No abstract

This project seeks a comprehensive understanding of riot as an operating principle in American history and culture-a principle variously revealed in, explored, or obscured by literature produced by popular and political novelists at the turn of the twentieth century. In defining riot as a presence, I identify as central to US history a haunting incoherence between fundamental cherished ideals of representative government and the use of violence or threats of violence to assert the privilege of one group through the subjugation of another.