Contemporary American Life

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Robert Johnson, Mythmaking, and Contemporary American Culture

Author : Patricia R. Schroeder
Publisher : University of Illinois Press
ISBN 13 : 9780252029158
Total Pages : 220 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (291 download)

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Book Synopsis Robert Johnson, Mythmaking, and Contemporary American Culture by : Patricia R. Schroeder

Download or read book Robert Johnson, Mythmaking, and Contemporary American Culture written by Patricia R. Schroeder and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2004-06-14 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Suddenly Robert Johnson is everywhere. Though the Mississippi bluesman died young and recorded only twenty-nine songs, the legacy, legend, and lore surrounding him continue to grow. Focusing on these developments, Patricia R. Schroeder's Robert Johnson, Mythmaking, and Contemporary American Culture breaks new ground in Johnson scholarship, going beyond simple or speculative biography to explore him in his larger role as a contemporary cultural icon. Part literary analysis, part cultural criticism, and part biographical study, Robert Johnson, Mythmaking, and Contemporary American Culture shows the Robert Johnson of today to be less a two-dimensional character fixed by the few known facts of his life than a dynamic and contested set of ideas. Represented in novels, in plays, and even on a postage stamp, he provides inspiration for "highbrow" cultural artifacts--such as poems--as well as Hollywood movies and T-shirts. Schroeder's detailed and scholarly analysis directly engages key images and stories about Johnson (such as the Faustian crossroads exchange of his soul for guitar virtuosity), navigating the many competing interpretations that swirl around him to reveal the cultural purposes these stories and their tellers serve. Unprecedented in both range and depth, Schroeder's work is a fascinating examination of the relationships among Johnson's life, its subsequent portrayals, and the cultural forces that drove these representations. With penetrating insights into both Johnson and the society that perpetuates him, Robert Johnson, Mythmaking, and Contemporary American Culture is essential reading for cultural critics and blues fans alike.

Contemporary Novelists and the Aesthetics of Twenty-First Century American Life

Author : Alexandra Kingston-Reese
Publisher : University of Iowa Press
ISBN 13 : 1609386752
Total Pages : 221 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (93 download)

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Book Synopsis Contemporary Novelists and the Aesthetics of Twenty-First Century American Life by : Alexandra Kingston-Reese

Download or read book Contemporary Novelists and the Aesthetics of Twenty-First Century American Life written by Alexandra Kingston-Reese and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2020-01-01 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contemporary Novelists and the Aesthetics of Twenty-First Century American Life gives us a new way to view contemporary art novels, asking the key question: How do contemporary writers imagine aesthetic experience? Examining the works of some of the most popular names in contemporary fiction and art criticism, including Zadie Smith, Teju Cole, Siri Hustvedt, Ben Lerner, Rachel Kushner, and others, Alexandra Kingston-Reese finds that contemporary art novels are seeking to reconcile the negative feelings of contemporary life through a concerted critical realignment in understanding artistic sensibility, literary form, and the function of the aesthetic. Kingston-Reese reveals how contemporary writers refract and problematize aesthetic experience, illuminating an uneasiness with failure: firstly, about the failure of aesthetic experiences to solve and save; and secondly, the literary inability to articulate the emotional dissonance caused by aesthetic experiences now.

Modern American Lives: Individuals and Issues in American History Since 1945

Author : Blaine T Browne
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317464664
Total Pages : 384 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (174 download)

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Book Synopsis Modern American Lives: Individuals and Issues in American History Since 1945 by : Blaine T Browne

Download or read book Modern American Lives: Individuals and Issues in American History Since 1945 written by Blaine T Browne and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-12-18 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The individuals presented in these narrative biographies significantly, and sometimes decisively, impacted contemporary American life in a wide range of areas, including national politics, foreign policy, social and political activism, popular and literary culture, sports, and business. The combined biographical/thematic approach is designed to serve two purposes: to present more substantive biographical information, and to offer a fuller examination of key events and issues. The book is an ideal supplement for undergraduate courses on The United States Since 1945, as well as for courses on Modern America and 20th Century America.

The Fractious Nation?

Author : Jonathan Rieder
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 9780520220430
Total Pages : 316 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (24 download)

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Book Synopsis The Fractious Nation? by : Jonathan Rieder

Download or read book The Fractious Nation? written by Jonathan Rieder and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Less than a year before two planes slammed into the World Trade Center, the 2000 presidential election produced not just the blue-and-red electoral map but also revealed the fractured nation that those totemic colors represent. And from the cultural wars to immigration restriction, from the Christian right to political correctness, recent decades have witnessed much hand-wringing on the left and the right about the fragmentation of American life. The Fractious Nation? enlists the critical intelligence of fourteen distinguished contributors who illuminate the schisms in American life and the often volatile debates they have inspired in the realms of culture, ethnic and racial pluralism, and political life. "This collection of essays offers a bracing challenge to widely held beliefs about cultural and political fragmentation in the United States today. The Fractious Nation? may well change the debate on issues ranging from multiculturalism and race relations to governance and public philosophy."--William A. Galston, author of Liberal Purposes: Goods, Virtues, and Diversity on the Liberal State "The virtue of this stunning collection of essays is the shrewd moderation of its authors, who explain that while we in the United States have serious social conflict, we also have the intellectual resources to address it. Most of all, The Fractious Nation, whose contributors embrace very different political approaches, reminds us that we must struggle to understand what constitutes nationhood in this difficult century."--Stanley N. Katz, professor, Woodrow Wilson School, and director of Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies, Princeton University "With an all-star team of contributors, this volume explores the many ways that fear of fragmentation plagues the American psyche today and provides the kind of understanding that allows us to overcome such fears. The breadth of talent assembled between the covers of this book is simply awesome."--Robert Suro, author of Strangers among Us: Latino Lives in a Changing America "This is an accessibly written and valuable collection by outstanding social scientists addressed to the broad question of whether the United States is experiencing or headed for a 'culture war.'"--R. Stephen Warner, author of New Wine in Old Wineskins: Evangelicals and Liberals in a Small-Town Church "This is an exceptionally well-focused collection of up-to-date, analytical reflections on several of the most pressing issues in American political culture today, written by some of our most discerning scholars and journalists."--David A. Hollinger, author of Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism

American Thought and Culture in the 21st Century

Author : Martin Halliwell
Publisher : Edinburgh University Press
ISBN 13 : 0748631321
Total Pages : 336 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (486 download)

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Book Synopsis American Thought and Culture in the 21st Century by : Martin Halliwell

Download or read book American Thought and Culture in the 21st Century written by Martin Halliwell and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2008-10-07 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Will the twenty-first century be the next American Century? Will American power and ideas dominate the globe in the coming years? Or is the prestige of the United States likely to crumble beneath the pressure of new international challenges? This ground-breaking book explores the changing patterns of American thought and culture at the dawn of the new millennium, when the world's richest nation has never been more powerful or more controversial. It brings together some of the most eminent North American and European thinkers to investigate the crucial issues and challenges facing the United States during the early years of our new century.From the subterranean political shifts beneath the electoral landscape to the latest biomedical advances, from the literary response to 9/11 to the rise of reality television, this book explores the political, social and cultural contours of contemporary American life - but it also places the United States within a global narrative of commerce, cultural exchange, i

The Slumbering Masses

Author : Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer
Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
ISBN 13 : 0816674744
Total Pages : 307 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (166 download)

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Book Synopsis The Slumbering Masses by : Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer

Download or read book The Slumbering Masses written by Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Analyzes and critiques how sleep and sleep disorders are understood and treated.

The Promise of American Life

Author : Herbert David Croly
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 488 pages
Book Rating : 4.X/5 (4 download)

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Book Synopsis The Promise of American Life by : Herbert David Croly

Download or read book The Promise of American Life written by Herbert David Croly and published by . This book was released on 1914 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Contemporary American Politics and Society

Author : Robert Singh
Publisher : SAGE
ISBN 13 : 1849206597
Total Pages : 297 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (492 download)

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Book Synopsis Contemporary American Politics and Society by : Robert Singh

Download or read book Contemporary American Politics and Society written by Robert Singh and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2002-11-14 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contemporary American Politics provides a comprehensive introduction to the most salient topics of debate in contemporary American politics and society today. The text introduces and explains the history, nature and underlying issues to the key areas of political division and conflict in America′s on-going `culture war′, including, abortion, gun control, capital punishment, pornography, gay rights and drugs. All students will gain a deeper and critical understanding of how this powerful set of concerns continue to underpin and shape the fundamental divisions informing American domestic politics at local, state and federal levels. Completely up-to-date and featuring chapter summaries, exhibit boxes, discussion questions, weblinks and further reading guides, Contemporary American Politics offers a lively and accessible text that will be essential reading for all students of American politics and society. Robert Singh is a lecturer in politics at Birkbeck College, London. Contemporary American Politics: Issues and Controversies is a companion text to the foundation textbook American Government and Politics: A Concise Introduction also published by SAGE. `In this volume the political scientist Robert Singh has selected and analyzed closely a set of topical issues and controversies in American politics - including gun control, capital punishment and cultural wars - as a way better to understand the United States. The result is an excellent text which conveys both the diversity of contemporary America and the complexity of issues often treated superficially in media accounts. I recommend the book highly′ - Desmond King, Mellon Professor of American Government, University of Oxford `Rob Singh is a master of style, and his book is the perfect companion for those who are interested in America′s "culture wars" but hitherto have been put off by the execrable jargon they have spawned′ - Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, Professor of American History, University of Edinburgh `For those who still believe that politics is normally, naturally, about economics, Rob Singh has gathered the evidence and dialed the wake-up call: seven major instances of an ongoing culture war meet a common analytic framework here in a lively and informative fashion′ - Byron E Shafer, University of Wisconsin `For the student this is the perfect complement to a textbook. American politics is not just about institutions and processes, but also about current political issues and debates. Robert Singh′s interesting book illuminates a range of social and cultural issues that divide Americans in the 21st century. All undergraduate courses on American politics should include it on reading lists for seminars, tutorials and classes′ - Alan Ware, Worcester College, Oxford

The Printed Book in Contemporary American Culture

Author : Heike Schaefer
Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 3030225453
Total Pages : 281 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (32 download)

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Book Synopsis The Printed Book in Contemporary American Culture by : Heike Schaefer

Download or read book The Printed Book in Contemporary American Culture written by Heike Schaefer and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2019-08-28 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This essay collection explores the cultural functions the printed book performs in the digital age. It examines how the use of and attitude toward the book form have changed in light of the digital transformation of American media culture. Situated at the crossroads of American studies, literary studies, book studies, and media studies, these essays show that a sustained focus on the medial and material formats of literary communication significantly expands our accustomed ways of doing cultural studies. Addressing the changing roles of authors, publishers, and readers while covering multiple bookish formats such as artists’ books, bestselling novels, experimental fiction, and zines, this interdisciplinary volume introduces readers to current transatlantic conversations on the history and future of the printed book.

Core Values in American Life

Author : Arthur G. Neal
Publisher : Transaction Publishers
ISBN 13 : 1412854423
Total Pages : 173 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (128 download)

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Book Synopsis Core Values in American Life by : Arthur G. Neal

Download or read book Core Values in American Life written by Arthur G. Neal and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on 2014-05-23 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What values do Americans hold dear? What happens when real-world situations cause those values to conflict? To better understand the intellectual map of how American society works, Arthur G. Neal and Helen Youngelson-Neal analyze values prominent in American word and deed. These values appear in our nation’s formal documents—rights and privileges prominently emphasized in the US Constitution and inscribed on the Statue of Liberty. They have shaped the historical destiny and, indeed, include those values most extensively propagated by the general population. Using these criteria, the authors identify individualism, the pursuit of happiness, freedom, consumerism, materialism, equality of opportunity, technology, mastery of the environment, quality of marriage, and national unity as the core American values. Core values provide the raw materials for the construction of contemporary society as a moral community, wherever that community is located. Such values are clusters of ideas that are central to self-identities; they generate a sense of collective belonging and membership. As such, core values define the existing social order and advance a set of ideas for depicting a desirable future. The analysis presented here helps us understand contemporary conflicts inherent in the American value system and the problems confronted by Americans as they try to live within the limitations and contradictions of value systems.

Anti-Intellectualism in American Life

Author : Richard Hofstadter
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 0307809676
Total Pages : 465 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (78 download)

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Book Synopsis Anti-Intellectualism in American Life by : Richard Hofstadter

Download or read book Anti-Intellectualism in American Life written by Richard Hofstadter and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2012-01-04 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 1964 Pulitzer Prize in Nonfiction Anti-Intellectualism in American Life is a book which throws light on many features of the American character. Its concern is not merely to portray the scorners of intellect in American life, but to say something about what the intellectual is, and can be, as a force in a democratic society. "As Mr. Hofstadter unfolds the fascinating story, it is no crude battle of eggheads and fatheads. It is a rich, complex, shifting picture of the life of the mind in a society dominated by the ideal of practical success." —Robert Peel in the Christian Science Monitor

Made in America

Author : Claude S. Fischer
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226251454
Total Pages : 523 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (262 download)

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Book Synopsis Made in America by : Claude S. Fischer

Download or read book Made in America written by Claude S. Fischer and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-05-15 with total page 523 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our nation began with the simple phrase, “We the People.” But who were and are “We”? Who were we in 1776, in 1865, or 1968, and is there any continuity in character between the we of those years and the nearly 300 million people living in the radically different America of today? With Made in America, Claude S. Fischer draws on decades of historical, psychological, and social research to answer that question by tracking the evolution of American character and culture over three centuries. He explodes myths—such as that contemporary Americans are more mobile and less religious than their ancestors, or that they are more focused on money and consumption—and reveals instead how greater security and wealth have only reinforced the independence, egalitarianism, and commitment to community that characterized our people from the earliest years. Skillfully drawing on personal stories of representative Americans, Fischer shows that affluence and social progress have allowed more people to participate fully in cultural and political life, thus broadening the category of “American” —yet at the same time what it means to be an American has retained surprising continuity with much earlier notions of American character. Firmly in the vein of such classics as The Lonely Crowd and Habits of the Heart—yet challenging many of their conclusions—Made in America takes readers beyond the simplicity of headlines and the actions of elites to show us the lives, aspirations, and emotions of ordinary Americans, from the settling of the colonies to the settling of the suburbs.

In the Wine Press

Author : Joshua Hren
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781621385332
Total Pages : 158 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (853 download)

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Book Synopsis In the Wine Press by : Joshua Hren

Download or read book In the Wine Press written by Joshua Hren and published by . This book was released on 2020-04-30 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The thirteen stories in this collection track strained lives, characters compressed by the crises of our times, from clerical misdeeds to school shootings. Never settling for easy exits, these intense fictions portray a world distrustful of its former guides but populated still by souls searching and finding.

The American War in Contemporary Vietnam

Author : Christina Schwenkel
Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 0253003318
Total Pages : 281 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (53 download)

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Book Synopsis The American War in Contemporary Vietnam by : Christina Schwenkel

Download or read book The American War in Contemporary Vietnam written by Christina Schwenkel and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-13 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christina Schwenkel's absorbing study explores how the "American War" is remembered and commemorated in Vietnam today -- in official and unofficial histories and in everyday life. Schwenkel analyzes visual representations found in monuments and martyrs' cemeteries, museums, photography and art exhibits, battlefield tours, and related sites of "trauma tourism." In these transnational spaces, American and Vietnamese memories of the war intersect in ways profoundly shaped by global economic liberalization and the return of American citizens as tourists, pilgrims, and philanthropists.

Understanding Louise Erdrich

Author : Seema Kurup
Publisher : Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN 13 : 1611176247
Total Pages : 192 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (111 download)

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Book Synopsis Understanding Louise Erdrich by : Seema Kurup

Download or read book Understanding Louise Erdrich written by Seema Kurup and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 2015-12-30 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Understanding Louise Erdrich, Seema Kurup offers a comprehensive analysis of this critically acclaimed Native American novelist whose work stands as a testament to the struggle of the Ojibwe people to survive colonization and contemporary reservation life. Kurup traces in Erdrich's oeuvre the theme of colonization, both historical and cultural, and its lasting effects, starting with the various novels of the Love Medicine epic, the National Book Award-winning The Round House, The Birchbark House series of children's literature, the memoirs The Blue Jays Dance and Books and Island in Ojibwe Country, and selected poetry. Kurup elucidates Erdrich's historical context, thematic concerns, and literary strategies through close readings, offering an introductory approach to Erdrich and revealing several entry points for further investigation. Kurup asserts that Erdrich's writing has emerged not out of a postcolonial identity but from the ongoing condition of colonization faced by Native Americans in the United States, which is manifested in the very real and contemporary struggle for sovereignty and basic civil rights. Exploring the ways in which Erdrich moves effortlessly from trickster humor to searing pathos and from the personal to the political, Kurup takes up the complex issues of cultural identity, assimilation, and community in Erdrich's writing. Kurup shows that Erdrich offers readers poignant and complex portraits of Native American lives in vibrant, three-dimensional, and poetic prose while simultaneously bearing witness to the abiding strength and grace of the Ojibwe people and their presence and participation in the history of the United States.

Your Crib, My Qibla

Author : Saddiq M. Dzukogi
Publisher : U of Nebraska Press
ISBN 13 : 1496225783
Total Pages : 101 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (962 download)

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Book Synopsis Your Crib, My Qibla by : Saddiq M. Dzukogi

Download or read book Your Crib, My Qibla written by Saddiq M. Dzukogi and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2021-03 with total page 101 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry Winner Julie Suk Award Winner Nigeria Prize for Literature shortlist Your Crib, My Qibla interrogates loss, the death of a child, and a father's pursuit of language able to articulate grief. In these poems, the language of memory functions as a space of mourning, connecting the dead with the world of the living. Culminating in an imagined dialogue between the father and his deceased daughter in the intricate space of the family, Your Crib, My Qibla explores grief, the fleeting nature of healing, and the constant obsession of memory as a language to reach the dead.

Road-book America

Author : Rowland A. Sherrill
Publisher : University of Illinois Press
ISBN 13 : 9780252025464
Total Pages : 404 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (254 download)

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Book Synopsis Road-book America by : Rowland A. Sherrill

Download or read book Road-book America written by Rowland A. Sherrill and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Road-Book America, Rowland A. Sherrill explores how the old picaresque tradition, embodied in such novels as Henry Fielding's Tom Jones and Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders, opens to include a number of recent American texts, both fiction and nonfiction. Sketching the socially marginal, ingenuous, travelling characters common to old and new versions of the genre, Road-Book America is a wide-ranging and sophisticated discussion of the "new American picaresque", exemplified by William Least HeatMoon's Blue Highways, John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley, James Leo Herlihy's Midnight Cowboy, Bill Moyers's Listening to America, E. L. Doctorow's Billy Bathgate, and hundreds of other narratives published in the past four decades. Open, resilient, adaptable, and perennially hopeful, the protagonist of the new American picaresque follows a therapeutic path for the alienated modern self and lays the groundwork for spiritual renewal.