Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: Exchanges: A Cambridge UP Podcast
Episode: Bryan M. Santin, "Postwar American Fiction and the Rise of Modern Conservatism: A Literary History, 1945–2008" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
Description: In Postwar American Fiction and the Rise of Modern Conservatism: A Literary History, 1945–2008 (Cambridge UP, 2021), Bryan M. Santin examines over a half-century of intersection between American fiction and postwar conservatism. He traces the shifting racial politics of movement conservatism to argue that contemporary perceptions of literary form and aesthetic value are intrinsically connected to the rise of the American Right. Instead of casting postwar conservatives as cynical hustlers or ideological fanatics, Santin shows how the long-term rhetorical shift in conservative notions of literary value and prestige reveal an aesthetic antinomy between high culture and low culture. This shift, he argue...