Dana D. Nelson

[6] Nelson's The Word in Black and White: Reading "Race" in American Literature, 1638–1867 was named "an Outstanding Academic Book of 1992–1993 by Choice.

"[7] The book explored how eleven "Anglo-American authors constructed 'race'", including a study of The Last of the Mohicans and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, and earned positive reviews.

[7] In 2006, she co-edited with Russ Castronovo a collection of essays entitled Materializing Democracy: Toward a Revitalized Cultural Politics.

[13] She has published numerous books, essay collections, and articles on U.S. literature and the history of citizenship and democratic culture.

[10] Nelson lives in Nashville where she is involved in a program that helps incarcerated women develop better decision-making skills and works with an innovative activist group fighting homelessness in the area.

[14] In her 2008 book Bad for Democracy,[2][15] Nelson criticizes presidentialism which she sees as worship of the presidency and federal politics to the exclusion of all else.

[11] Newspaper columnist David Sirota wrote "this culture of 'presidentialism,' as Vanderbilt Professor Dana Nelson calls it, has justified the Patriot Act, warrantless wiretaps and a radical theory of the unitary executive that aims to provide a jurisprudential rationale for total White House supremacy over all government.

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