Applies new understandings of realism as a political aesthetic to Progressive Era Literature, arguing for its radicalism politically and culturally Offers an original interpretation of the contribution of American anthropology and social science to the development of literature and culture in the 20th century New readings of canonical and non-canonical texts of the period 1880 1930, placing Edith Wharton, WD Howells, Stephen Crane Jose Mart and others alongside works by other working-class reformers, journalists, political radicals and anthropologists working in the Progressive Era U.S.A. New approach to realism that explores it as a form of modernism in the arts Develops a theory of the intersections of class and culture in U.S. literature that contributes to ongoing discussions in the method wars This book is an account of how American realism in the Progressive Era contributed to debates about modernity. It uses the anthropological theories of Franz Boas, and Jacques Ranciere's work on aesthetics and politics to develop a mode of reading class and culture that challenges conventional interpretations that pit the two modes of representation in opposition. It paints a picture of the late-nineteenth century, prior to modernism, as an aesthetically exciting, original, and politically radical stage in American life to reinvigorate realism as a radical aesthetic practice, with implications for understandings of American literature both in the past and into the future.