American Studies
College Life through the Eyes of Students
Presents the perspectives of contemporary college students on their lives and educations.
Main Street to Mainframes
Tells the story of Poughkeepsie’s transformation from small city to urban region.
White Savage
Brings a strikingly original perspective to Johnson’s life, and suggests new ways of thinking about Johnson’s part in creating a nation he did not live to see.
New York Sings
New York's fascinating history as presented in song.
Three Documentary Filmmakers
Uses new critical approaches to demonstrate deep affinities in these vastly different filmmakers’ philosophies on film, fantasy, and reality.
It Happened in Brooklyn
Over one hundred voices recall, chronicle, and celebrate the Brooklyn of legend.
It Happened in the Catskills
More than one hundred voices recall the "Borscht Belt" in its heyday.
Digital Diaspora
Traces the rise of black participation in cyberspace.
Latino Voices in New England
Compelling stories and striking photographs illustrate the challenges and highlights of Latino/a life in Portland, Maine.
The Reason for Crows
The story of a 17th century Mohawk woman's interaction with her land, the Jesuits, and the religion they brought.
Mohawk Frontier, Second Edition
A history of Dutch Schenectady.
Locating Race
Pinpoints the limits of many current globalization theories in challenging racial oppression, and argues instead for local and situated strategies for resisting racism and imperialism.
Decadent Culture in the United States
The paradoxes of the American decadent movement in the 1890s and 1920s.
Cary Nelson and the Struggle for the University
Scholars engage the ideas and legacy of Cary Nelson in conversations about the corporate university, teaching, poetry, and activism.
Ecology and Popular Film
Ecocritical takes on popular film.
The Oprah Affect
Essays explore the broad cultural impact of Oprah’s Book Club.
Feminist Mothering
Essays explore a wide range of contemporary feminist mothering practices.
Taking South Park Seriously
Collection of scholarly essays on the wildly popular Comedy Central show.
Ain't I a Feminist?
Interview-based study of contemporary African American feminist men.
The Metrosexual
Explores the cultural significance of the metrosexual in sports.
What's Wrong with Obamamania?
Juxtaposes the meteoric rise of Barack Obama with far-reaching—and disturbing—shifts in black leadership in post–Civil Rights America.
The Dynamic Individualism of William James
Explores James’s concept of the individual in terms of physiology, psychology, philosophy, and religion.
Unmaking Race, Remaking Soul
Explores the theme of aesthetic agency and its potential for social and political progress.
The Promise of Poststructuralist Sociology
A postmodern critique of sociology’s presuppositions.
Sin, Sex, and Democracy
Explores the Christian Right’s use of tailored rhetorics to advance multiple and varied antigay political projects.
Give and Go
A pickup basketball player looks at the pickup game as a distinctive culture using both personal experience and cultural studies theory.
Conspiracy Panics
Examines contemporary anxiety over the phenomenon of conspiracy theories.
American Exceptionalism in the Age of Globalization
Connects the American exceptionalist ethos to the violence in Vietnam and the Middle East.
Edible Ideologies
Contributors explore the relationship between food and the production of ideology.
The American Protest Essay and National Belonging
Explores the role of the literary protest essay in addressing social divisions in the United States.
Why Community Matters
Provides a fresh perspective on the undeniable relationship between education reform and democratic revitalization.
This Is a Picture and Not the World
Uses satirical parodies of screenplays and political blogs to reveal the cracks in our post-9/11 American psyche.
The Things Themselves
Essays on phenomenological encounters with the world.
Rules of the Game
Critically examines the quiz show genre in American culture from the 1930s to the present.
Hospital Transports
Details the reactions of men and women serving aboard a hospital transport ship during the American Civil War.
Buried Caesars, and Other Secrets of Italian American Writing
Examines the forces that have shaped Italian American writing, from the novels of John Fante to the musings of Tony Soprano.
Oil, Globalization, and the War for the Arctic Refuge
Examines the battle to develop the oil resources of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Humanities, Culture, and Interdisciplinarity
Investigates the changing relationship of humanities, culture, and interdisciplinarity and its impact on humanities disciplines, American culture studies, and undergraduate education.
The New Abolitionists
Writings by twentieth-century imprisoned authors examining confinement, enslavement, and political organizing in prison.
Sites of Autopsy in Contemporary Culture
Explores the role and function of the autopsy in Western culture, from Rembrandt's The Anatomy Lecture to The X-Files and CSI.
Murder on Trial
A historical romp through the fascinating subject of murder jurisprudence in the United States from the colonial period to the present, showing how changing social mores have influenced the application of murder law.
Rimer Cardillo
The first comprehensive survey of the work of the Uruguayan printmaker and graphic artist Rimer Cardillo, presented in both English and Spanish.
Redreaming America
Pursues an inquiry into the cultural and linguistic dissonances that Spanish creates in the United States.
Socialization to Civil Society
Using a life history approach, looks at what influences citizens to participate in the voluntary associations that comprise and promote civil society.
Reading Oprah
An analysis of how Oprah's Book Club has changed America's reading habits.
Punk Productions
A history and social psychology of punk music.
The Politics of Multiracialism
A provocative analysis of current thought and discourse on multiracialism.
Film Voices
Interviews with prominent filmmakers, actors, and others on the art, craft, and business of moviemaking.
The Bear River Massacre and the Making of History
Explores how a pivotal event in U.S. history—the killing of nearly 300 Shoshoni men, women, and children in 1863—has been contested, forgotten, and remembered.
Buying Time and Getting By
An exploration of the voluntary simplicity movement including comments from simple livers and a look at class, race, and gender in this movement.
Bad
Examines the many forms of cinematic "badness" over the past one hundred years, from Nosferatu to The Talented Mr. Ripley.
Extreme Virtue
Explores leadership and civic virtue in American culture.
Imagining Italians
Explores changes in American attitudes toward Italy and Italians during a crucial period of U. S. immigration history.
Rediscovering America's Sacred Ground
Sees a way out of the contentious debates over the role of religion in American public life by looking back to the ideas of John Locke and the nation's Founders.
Transforming the Dream
Explores the underlying assumptions of environmental studies and the need for a new paradigm for understanding our world.
Memory's Orbit
Memoir meets cultural criticism in this examination of American popular culture at the end of the century.
In Gotham's Shadow
Examines the effects of globalization on three New York communities—Utica, Cooperstown, and Hartwick.
Circle of Goods
Studies how women in a reservation economy have creatively responded to federal policy.
American Diversity
Demographers explore population diversity in the United States.
The Solidarity of Kin
Using the example of the Eastern Algonkians, this book argues that Native Americans did not convert to Christianity, but rather made sense of Christianity in their own traditional ways and for their own social purposes.
Postfeminist News
Examines the representation of women in the media.
The Godfather and American Culture
A comprehensive look at a classic work of popular fiction and its hold on the American imagination.
Spinster Tales and Womanly Possibilities
Looks at changing conceptions of spinsterhood in modern American culture.
Intentional Community
Uses classical anthropological theory to understand “intentional communities” in the United States.
Michael Jordan, Inc.
Uses Michael Jordan as a vehicle for viewing the broader social, economic, political, and technological concerns that frame contemporary culture.
From Paesani to White Ethnics
Examines the transformations of Italian American ethnic identity in twentieth-century Philadelphia.
Emerson, Thoreau, and the Role of the Cultural Critic
Reinterprets important works of the social criticism of Emerson and Thoreau as being based in defense of community.
The Music of the Inferno
An unusual, deft, often piercing meditation on storytelling, ethnicity, and the Italian/American experience.
The Next Generation
Focusing on the more than one million Jewish children and adolescents living in the United States, this book questions the future of the Jewish community's next generation.
Jewish Life and American Culture
Illustrates how some Jews have created a new, hybrid form of Judaism, merging American values and behaviors with those from historical Jewish traditions.
Sustaining the Forest, the People, and the Spirit
Documents and describes the Menominee Indians' tribal practice of sustainable environmental development.
Che Bella Figura!
A colorful ethnography of an Italian ladies' club, this book explores the historical and linguistic importance of the women's language and behavior.
Home Front Soldier
Presents a multi-layered social history of a soldier and his Italian American family during World War II.
Representing Popular Sovereignty
Explores the contradiction between the Constitution's importance as a political document with its weakness as a symbol in American popular culture.
Drifting on a Read
For almost a century, writers such as Ralph Ellison, Michael Ondaatje, and Ishmael Reed have expressed an affinity for jazz, hearing the music as a model for writing. Jarrett examines their work and the work of others who have brought jazz into language, pushing "interpretation" into the realm of "invention."
Thomas Merton's American Prophecy
Presents Thomas Merton as the quintessential American outsider who defines himself in opposition to the world and then discovers a way back into dialogue with that world and compassion for it.
Too Cheap to Meter
Uses concepts from social theory to explore the history and future of nuclear power in the U. S. and to explore the nature of technological change in the U. S. economy.
Weaving Ourselves into the Land
Examines how both negative and positive stereotypes of the "Indian" have influenced the study of Native American religions.
Affirmative Action's Testament of Hope
Focuses on affirmative action and its impact on colleges and universities since its inception in 1965. Suggests different perspectives on and approaches to affirmative action and offers and presents various voices on the impact and philosophical implications of affirmative action.
American Work Values
Examines broad shifts in American work values from their Calvinist origins to present controversies involving work, welfare, and affirmative action.
To Live Heroically
Analyzes American Indian education in the last century and compares the tribal, mission, and Bureau of Indian Affairs schools.
Georg Simmel and the American Prospect
This first book-length examination of the American reception of German philosopher and sociologist Georg Simmel explores the practical and strategic uses of Simmel's ideas.
Spectacular Vernaculars
Viewing hip-hop as the postmodern successor to African American culture's Jazz modernism, this book examines hip-hop music's role in the history of the African-American experience.
Transferring to America
This book uses recent psychoanalytic theory to analyze the work of three contemporary scholars--Harold Bloom, Stanley Cavell, and Sacvan Bercovitch--while viewing their work as expressing Jewish immigrant desires for integration into American culture.
Formulating American Indian Policy in New York State, 1970-1986
This is the first descriptive analysis of how American Indian policies are made both at the statewide and at agency levels. Pertinent to all states, the study describes New York's historic policies and ...
The Remaking of Pittsburgh
What forces transformed a community in which industrial workers and other citizens exercised a real measure of power over their lives into a metropolis whose inhabitants were utterly dependent on Big ...
Extending the Rafters
To the Iroquois, "extending the rafters" meant adding onto the longhouse, both in the literal sense of making room for new families and in the figurative sense of adding adopted individuals or tribes ...