Dangerous Giving in Nineteenth-Century American Literature

Alexandra Urakova is a KONE Foundation fellow at the University of Tampere, Finland. She also teaches at the National University Higher School of Economics and holds a research position at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, Russia. She has widely published on nineteenth-century American literature and is a co-editor of the forthcoming The Dangers of Gifts from Antiquity to the Digital Age (Routledge, 2022).

1 Introduction.- 2 Gifts, Language, Ideology, and the Sentimental.- 3 Sentimental "Potlatch" and the Making of the Nation.- 4 Un-Gendering the Gift Book.- 5 Racial Identity and the Perils of Giving.- 6 The Poison of the Gift, The Race of the Gift.- 7 Pure Tokens and Venomous Bodies.- 8 The Gift/Gifts of Death.- 9 "The Season of Gifts": Christmas and Melancholia.- 10 Conclusion.