American Culture

"The discussion of each period is wide-ranging, analyzing movements and spotlighting major figures in politics and philosophy, law and literature, economics and education, jazz and journalism, science and civil rights. A readable, insightful overview of the underlying patterns that give shape to U.S. cultural history. Nonacademic readers will find Crunden's selective bibliographical essay helpful". -- Booklist

Awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his People of Paradox (1973), and the Francis Parkman Prize for A Machine That Would Go of Itself (1987), Michael Kammen is widely regarded as one of our most important, and most diversely talented, cultural historians. David Brion Davis has said of him that "no other historian of Michael's generation has such a broad and concrete grasp of 'American culture' in all its manifestations from constitutional law to formal painting and popular culture." Now, In The Past Lane brings together writings from a span of more than a decade, covering the broad spectrum of Kammen's recent interests, including the role of the historian, the relationship between culture and the State, uses of tradition in American commercial culture, American historical art, memory distortion in American history, and the contested uses of history in American education, and much more. Here are major contributions to Kammen's work and to American cultural history. In the previously unpublished "Personal Identity and the Historian's Vocation," Kammen considers the complex interplay between historians' personal lives--their religion, ideology, race, gender, sexual orientation--and the history they write. Drawing on prominent historians' own self-reflections, in fascinating letters and memoirs, Kammen takes us inside the process of doing history and traces the movement away from delusions of objectivity to a more engaged and personal approach to the past. We find a lively exchange between David M. Potter and Richard Hofstadter, a personal account of a highly dramatic public debate between Arnold J. Toynbee and Allan Nevins, as well as delightful quotes from many important historians about their work, their beliefs, and their colleagues. We have, for example, Lewis Mumford at Christmas time informing a friend that he was using "the season of peace and cheer and goodwill to begin a murderous attack upon Mr. Bernard DeVoto, and Allan Nevins wryly recommending his multi-volume Civil War history, The Ordeal of the Union, as an ideal wedding present. In "Culture and the State in America," Kammen gives us an illuminating history of government funding for the arts which provides a surprising perspective on the current crises involving the NEA and NEH. He marshals his deep historical knowledge to argue that an elimination of public support will lead to an even greater loss of private support for the arts and humanities, and that the results will impoverish us all. Kammen addresses a range of other concerns in these essays, including the distinction between heritage and history, how multicultural art exhibits are developed, memory distortion in American history. Whether he's warning against historical amnesia, analyzing the iconography of judgment in American courthouses, considering American diversity, or reconsidering the issue of American exceptionalism, Kammen's remarkable essays show us the many ways the past informs, eludes, and yet gives birth to the present.

America, like other modern nations, is characterized by its diversity and can be seen as a complex and fragmented nation-state. Yet an American culture defined by those beliefs, and behaviors that all Americans do share, irrespective of their other cultural affiliations, does exist. This book presents an innovative approach to the issues and aspects in the study of America's unique culture.

As editor of the Journal of American History, author of a number of books on nineteenth-century America, and professor of history at Vanderbilt University, Lewis Perry has been a leading historian of United States intellectual life for more than two decades. Now, in this highly original look at American culture in the decades between the War of 1812 and the Civil War, he paints a vivid portrait of our tumultuous society as it veered toward modernity. Boats Against the Current provides a fascinating account of how American culture emerged from the sheltered, elitist world of the eighteenth century into the dynamic, turbulent civilization that reached full bloom after the Civil War. The antebellum years were times of flux and change, years of a society rushing into the western wilds, muscular and ambitious, yet haunted by uncertainty about its future and its past. Perry begins with a fresh look at Andrew Jackson--who personally linked the revolutionary period to the era that bears his name--vividly recreating a time when Americans, feeling their ties to the past disintegrating, fostered a new fascination with history. Then Perry introduces us to the observations of such articulate foreign travelers as Alexis de Tocqueville and Fredrika Bremer. He deftly weaves together these writers' perspectives to provide a fascinating look at our emergent nation. Here, too, are the women of the cities and frontier, the peddlers, preachers, and showmen, along with such writers as Hawthorne, Emerson, Whittier, and Parker. Perry brings these personalities and writings together to show us how early nineteenth century America saw itself, in both its promise and its fears. Gracefully written and filled with fresh insights, Boats Against the Current offers a brilliant portrait of a society in the midst of change, expansion, and reflection about its own future and past. Written by one of our leading intellectual historians, it makes a major contribution to our understanding of the emergence of modern American culture.

Drawing on his own experience of having lived with different racial groups, the author writes about those who are trying to reduce the significance of race in society and, through their actions, to create models of behaviour for America's future.

Four early "reflexive ethnographies" which have been the subject of comment by other anthropologists are analyzed in detail and then related to the larger professional and cultural context in which they emerged. These ethnographies are treated as cultural productions, the form and content of which were permeated by the proximate American experience as well as characteristically American constructs for interpreting social reality.

An expert on the rhetoric of the mass media, John M. Sloop has written several books on how the spoken and written word can influence political and cultural debate. In Disciplining Gender, he turns his attention to a topic that has attracted widespread public discussion--the treatment of gender ambiguity in American culture. He offers critical readings of five cases, showing the extent to which, in each instance, public discourse and media representations have served to reinforce dominant norms and constrain or "discipline" any behavior that blurs or subverts conventional gender boundaries. The five cases include John/Joan or David Reimer, Brandon Teena, k.d. lang, Janet Reno, and Barry Winchell/Calpernia Addams. Sloop draws on queer theory and research in the field of critical rhetoric to examine representations of "gender trouble" in these much-publicized stories. In each case, he provides a comprehensive analysis of the public discussions of their significance. In short, rather than simply study the people and circumstances involved in each case, he examines the public meanings attached to them and the implications of those meanings for how contemporary culture comes to understand what "man" and "woman" mean and which sexual behaviors are appropriate and inappropriate. In highlighting the ideological constraints imposed by our society, Sloop also suggests the ways that these constraints might be loosened and understandings of gender and sexuality diversified.

The research conducted by family historians over the past three decades challenges, modifies, & ultimately enriches sociological understandings about American family life today. By looking closely at the historical record, the author is able to debunk certain myths, such as the belief that the "ideal" family (male breadwinner & female domestic manager) has been historically prevalent; that the "traditional" family has been disintegrating in recent years; that the presumed breakdown of the family has left children more vulnerable than in the past. Drawing on & integrating this literature, then, allows students to develop new perspectives on contemporary social issues & reorients the kinds of questions sociologists bring to the study of family structures & processes.

A study of the ways popular culture viewed jazz & its musicians in postwar America.

American Literature, American Culture is the first anthology of American literary criticism to appear in many years. Its focus is the tradition of American literary criticism as cultural critique and includes essays which debate the social and political importance of American writing. These documents draw from the early years of the republic, through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Their shared concerns are the terms on which a national literature might be based, the complications of gender and class and the challenges posed by race in identifying a national cultural identity. The anthology also features a substantial selection of recent essays.

How the craze of exhausting marathon dancing mirrored America's struggle to outlast social problems of the era.