American Studies

Showing 201-287 of 287 titles.
Sort by:

College Life through the Eyes of Students

By Mary Grigsby
Subjects: Sociology

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.

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

By Brian Norman
Subjects: Literature

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

Edited by Laura L. Behling
Introduction by Laura L. Behling
Subjects: Sociology

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

Edited by Joy James
Introduction by Joy James
Subjects: History
Series: SUNY series, Philosophy and Race

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.

The Politics of Multiracialism

Edited by Heather M. Dalmage
Subjects: Sociology

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

By Mary Grigsby
Subjects: Sociology

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

Edited by Mildred Garcia
Subjects: American Studies

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 ...