end of the 1950s. While the public declarations of the Supreme Court and the private declamations of the lyric poet may seem unrelated, both express the upheavals in American notions of privacy that marked the Cold War era. Nelson situates the poetry and legal decisions as part of a far wider anxiety about privacy that erupted across the social, cultural, and political spectrum during this period. She explores the panic over the "death of privacy" aroused by broad changes in postwar culture: the growth of suburbia, the advent of television, the popularity of psychoanalysis, the arrival of computer databases, and the spectacles of confession associated with McCarthyism.

Examining this interchange between poetry and law at its most intense moments of reflection in the 1960s, '70s, and '80s, Deborah Nelson produces a rhetorical analysis of a privacy concept integral to postwar America's self-definition and to bedrock contradictions in Cold War ideology. Nelson argues that the desire to stabilize privacy in a constitutional right and the movement toward confession in postwar American poetry were not simply manifestations of the anxiety about privacy. Supreme Court justices and confessional poets such as Anne Sexton, Robert Lowell, W. D. Snodgrass, and Sylvia Plath were redefining the nature of privacy itself. Close reading of the poetry alongside the Supreme Court's shifting definitions of privacy in landmark decisions reveals a broader and deeper cultural metaphor at work.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

Pursuing Privacy in Cold War America explores the relationship between confessional poetry and constitutional privacy doctrine, both of which emerged at the end of the 1950s. While the public declarations of the Supreme Court and the private declamations of the lyric poet may seem unrelated, both express the upheavals in American notions of privacy that marked the Cold War era. Nelson situates the poetry and legal decisions as part of a far wider anxiety about privacy that erupted across the social, cultural, and political spectrum during this period. She explores the panic over the "death of privacy" aroused by broad changes in postwar culture: the growth of suburbia, the advent of television, the popularity of psychoanalysis, the arrival of computer databases, and the spectacles of confession associated with McCarthyism.

Examining this interchange between poetry and law at its most intense moments of reflection in the 1960s, '70s, and '80s, Deborah Nelson produces a rhetorical analysis of a privacy concept integral to postwar America's self-definition and to bedrock contradictions in Cold War ideology. Nelson argues that the desire to stabilize privacy in a constitutional right and the movement toward confession in postwar American poetry were not simply manifestations of the anxiety about privacy. Supreme Court justices and confessional poets such as Anne Sexton, Robert Lowell, W. D. Snodgrass, and Sylvia Plath were redefining the nature of privacy itself. Close reading of the poetry alongside the Supreme Court's shifting definitions of privacy in landmark decisions reveals a broader and deeper cultural metaphor at work.

More books from Columbia University Press

Cover of the book Social Work and Human Rights by Deborah Nelson
Cover of the book Course in General Linguistics by Deborah Nelson
Cover of the book The Domestication of Language by Deborah Nelson
Cover of the book This Incredible Need to Believe by Deborah Nelson
Cover of the book The Ecosystem Approach by Deborah Nelson
Cover of the book The Lovelorn Ghost and the Magical Monk by Deborah Nelson
Cover of the book After the Silents by Deborah Nelson
Cover of the book The End of the West and Other Cautionary Tales by Deborah Nelson
Cover of the book Dying, Death, and Bereavement in Social Work Practice by Deborah Nelson
Cover of the book Gorbachev by Deborah Nelson
Cover of the book Soul and Form by Deborah Nelson
Cover of the book Food, Medicine, and the Quest for Good Health by Deborah Nelson
Cover of the book The Power of Tolerance by Deborah Nelson
Cover of the book The Conversational Firm by Deborah Nelson
Cover of the book Hatred and Civility by Deborah Nelson
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy