Brown Studies Now and in Transition

Abstract

This chapter examines the state of the field of Charles Brockden Brown studies since 2000. Taking a thematic approach, I discuss four dominant strands in twenty-first-century criticism: geographies, medical humanities, economies, and aesthetics. These sections cover the scholarly debate over a transnational, imperial, or postcolonial Brown; consider the new ways in which early national medicine intersects with his fiction; chart the rise of market and class-based criticism; and discuss a return to formal concerns in light of the aesthetic or postcritique turn. The final section of this chapter looks ahead to emergent trends in future Brown scholarship in response to the previous decade’s work.