Introduction: Transnational circulation in the age of realism and progressivism -- From cosmopolitanism to world-salvation: the transnational imaginary and the idea of the progressive state -- Local color, world literature, and the transnational turn in William Dean Howells's fiction and criticism -- Improper wealth getting: Henry James, the rise of finance capitalism, and the emerging global cultural economy -- Migration systems and literary production: the global routes of Abraham Cahan and Knut Hamsun -- Freedom amongst aliens: Jack London, Lafcadio Hearn, and the alternative modernity of Japan -- Coda: Modernism, multiculturalism, and the legacy of the mediating nation
Summary
Mediating Nation: Late American Realism, Globalization, and the Progressive State
