The recent International Poe conference saw a number of panels and individual presentations dedicated to examining the author's works in their social and historical contexts, suggesting that contemporary Poe criticism is moving in a cultural direction long overlooked by scholars and critics. With no less than two full panels devoted specifically to issues of race in Poe's writing, and other papers addressing issues of cultural identity, gender politics, Poe's relationship to American literary nationalism, and the author's ties to both antebellum society and Jacksonian democracy, this conference provided overwhelming evidence of a current desire to emplace Poe more specifically within his cultural and historical milieu. In a broader sense, such attention to the historical and cultural dynamics of Poe's writing suggests increased attention of late to Poe's own Americanness. This critical trend toward assessing Poe as a distinctly American writer has, of course, also informed such......
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