Sensational Internationalism
The Paris Commune and the Remapping of American Memory in the Long Nineteenth Century
“An engaging and convincing study of the ways in which the Paris Commune of 1871 was pressed into political and cultural service in the USA. Ambitious in its multidisciplinary approach and innovative in its focus on transnational commemoration, this deftly executed work stages an original intervention into understandings of popular political memory in the fin de siècle United States and on into the political and cultural upheavals of the 1930s and 1960s.”
— Judging Panel, Arthur Miller Centre Prize in American Studies (2017)
“I’ve been waiting a long time for such a book.”
— Eric Lott, Graduate Center, City University of New York
PRAISE FOR INTERNATIONAL SENSATIONALISM
As reviewed by…
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John Funchion
“J. Michelle Coghlan’s elegantly written Sensational Internationalism persuasively argues that the Paris Commune produced an ‘insurgent memory’ that profoundly affected US politics and culture.”
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Woody Brown
“Sensational Internationalism significantly expand[s] our understanding of the role that the Paris Commune has played and continues to play in American political discourse. Taking the Commune seriously, in all its varied aspects, has rarely been more important.'“
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William J. Maxwell
“Coghlan’s deftness with both visual and literary analysis, applied to texts high, low, and everywhere in between, helps to unify her book as it realizes forsaken promises of cultural studies.”
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Elizabeth Duquette
“This is a useful and timely book… Sensational Internationalism gathers an impressive collection of US materials about the Commune, and the book is invaluable in its attention to the radical politics of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.”
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Dean de la Motte
“The interdisciplinary richness of Coghlan's study emerges from her detailed analyses of visual representation and spectacle…Coghlan's ambitious work is distinguished by broad, impeccable archival scholarship and beautiful, limpid prose.”
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Michael J. Collins
“What impresses most is that in charting feeling and memory across a wide range of sources (Henry James travelogues, popular adventure and horror fiction, dioramas, lithographs) Coghlan shows how the affects associated with one’s personal experiences might be Janus-faced, helping give color, taste, and texture to the writing of literary criticism and history, whilst also conferring upon the author and reader a political intensity and receptivity to the possibilities of the present.”
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Scott McCracken
“Written with enviable clarity and style, Sensational Internationalism brings to life a history that by its end we are convinced should never be forgotten.”
PUBLIC ENGAGMENT
Radio 1871 episode on “Internationalism” for the 2021 “La Commune” free school organized by Prof. Roxanne Panchasi and UNIT/PITT: Society for Critical Awareness (April 2021)