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The essay deals with the novel The Moon Is Down (1942) by American Nobel Prize winning writer John Steinbeck. Withing a year after its publication, the novel evolved into a play and movie. The appearance of this slim volume came as a shock to readers eagerly waiting another book on the same epic scale as its monumental predecessor, The Grapes of Wrath. During World War II, The Moon Is Down successfully served as a work of propaganda, as Steinbeck intended, raising morale in the European resistance movement. However, the work is not contingent upon time or place and deserves more critical attention. Reflecting delusions, traumas, and fears of a historical period, and the collective effort for survival, The Moon Is Down is also a study of today’s world in a state of conflict. By creating new awareness and conveying the idea about the unconquerable spirit of those reacting to the assault on freedom and democracy, it offers the assurance the people of Ukraine and Gaza, among others, want to hear.

This study focuses on the issue of female psychopathy and the portrayal of an emotionally and mentally disturbed female character in East of Eden (1952) by the contemporary American author, John Steinbeck. Although female characters are like male characters regarding their psychological complexity, the issues of antisocial personality disorders and psychopathy have only been examined in previous studies concerning male characters. Hence, this study focuses on the issue of psychopathy as an antisocial personality disorder explored through the leading female character based on the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) by the American psychiatrist, Robert Hare (1991). A prominent view on the mentally disturbed female characters is that they are not analysed with equal attention as male characters; thus, this presumption that women are disqualified from psychological conductions on account of their gender is a predicament by itself. Accordingly, this study examines the non-traditional la femme fatale personified through the female character, Cathy Trask, and investigates the author’s portrayal of a female character with antisocial personality disorder tendencies. The findings show that, from a young age, Cathy reveals her lethal inclinations, harnessing her beauty and intelligence not only to her advantage but also to exploit those around her. Cathy also embodies the two “Personality Traits” and “Antisocial” factors and experiences many short-term marital relationships based on Hare’s (PCL-R). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The piece overviews major archival holdings related to John Steinbeck at Ball State University, the Harold A. Miller Library at Hopkins Marine Station, the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin, the Morgan Library and Museum, Princeton University Library, and Stanford University. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the most part, no one doubted the veracity of John Steinbeck's story The Grapes of Wrath. They agreed or disagreed with his message and his viewpoint, but they did not doubt the truth of what he wrote. The one glaringly indefensible weakness in his novel appeared to be the tractoring-off scene at the beginning of the book. Many sought to prove that the heavy machinery aspect of what led to the farmers being put off their land did not happen, especially not in the area that Steinbeck used in Oklahoma for his starting point of the Joads' exodus. Many tried to use this as a wedge to disprove the other "facts" as if this was a nonfiction research book. Even Carey McWilliams, who was in fact a nonfiction researcher and a staunch supporter of Steinbeck and the dispossessed and oppressed people that Steinbeck obviously cared about greatly, went into research mode in Ill Fares The Land, and did not see the proof of the reality behind Steinbeck's novel. No tractors and no Joads where Steinbeck placed them in The Grapes of Wrath. Neither The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck nor Factories in the Field by Carey McWilliams was directly responsible for causing measurable improvements to happen for the migrant workers, but both more than served their purpose of bringing public awareness to the table, causing widespread as opposed to local scrutiny, in turn resulting in the Tolan Hearings and the La Follette Hearings; this article deals with these themes, focusing mainly on The Grapes of Wrath and the Tolan Hearings. As Susan Shillinglaw wrote, "Steinbeck had not lied." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the second half of 2023, Steinbeck activities included an auction of the author's manuscripts and correspondence from the family of his youngest sister; the conclusion of preservation efforts for the Western Flyer; the official opening of the Steinbeck House in Sag Harbor; the launch of the Steinbeck Writers' Retreat; and new adaptations of The Grapes of Wrath. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article traces the restoration of the Western Flyer, the vessel John Steinbeck and Edward Ricketts sailed for the Sea of Cortez expedition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Steinbeck Today" includes contemporary notes and mentions of John Steinbeck's works and legacy of interest to scholars, fans, and general-interest readers. In 2022 and early 2023, Steinbeck's fiction has continued to cause controversy, most notably in popular discourse regarding banned books, while also inspiring adaptations in range of mediums, including performances of Of Mice and Men as ballet and an opera. Further, this period has seen efforts to preserve sites that are significant to Steinbeck's life and work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the significance of Aristotle's concept of philia in John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, arguing for its crucial role in keeping the characters of George Milton and Lennie Small whole and stable. Because of their close relationship and despite their social and economic desperation, George and Lennie maintain a higher quality of life than the ranch men around them. This article draws on developments in queer and gender studies to analyze how Steinbeck's representations of men's friendships in Of Mice and Men explores and expands the definition of manhood during the 1930s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a showcase of students' work from the class "ENGL 167: Steinbeck" at San José State University. At the end of the term, students were presented with three options: they could compose a traditional research-based, analytical essay; they could create a series of lesson plans for a high school unit on Steinbeck's work; or they could craft a creative response. All students were required to submit an initial prospectus and a research summary, and students who submitted a creative project were also asked to submit an artist's statement that connected their project to the semester's readings and their external research. The projects shared here use visual art, crafts, collage, creative writing, music, and a crossword to reflect on the author, his work, and his enduring legacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In The Sea of Cortez, John Steinbeck mentions that the Western Flyer carried provisions for seven, but writes about only six crew members, including himself. The unmentioned passenger, hardly a ghost, was his first wife, Carol. A force of nature, she collected and preserved marine invertebrates with John and Ed Ricketts, joked and drank with the men, and thoroughly enjoyed herself. John and Carol separated shortly after the trip, and she left no written account of her adventures on the Sea of Cortez. Fortunately, the Steinbeck universe is populated by countless experts, documents, audio recordings, and artifacts that help fill the gaps in Carol's story and allow one to imagine what her experience might have been. A visit to the Lab on Cannery Row and a trip to the Sea of Cortez helped to complete the picture as I wrapped up my research for a historical fiction novel about Carol's experience aboard the Western Flyer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of RumeliDE Journal of Language & Literature Research / RumeliDE Dil ve Edebiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi is the property of RumeliDE Uluslararasi Hakemli Dil & Edebiyat Arastirmalari Dergisi and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

An examination of Steinbeck's "Letters to Alicia," a series of travel essays published in Newsday between 1965 and 1967, reveals the influence of Irish jokes and humorous stories on the structure and focus of Steinbeck's late-career nonfiction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Ankara Üniversitesi Dil ve Tarih-Cografya Fakültesi Dergisi DTCF Dergisi is the property of Ankara Universitesi Dil ve Tarih-Cografya Fakultesi (DTCF Dergisi) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article explores John Steinbeck's Vietnam War journalism as a way of understanding how hawks—those who favor military intervention—read the world with what affect theorists would call a "strong theory" of aggression. I argue that hawkish reading weaponizes the rhetorical precepts of synecdoche, taking its premise that a part can represent a whole as a means to escalate and invade. Steinbeck's journalism demonstrates how hawkish reading occurs not only in a hawk's depiction of the enemy abroad, but inevitably becomes a way of depicting protestors at home. What hawkish reading shows is how the hawk is dedicated to maintaining his strong theory of aggression at any cost, even when the hawk's depictions perpetuate cliché, stereotype, and ultimately, demagoguery. To explore texts like Steinbeck's for their hawkish reading is to better understand not only how the hawk uses facile language to create intense attachments, but also to better understand how the hawk's language creates dissensus at home. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1940 James M. Buchanan, a future Nobel laureate in economics, wrote a book review of The Grapes of Wrath for his college newspaper in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Buchanan's review of the work of his fellow future laureate, John Steinbeck, provides a unique case study of how Steinbeck influenced young readers. This article describes Buchanan's review The Grapes of Wrath and contrasts the experiences of the Joads with Buchanan's own experience farming in central Tennessee. It then moves to Buchanan's analysis of the political economy of farm labor migration during his doctoral studies at the University of Chicago, which both echoes and contrasts with Steinbeck's work. While Steinbeck focused on the treatment of migrant farm workers who had already made their journey to California, Buchanan analyzed the barriers that prevented successful migration for poor farmers in the South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Academic Social Science Studies is the property of Journal of Academic Social Science Studies and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Written in the light of critical discourse about the social value of literary sympathy and against the backdrop of critical whiteness studies, the article deals with John Steinbeck’s non-fiction book Travels with Charley in Search of America. Framed by an interest in how the writer responded to the racial separation in the United States, the article demonstrates that this work, which is often dismissed as a “charming portrayal of America,” is a serious intervention in all sites of discrimination and domination.

La mayor parte de los temas generales de la historia económica, por su naturaleza social, admiten su abordaje desde numerosas perspectivas, como las que muestran los postulados del sociólogo germano Max Weber. Siguiendo los criterios que se desprenden de la concepción socioeconómica weberiana, advertimos que las causas y consecuencias de la Gran Depresión de los años 30 en EE.UU. puede considerarse uno de los hechos más frecuentemente estudiados con bibliografía proveniente tanto de la ficción literariacomo de otras esferas del arte. El multipremiado John Steinbeck, autor de varios relatos que registran el mayor fracaso económico-financiero de la historia moderna, nos propone una mirada alternativa en Of Mice and Men (1937). Esta criticada y controvertida novela es un documento de protesta y denuncia social, reflejado en las andanzas de George Milton y Lennie Small, dos peones rurales migrantes que representan a los miles de jornaleros que emprendieron un éxodo hacia el Oeste estadounidense,enfrentando los efectos devastadores de la mayor crisis económica mundial que conoce el sector agrícola del mundo desarrollado.

In The Grapes of Wrath (1939), John Steinbeck portrays "the Okies" as refugees in their own country—tenant farmers forced off the land by big agriculture—who flee to California hoping to find work and a new home. Thrown together by shared circumstances, these dispossessed people bond during the journey, creating a community of people who might otherwise not have interacted. As a timeless national epic, The Grapes of Wrath calls attention to the exploitation and disenfranchisement of agricultural workers, migrants, and refugees past and present. Recognizing that the national focus of power and privilege was concentrated in urban areas, Steinbeck mobilized readers' imaginations to think beyond urban manufacturing or trade toward the world of agriculture. Steinbeck's choice of the term "refugees" in portraying the people affected most deeply by the Depression is deliberate and significant. Examining the plight of the Dust Bowl refugees in light of The Grapes of Wrath provides a tool for eliciting greater empathy for the plight of today's migrants and refugees as they seek to gain membership in the local community—to find a home and a homeland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to scrutinize the lesser-known journalist identity of John Steinbeck (1902-1968), who has a global reputation as a novelist. Before producing his works including the Great Depression novels that led him to fame, Steinbeck was among the prominent representatives of the literary reportage genre, as he was worked as a reporter for various newspapers and combined his literary talent with journalistic practice. As a journalist and a writer who managed to touch the lives of ordinary people by getting at the heart of the events and telling unique stories on neglected issues and details, Steinbeck's texts can be considered as an example of unique content production and storytelling, which constitute an alternative for today's standardized news reporting devoid of content. For this purpose, this paper analyses Steinbeck's two works, which foreground his identity as a journalist and are among the outstanding examples of the literary reportage genre: Once There Was a War, in which he narrates the background of World War II, and Travels with Charley: In Search of America, in which he conveys his observations on the United States society. As a result of thematic analysis, it is observed that these texts provide the opportunity to narrate unique life-touching stories based on testimonies and by proceeding with ordinary people and details. In sum, Steinbecks' journalism constitutes the initial examples of many news formats and practices, which have later been defined and promoted as alternative journalism and developed further through communication technologies, and promises a significant potential that can offer solutions to the contemporary issues in journalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the sensitive, religious-political issue of the promised land. It discusses this issue from the perspective of the criticism of the promised land in the works of Walter Brueggemann in comparison to his artistic source of influence, John Steinbeck. After the systematic analysis of Brueggemann's criticism of land ideology throughout his work, I elaborate on Steinbeck's critical attitude to this topic which I offer as Steinbeck's own alternative criticism. On top of the affirmation that "Steinbeck may have put the issue of the land most eloquently," as suggested by Brueggemann himself, I propose that Steinbeck (unlike Brueggemann) does not fall into the trap of producing an inverted ideology and offers a balanced and timeless criticism of the promised land issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to reassess John Steinbeck’s presence and significance within American modernism by advancing a myth-critical reading of his early novel “To a God Unknown” (1933). Considering the interplay between this novel and the precedent literary tradition and other contextual aspects that might have influenced Steinbeck’s text, this study explores Steinbeck’s often disregarded novel as an eloquent demonstration of the malleability of myths characteristic of Anglo-American modernism. Taking myth-ritualism—the most prominent approach to myth at the time—as a critical prism to reappraise Steinbeck’s own reshaping of modernist aesthetics, this article examines recurrent frustrated and misguided ritual patterns along with the rewriting of flouted mythical motifs as a series of aesthetic choices that give shape and meaning to a state of stagnation common to the post-war American literary landscapes, but now exacerbated as it has finally spread, as a plague of perverse remythologization, to the Eden of the West.

The arrival of COVID caused closings and cancellations that severely affected Steinbeck news and events in the second, third, and fourth quarters of 2020. Institutions including the Steinbeck House, National Steinbeck Center, and Monterey Library reformatted accordingly, as did the host organization for an important address on Steinbeck and the American West. Promotional plans and major-publication reviews of William Souder's new biography of Steinbeck were also curtailed; some reviews were critical of Steinbeck's reputation and writing, though most reviewers accepted Souder's premise that anger was fundamental to Steinbeck's character from an early age. Travels with Charley remained a frequent focus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores John Steinbeck's positive impact on Algerian culture, apparent from frequent references to his work in literary, academic, journalistic, and popular publications in Algeria. For example, The Pearl (1947) was integrated into the national Algerian school curriculum in the 1990s when an excerpt from the novella was included in a French-language textbook for seventh-grade students. In addition, stylistic and thematic echoes of Steinbeck's works can be discerned in modern Algerian literature. One notable instance of this is Mohamed Dib's 1954 novel L'incendie (French for "The Fire"), modeled on The Grapes of Wrath (1939). And not infrequently, Algerian newspapers dedicate space to issues related to Steinbeck's work, such as Fayçal Métaoui's article on the Algerian martyr Ahmed Zabana's impressions of Viva Zapata! (1952). But perhaps the most impressive evidence of Steinbeck's influence on Algerian culture to date remains Arezki Boudif's translations of The Pearl , Of Mice and Men (1937), and The Grapes of Wrath into Tamazight, a Berber language spoken by the Kabyle people in the north and northeast regions of Algeria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Acta Neophilologica is the property of Acta Neophilologica and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Developments around COVID-19 in the first half of 2020 stimulated renewed interest in The Grapes of Wrath while suggesting a limited future for live events like the annual Steinbeck festival in Salinas, or the public presentation in Palo Alto by Gavin Jones on Steinbeck's time at Stanford and the university's influence on To a God Unknown , Cannery Row , and other books by Steinbeck. Commentators in New York responded to the imposition of social distancing controls there and elsewhere in America with appeals to The Grapes of Wrath that left room for ambivalence about the future, like the ambiguous ending of Steinbeck's greatest novel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marine ecologist Edward Flanders Ricketts made three trips in the early 1930s to British Columbia, Canada, before publication in 1939 of his Between Pacific Tides, the classic marine ecology text for the west coast of North America. Between Pacific Tides is a highly influential book, widely read by marine ecology students and researchers working in the intertidal zone. These trips were to the inner coast and sheltered waters of the region, where he sampled marine and estuarine habitats. Explored in this paper are details of Ricketts's British Columbia inner coast work, including comments on collection records, collection site locations and influence of survey results, topics that are new to the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay explores the intersection of science and literary expression in Californian literature. It aims to analyze a current in said literature characterized by the convergence of literature and science. In so doing, the essay probes four thematic layers that play a prominent role in Californian environmental literature: 1) ecology and Darwinian science, 2) the holistic approach to science, 3) the geological imagination, 4) and imagined worlds in ecological science fiction. Investigating literary works spanning from the late 19th century to the early 21st century, the essay addresses authors such as John Muir, Mary Austin, Robinson Jeffers and John Steinbeck, each of whom incorporated science into their imaginative writing. In addition to these quintessential Californian authors, the essay also probes texts by writers who experienced the dramatic degradation of the California environment in the 1960s and was further aggravated by climate change at the turn of the century. These writers include Gary Snyder, Ernest Callenbach, Ursula Le Guin and Kim Stanley Robinson. The essay identifies a distinctive and coherent thread that runs through the texts under scrutiny, one characterized by a critical and skeptical attitude to fragmented science and its ambition to control rather than apprehend the natural world. In contrast, the writers draw from the inclusive and holistic approach applied by Charles Darwin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the summer of 1936, the novelist John Steinbeck was hired by the newspaper The San Francisco News to cover the phenomenon of the migrants that crowded the roadsides of California and the United States in the aftermath of the dust bowls and the 1929 crisis. As a result of the field trip, Steinbeck wrote seven articles that were published in October 1936 and called "The harvest gypsies". These texts have great documental value regarding the social effects of the economic recession and, this is our argument, they play a fundamental role in the change of perspective in Steinbeck's literature, making it more politically engaged and aesthetically realistic. This article aims at understanding how the summer of 1936 altered Steinbeck's critical perception over the American reality, underscoring the fact that migrants were pivotal in such process, since they uncovered the historical kinship between the workers and the old rural middle classes to which the writer belonged. This discovery enhanced the democratic claims of his literature, which peaked in the greatest novel about the Great Depression: 1939's The grapes of wrath. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main goal of this paper is to reach beneath the surface of John Steinbeck's literary works in order to analyse the metaphorical connections between the long-term violence, abuse or oppression of women and the depletion of the land portrayed in several of his novels. For this purpose, excerpts dealing with the topic of production and reproduction in the works In Dubious Battle, To a God Unknown, "The Forgotten Village", East of Eden and The Grapes of Wrath are analysed to explore Steinbeck's depiction of the connection between the land and the female body. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although there has been extensive scholarship examining the reception of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath among demographics on both ends of the Joads' journey, very little attention has been paid to the reception of the author and the story within a location that the family passes through in the novel: the Farm Security Administration's migrant labor camps. While studies that privilege the reactions of Oklahomans and Californians have perpetuated a narrative of negative attitudes toward The Grapes of Wrath , the archive of the F.S.A. labor camp newspapers undermines the accuracy of this narrative insofar as it extends to the migrants in the government camps. Within these newspapers, migrants enthusiastically reported on several topics related to Steinbeck's activities in the late 1930s and early 1940s, such as the Steinbeck Committee to Aid Agricultural Organization, The Grapes of Wrath novel, and the novel's adaptation into film. Regarding these overlapping topics, migrants in the F.S.A. labor camp newspapers expressed gratitude, published reviews, formed discussion groups, and defended the story from outside attacks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to enlarge the scope of previous research, such as that of Kiyoshi Yamauchi, since it is mostly Eurocentric and does not include any African countries or Asian nations besides Japan. Sixty-three surveys were administered to educators with a doctorate or master's and also to doctoral students with majors in English, French, and literature in translation at several universities across Algeria, thus providing geographically diverse responses. To assess their exposure to and views of Steinbeck, an open-ended, eight-question questionnaire was distributed. Findings show that Steinbeck is well-received in Algeria, noting his influence on the noted Algerian writer Mohamed Dib. Looking ahead, Algerian literary scholars have potential to influence trends in Steinbeck studies, providing a unique cultural perspective and expanding the number of available translations in Algeria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Ícone: Revista Brasileira de História da Arte is the property of Universidade Federnal do Rio Grande do Sul and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article examines the fortunes of Steinbeck's works in East European countries as they were in the grip of communist rule and as they are since the change in the political systems. In their struggle for working-class uniformity, these countries constituted an eager market for class-conscious works. Evaluated through an ideological lens, the sole value of literary works was seen to reside in their utility to oppressive political regimes. Given Steinbeck's international reputation in the 1940s and 1950s as an ardent advocate for the downtrodden, the writer inadvertently served as a political tool against the social order of capitalism. His works that largely conformed to the communist regime's ideology were critically acclaimed and widely translated, whereas several others were unjustifiably marginalized or consigned to oblivion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the features of the Soviet reception of the novel by John Steinbeck. «The winter of our anxiety» published in the USSR within the sunset of «thaw» in 1962. Despite the restrained assessment of the novel at its homeland and the general low opinion about the post-war work of Steinbeck, in the USSR «Winter of our anxiety» was accepted very warmly, after the Nobel committee of Soviet critics began to talk about the return of «old times of Steinbeck>s «Grapes of wrath». However, no doubt that the reason for the success of this book in the USSR was not much Steinbeck>s «critics of bourgeois reality», the «American Dream», which commonly was written by the domestic press as guessable Soviet readers parallels between the way the main character of the novel Ethan Allen Hawley, committed them to choose between good and evil, «money and humanity» - and his own life, ambiguous and unstable situation of the creative intelligentsia in the Soviet Union at the beginning of 1960. However, the inability to say publicly about his own doubts and problems that inevitably led to a repetition of the rhetoric of the 1930s reduced the value of the novel «Winter of our anxiety» in denouncing the American way of life. Documentary base article made reviews of the novel members of the editorial board of the magazine «Foreign Literature «, research works by R.D. Orlova «Money against humanity» («Foreign Literature», 1962, № 3) and I.M. Levidova «Postwar books of John Steinbeck» («Questions of Literature», 1962, № 8).

The fiftieth anniversary of John Steinbeck's death in New York occasioned coverage on foreign news sites, appreciative editorials, and community commemoration in Sag Harbor. It was marred by domestic news, including renewed litigation over film rights and publication of the transcribed recording by Steinbeck's second wife of her account of their relationship. Pending publication of William Souder's life of Steinbeck, the best new writing on Steinbeck is an astute online essay by a British blogger, who implicitly answers Orwell's charge that Steinbeck lacked significance, and a compelling profile by a seasoned journalist who adds dimension and detail about the author that is likely to be cited widely in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the prevalence of eugenics and determinist race-thinking during much of Steinbeck's working life, few critics have attempted to trace the echoes of that lineage in his work. Working within an interdiscplinary paradigm, I wish to argue that one of Steinbeck's oft-read and oft-analyzed novellas, Of Mice and Men , ought to be analyzed within the eugenic milieu of early twentieth-century America. Borrowing widely from intellectual history, philosophy, critical race theory, and labor studies, I present three distinct analytical channels for excavating the presence and activity of eugenic thinking in the novella. The first channel is a cosmological reading of the striking similarities between Steinbeck's non-teleological philosophy of "visceral understanding" and the worldview advanced by eugenicists–cum–political theorists Madison Grant and Lothrop Stoddard. The second is a micro-historical focus on California's role as a frontier for the institutionalization and practice of eugenics, a context that allows one to redefine some of Of Mice and Men's own narrative moments and structural relationships as marked by eugenic considerations and ethics. The third channel is a "geosophical" interpretation of the construction of the hobo archetype—which Lenny and George both fall under—in order to elucidate how hoboes and tramps become eugenically translated, a process of coding and identification of the unfit that signals to a coextensive precarity and revolutionary potential that "strange" and mobile persons embody within racially constituted spaces. In sum, much of my argument can be understood as turning around the effects and consequences of what would it mean to consider Of Mice and Men a eugenic novel in some sense. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]