Earthquake and the Invention of America Audiobook By Anna Brickhouse cover art

Earthquake and the Invention of America

The Making of Elsewhere Catastrophe

Pre-order with offer Pre-order for $0.00
Offer ends January 21, 2025 at 11:59PM ET.
Prime logo Prime members: New to Audible?
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 3 months. Cancel anytime.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Earthquake and the Invention of America

By: Anna Brickhouse
Narrated by: Kim Niemi
Pre-order with offer Pre-order for $0.00

$14.95/mo. after 3 months. Offer ends January 21, 2025 11:59PM ET. Cancel anytime.

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Pre-order for $20.99

Pre-order for $20.99

Confirm pre-order
Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.
Cancel

About this listen

Earthquake and the Invention of America: The Making of Elsewhere Catastrophe explores the role of earthquakes in shaping the deep timeframes and multi-hemispheric geographies of American literary history. Spanning the ancient world to the futuristic continents of speculative fiction, the earthquake stories assembled here together reveal the emergence of a broadly Western cultural syndrome that became an acute national fantasy: elsewhere catastrophe, an unspoken but widely prevalent sense that catastrophe is somehow "un-American." Catastrophe must be elsewhere because it affirms the rightness of "here" where conquest, according to the syndrome's logic, did not happen and is not occurring.

The psychic investment in elsewhere catastrophe coalesced slowly, across centuries; varieties of it can be found in various European traditions of the modern. Yet in its most striking modes and resonances, elsewhere catastrophe proves fundamental to the invention of US-America—which is why the earthquake, as the exemplary elsewhere catastrophe, is the disaster that must always happen far away or be forgotten. At the core of the book's inquiries are the earthquakes, historical and imagined, that act as both a recurrent eruptive force and a provocation for disparate modes of critical engagement with the long and catastrophic history of the Americas.

©2024 Anna Brickhouse (P)2025 Highbridge Audio
Literary History & Criticism United States Natural Disaster Fiction Earthquake
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

What listeners say about Earthquake and the Invention of America

Average customer ratings

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.