"Campus Peripheries": Academic Fiction(s) During the Rise and Fall of the Golden Age of the American University

This dissertation argues for an expansive understanding of American academic fiction in the postwar period—specifically as associated with the rise and fall of the "Golden Age of the American University"—beyond the conventional forms of the campus and academic novel. Rather than restricting academic fiction solely to types of novels that are explicit about their campus influences, via their incorporation of actively present and legible university characteristics such as college students, staff, faculty, and campus settings, this dissertation proposes alternate but adjacent literary sites to look for the influence of American higher education. To that end, it argues for the unique nature of these alternate academic fictions it names "campus peripheries" as they address the education issues of human capital, economic mobility, "minority" status, inclusion/ exclusion, individual achievement, and community service. These "campus peripheries," as this dissertation defines them, are brief and thus peripheral moments in novels that allude and gesture towards the university's significance despite their seemingly small contribution to the totality of the text they appear within. Additionally, this dissertation consolidates a review of conventional academic fiction and its accompanying criticism to show how this work has often failed to distinguish between two versions of this genre: student-centered campus novels and faculty-centered academic novels. I then turn to highlighting the alternate, non-conventional ones, "campus peripheries," which largely borrow from campus novels, through several close readings of select novels that I argue are representative of these peripheral moments. Overall, through readings of these campus periphery moments in some key novels, this dissertation argues for a novel way of understanding American academic fiction and the indebtedness these novels and their authors have to American higher education in the postwar period when its centrality in American life was becoming more pronounced.