Gothic America by Teresa Goddu

In this monograph Teresa Goddu argues that American Gothic literature cannot be understood outside of a raced context, especially the historical context of slavery. She offers fine readings especially of Crevecoeur's Letters from an American Farmer, Charles Brockden Brown's Arthur Mervyn, and Hawthorne's Blithedale Romance. I thought the book was a little weak in unity towards the end: the first three chapters really show how a series of Gothic texts increasing trouble the idea of the nation state. But the last two chapters felt a little bit like a grab-bag: let's see how women fit in (although I was intrigued about the idea of veiling and I thought there was good work on public/private spheres going on), and what do African American texts do to the Gothic. I think her central idea of slavery being the root of an American Gothic is right, and I was particularly interested in the ways she related to the formation of the nation state, contagion, and the place of Native Americans to that Gothic. Overall a very helpful book.