American Obscurantism: History and the Visual in U.S. Literature and Film

American Obscurantism: History and the Visual in U.S. Literature and Film by Lurie, Peter. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780199797318.

American Obscurantism argues for a salutary indirection in US culture. Critiquing the impulse to see history in seminal works like Griffiths Birth of a Nation and the residual positivism of New Historicist methodology, the book challenges this shared visual epistemology . It traces meaningful exceptions to this pattern across canonical figures from US literature and film.