A Return to the Region: Reconstructing the Past in Jewett, Cather, and Hurston (1896-1935)

My senior project focuses on three works of American literature, starting from 1896 and ending in 1935. During this time period, the United States was undergoing drastic cultural and industrial changes, both of which indefinitely reshaped the American landscape. My project seeks to understand these changes through Sarah Orne Jewett’s The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896), Willa Cather’s My Ántonia (1918), and Zora Neale Hurston’s Mules and Men (1935). All three works look beyond the city, and instead look inward toward small regional communities in Maine, Nebraska, and Florida. With the regional focus placed on the narratives, my project stands as a way to explore the intersection of landscape, nostalgia, and preservation– while each protagonist tells a separate narrative on the complexity and triumphs of being an outsider