A classic work that launched the career of one of the most influential scholars of their generation.

Lauren Berlant influenced generations of scholars in gender studies, affect theory, literary criticism, anthropology, sociology, and beyond. Her first book, The Anatomy of National Fantasy, was published in 1991, and it marked the start of an extraordinary career of groundbreaking essays, editorial collaborations, and monographs. This new edition reintroduces Berlant’s earliest work with a new foreword by Caleb Smith, who connects Berlant’s initial investigations as a scholar of nineteenth-century American literature to her more widely known interventions in how we understand the entanglements of national ideology, citizenship, affect, and everyday life.