Rereading the Machine in Garden: Nature and Technology American Culture: 34

Reexamines the trope of the machine in the garden that laid out by Leo Marx years ago. Extending the relevance of Marx's theory from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century, this title examines the filmic and literary representations of industrial, bureaucratic, and digital gardens; explore its role in the aftermath of the Civil War and more. This book reexamines the trope of the machine in the garden first laid out by Leo Marx fifty years ago. Contributors explore the lasting influence of this concept on American culture and the arts, rereading it as a dialectic wherein nature is as much technologized as technology is naturalized. Extending the relevance of Marx's theory from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century, they examine filmic and literary representations of industrial, bureaucratic, and digital gardens; explore its role in the aftermath of the Civil War and of rural electrification during the New Deal; its significance in landscape art as well as in ethnic literatures; and discuss the historical premises and continued impact of Marx's study.