Erik Dussere is Associate Professor of Literature at American University. He is the author of Balancing the Books: Faulkner, Morrison, and the Economies of Slavery.

Winner of the 2014 Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Critical/Biographical Book

"In this lucidly written study, Erik Dussere deftly combines a wide-ranging examination of social and political forces with the detailed textual scrutiny of a range of films and novels to produce an original and illuminating discussion of film noir as an oppositional critique of consumer culture. America Is Elsewhere not only extends our understanding of film noir, but offers a penetrating analysis of post-war American culture."--Andrew Spicer, coeditor of A Companion to Film Noir

"America Is Elsewhere provides a rigorous consideration of key texts in hard-boiled and film noir traditions. While other studies have considered these texts in relation to consumption and masculinity, Dussere strikes important new ground by including the crucial and contested postwar concept of authenticity in his examination. The result is a nuanced and creative addition to our study of these works and the period as a whole."--Abigail Cheever, author of Real Phonies: Cultures of Authenticity in Post-World War II America

"Dussere offers new and richly insightful ways of understanding both noir texts themselves and the discourses of authenticity in which they participate and that they have helped constitute." --Journal of American Culture