Main street and empire : the fictional small town in the age of globalization / Ryan Poll.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

In Main Street and Empire, Ryan Poll argues that the small town, as evoked by the image of "Main Street," is not a relic of the past but rather a metaphorical screen upon which the nation's "everyday" stories and subjects are projected on both a national and global level. It brings together a wide range of literary, cultural, and political texts to examine how the small town is used to imagine and reproduce the nation throughout the twentieth- and into the twenty-first century.

Introduction: the small town as a modern nation form -- Sacred islands in modernity: the prehistory of the dominant small town -- An unfinished revolution: "the revolt from the village" reconsidered -- Mapping the modern small town: a circular imaginary -- A new machine in the small-town garden: periodizing an automodernity -- The formation of a U.S. fascist aesthetics; or, welcome to main street -- Staging and archiving the nation: pedagogical theater, Thornton Wilder's Our town, and U.S. imperialism -- "One happy world": the postmodern small town and the small-town postmodern -- Global belonging: the small town as the world's home -- Afterword: the global village.

Print version record.

English.

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