Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: New Books in American Studies
Episode: Imagining Independence; or, Why Does Rip Van Winkle Sleep Through the Revolution?
Description: Thursday, March 12—Inaugurating a series of programs to mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, authors and scholars Michael Gorra, Wendy S. Walters, and Brenda Wineapple discuss three classic short stories, each written within fifty years of the American Revolution, that imaginatively explore the meaning of that founding moment: Washington Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle,” William Austin’s “Peter Rugg, The Missing Man,” and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “My Kinsman, Major Molineux.”
Drawing on the recently published two-volume anthology The American Short Story: The Nineteenth Century and Nathaniel Hawthorne: Tales and Sketches join us for an evening that will illumina...