This essay analyses the later fiction of Nobel Prize-winning writer Isaac Bashevis Singer through the prism of his vegetarianism. Singer figured his adoption of a vegetarian diet in 1962 as a kind of conversion, pronouncing it a “religion” that was central to his being. Here I outline Singer's vegetarian philosophy, and argue that it was the underlying ethical precept in the fiction written after the conversion. I demonstrate the way in which that ethic informs the presentation of both Judaism and women in Singer's later writings. The piece concludes with the suggestion that this vegetarian ethic was the mainspring of the critique of humanism found in Singer's final novels.

This essay adopts an innovative interdisciplinary approach to the analysis of Disney's representations of the American founding in television and movie productions as secondary works; that is, as works of historical interpretation. “The Liberty Story” (1957), Johnny Tremain (1957) and The Swamp Fox (1959–60) are analysed in the context of contemporaraneous historiographical trends. The essay demonstrates that despite certain flaws and weaknesses, Disney's representations sometimes presented innovative themes and insightful interpretations, which at the height of the Cold War influenced popular understanding of the American founding and the society that it produced.

The poetry of Frank O'Hara (1926–66) takes place in the routes of New York City, both above and below the ground. This essay looks at the characteristics of his poetic lines, and some of the ways they invest themselves in each other, interacting complexly through rhymes and line breaks that we may struggle to negotiate. Then, broadening outwards to consider urban topographies and the experience of inhabiting the avenues of Manhattan, it discusses how the lines of a poem might relate to the lines of a subway system or street grid, and considers how O'Hara's poetry opens our attention, and our generosity, to the aspects of a cityscape that we habitually overlook.

The American New Right that grew to prominence during the second half of the twentieth century consists of three major ideological strands – traditionalism, libertarianism, and anticommunism. The New Christian Right (NCR) that rose to prominence in the 1970s fell within the traditionalist camp. At the same time, not all theological conservatives or social traditionalists joined the NCR. The work of comic book artist Jack Chick demonstrates the phenomenon of opposition to the NCR among some theological and social conservatives. Beginning in the early 1960s, Chick published tracts and comic books that espoused extreme social conservatism while at the same time opposing government enforcement of social norms. He frequently criticized politically active or well-connected preachers such as Jerry Falwell and Billy Graham and opposed prayer in schools. Chick, along with many other fundamentalists, opposed the NCR because it involved cooperation with Roman Catholics. For Chick, doctrinal purity is more important than having a “Christian” nation. This essay concludes by noting how, as evangelicals lose ground in key battles of the culture wars, there are signs that Chick's antipolitics is gaining ground among conservative Protestants.

This article explores ideas of suburban masculinity in “My Dog Stupid” (1986), a comic novella by the critically neglected novelist and screenwriter John Fante. Placing the text within the context of the twentieth-century suburban “canon,” I argue that Fante complicates and critiques the dystopian image of American suburbia that has dominated both fictional and sociological representations of this environment over the past seventy years.

Korean War films from the US and South Korea provide one cultural site through which scholar–teachers working in American studies, and the humanities in general, can intervene in the unending Korean War. An emergent peace movement has organized around term unending Korean War in order to educate the public both about the history of the three-year period of active combat, and about the repercussions of the fact that the Armistice Agreement, signed on 27 July 1953, stopped the shooting but did not end the war. In the US context, the Korean War is described as a forgotten war. When the war is remembered, it has often been interpreted as a limited, defensive, or static war – a war fought in the trenches – a perspective that tends to occlude the air war. Through a comparative study of the Hollywood film The Bridges at Toko-Ri (Mark Robson, 1954) and the South Korean film Welcome to Dongmakgol (Park Kwang-hyun, 2005), I explore conflicting ways of representing and remembering the air war: as limited to an interdiction campaign in the former, as the cause of civilian casualties in the latter. The friction that results from viewing Welcome to Dongmakgol against the grain of The Bridges at Toko-Ri provides one starting point for a discussion of the unending Korean War, a discussion which has yet to appear in the field of transnational American studies. My hope is that greater understanding of the devastating air war can contribute to the struggle for peace on the Korean peninsula.

This article examines representations of the road in the work of independent Florida-born film director Kelly Reichardt. Reading Reichardt's so-called Oregon trilogy, Old Joy (2006), Wendy and Lucy (2008), and Meek's Cutoff (2010), alongside radical anti-freeway and anti-automobile movements from the Pacific Northwest, I argue that Reichardt's films offer critical engagements with the subject of the American road, interrogating the freedom and emancipation from social constraint it purportedly offers.