Rereading the Machine in the Garden

Nature and Technology in American Culture

Author: Eric C. Erbacher, Nicole Maruo-Schroder and Florian Sedlmeier Series: North American Studies

Reexamines the trope of the machine in the garden that laid out by Leo Marx years ago. Extending the relevance of Marx's theory from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century, this title examines the filmic and literary representations of industrial, bureaucratic, and digital gardens; explore its role in the aftermath of the Civil War and more.

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This book reexamines the trope of the machine in the garden first laid out in one of the founding texts of American studies by Leo Marx fifty years ago. The contributors to this volume explore the lasting influence of this concept on American culture and the arts, rereading it as a dialectic wherein nature is as much technologized as technology is naturalized. Extending the relevance of Marx's theory from the nineteenth to twenty-first centuries, they examine filmic and literary representations of industrial, bureaucratic, and digital gardens; explore its role in the aftermath of the Civil War and of rural electrification during the New Deal; its significance in landscape art as well as in ethnic literatures; and discuss the historical premises and continued impact of Leo Marx's groundbreaking study.

About the Author

Eric Erbacher is a lecturer in American studies at the University of Muenater, Germany Nicole Maruo-Schroder is professor of cultural studies at the University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany. Florian Sedlmeier is assistant professor of American literature in the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies at the Free University of Berlin.