American Studies

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Reclaiming Time

Offers an interdisciplinary feminist framework for conceptualizing time and temporal justice as a form of reparation.

Transforming One's Self

A fresh and rigorous interpretation of William James's ethical theory, showing how experimenting with life's opportunities can transform one's self and life.

Casseroles, Can Openers, and Jell-O

An “all-you-can-eat” tour of American life in the postwar period, told through the foods we loved.

Blues on Stage

Tells the story of classic blues singers from Ma Rainey to Bessie Smith.

New York's Great Lost Ballparks

Tells the story of New York's playing grounds, teams, and ballparks of yesteryear.

The Hard Sell of Paradise

Traces the complex and contradictory representations of Hawai’i in popular film and television programs from the 1930s to the 1970s.

Nietzsche in Hollywood

Argues that Nietzsche’s idea of the Übermensch was a central concern of filmmakers in the 1920s and 1930s.

No Jurisdiction

A deeply personal study of post-9/11 film that exposes how genre can frame the shifting meanings of the War on Terror and its impact on American law and culture.

Whiteness at the End of the World

Examines the ways in which post-apocalyptic films express white racial anxiety.

Drops of Inclusivity

A critical view of race relations on the island of Puerto Rico from 1898 to 1965.

Through the Periscope

Offers a wider approach to Italian American culture, one that stresses both its material, urban components and the creativity of its formal literary codes.

Media-Ready Feminism and Everyday Sexism

Unique empirically grounded analysis of how audiences negotiate sexism and feminism across media, from popular television shows to dating apps.

Enduring Critical Poses

A celebration of Anishinaabe intellectual tradition.

Varieties of American Sufism

Participant-observation-based studies that explore a range of Sufi movements operating across the contemporary American religious landscape.

Funny How?

Uses comedy skits, from Monty Python to Key and Peele, to probe how humor works.

Rumble and Crash

Analyzes six films as allegories of capitalism’s precarious state in the early twenty-first century.

Multicultural Poetics

Argues that multiculturalism and hybridity are key components of the nation’s poetry and its culture.

College Bound

Argues that first- and second-generation Jewish American writers had an ambivalent relationship with educational success.

Passionate Detachments

Investigates the cultural value of film violence.

Over a Barrel

How a small family company in the Finger Lakes became one of the most important wine producers in the United States, only to be taken down by corporate greed and mismanagement.

Historicizing Post-Discourses

Examines how postfeminism and postracialism intersect to perpetuate systemic injustice in the United States.

Trendy Fascism

Explores how white supremacist groups use popular music and culture to teach hate and promote violence.

From Italy to the North End

Documents the arc of the Italian American immigrant experience on both sides of the Atlantic.

Figures of Memory

Explores how the USHMM and other museums and memorials both displace and disturb the memories that they are trying to commemorate.

Invented Lives, Imagined Communities

How Hollywood biopics both showcase and modify various notions of what it means to be an American.

The Disappearing L

Investigates the rise and fall of US American lesbian cultural institutions since the 1970s.

Race, Ethnicity, and Place in a Changing America, Third Edition

Uses both historical and contemporary case studies to examine how race and ethnicity affect the places we live, work, and visit. .

The Sitcom Reader, Second Edition

Updated version of an engaging overview of the television situation comedy.

Buddhism beyond Borders

Explores facets of North American Buddhism while taking into account the impact of globalization and increasing interconnectivity.

A Pedagogy of Witnessing

Explores the curating of “difficult knowledge” through the exhibition of lynching photographs in contemporary museums.

American Dolorologies

Offers a critical history of the role of pain, suffering, and compassion in democratic culture.

Twenty West

Traces the route, history, and geography of US 20, America’s longest road.

The Guitar and the New World

A transformative look at a popular instrument and a hidden chapter of American history.

Slouching towards Gaytheism

Argues that homophobia will not be eradicated in the United States until religion is ended.

Indigenous North American Drama

Traces the historical dimensions of Native North American drama using a critical perspective.

Key to the Northern Country

Offers nearly forty years of interdisciplinary scholarship on the Hudson River Valley’s role in the American Revolution.

From the Shahs to Los Angeles

A fascinating look at the lives, culture, and religious and ritual observance of three generations of Iranian Jewish women in the United States.

Potent Mana

Brilliant study of the effects of colonialism on the physical, mental, and spiritual health of Native Hawaiians, and their efforts to decolonize through healing and remembering.

Race, Ethnicity, and Place in a Changing America, Second Edition

A comprehensive assessment of how race and ethnicity affect the places we live, work, and visit.

Multicultural Geographies

Geographical perspectives on the changing patterns of race and ethnicity in the United States.

Disciplining Women

An interdisciplinary look Alpha Kappa Alpha (AKA), the first historically Black sorority.

Race, Ethnicity, and Place in a Changing America

A comprehensive assessment of how race and ethnicity affect the places we live, work, and visit.

The African Diaspora in the United States and Canada at the Dawn of the 21st Century

Offers important new perspectives on the African Diaspora in North America.

Interdisciplinarity and Social Justice

Considers the past, present, and future of interdisciplinary fields motivated by concerns for social justice.

Measured Meals

Provides an alternative history of nutrition in the U.S. that focuses on the power of scientific language.

The Other Loyalists

Fascinating stories of ordinary people in the Middle Colonies who remained loyal to the Crown.

Cuban-American Literature and Art

Explores how Cuban Americans negotiate bicultural identities through cultural production.

Caribbean Genesis

Philosophical exploration of Jamaica Kincaid’s entire literary oeuvre.

The Passionate Empiricist

Explores John Quincy Adams’s oratorical work in support of government-funded science.

By the Breath of Their Mouths

Examines the liberating power of speech and its influence on generations of Italian American writers.

Perpetual Adolescence

Explores the arrested development of American culture.

Womanist Forefathers

Traces a lineage of pro-feminist black men to two early radical proponents of female equality.

Religious Festive Practices in Boston's North End

A comprehensive cultural and historical portrait of Italian American identities in Boston’s North End.

The Gita within Walden

Looks at the connections between Thoreau’s Walden and the work that influenced it, the Bhagavad-Gita.

City of Rhetoric

Examines the relationship of civic discourse to built environments through a case study of the Cabrini Green urban revitalization project in Chicago.

Herman Melville and the American Calling

Argues that Herman Melville’s later work anticipates the resurgence of an American exceptionalist ethos underpinning the U. S.-led global “war on terror. ”

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.

Latino Voices in New England

Compelling stories and striking photographs illustrate the challenges and highlights of Latino/a life in Portland, Maine.

Decadent Culture in the United States

The paradoxes of the American decadent movement in the 1890s and 1920s.

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.

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.

New Morning

Essays and poems explore the contemporary relevance of Emerson’s work and thought.

The Metrosexual

Explores the cultural significance of the metrosexual in sports.

Unmaking Race, Remaking Soul

Explores the theme of aesthetic agency and its potential for social and political progress.

The Dynamic Individualism of William James

Explores James’s concept of the individual in terms of physiology, psychology, philosophy, and religion.

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.

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.

Dispatches from the Color Line

Explores contemporary news media coverage of multiracial people and identities.

Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance

Leading scholars explore how different forms of ignorance are produced and sustained, and the role they play in knowledge practices.

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.

The Sitcom Reader

Offers a variety of perspectives on the sitcom genre and its influence on American culture.

Rebel Without a Cause

Assesses the layered meanings and persistent global legacy of an American film classic.

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.

Redreaming America

Pursues an inquiry into the cultural and linguistic dissonances that Spanish creates in the United States.

Reading Oprah

An analysis of how Oprah's Book Club has changed America's reading habits.

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.

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.

Extreme Virtue

Explores leadership and civic virtue in American culture.

Leaving Little Italy

Provides an overview of the past, present, and future of Italian American culture.

Imagining Italians

Explores changes in American attitudes toward Italy and Italians during a crucial period of U. S. immigration history.

Scattering Point

Creative non-fiction by a Mennonite poet that blends the history of the Amish and Mennonites, family history, and his own life story to look at how he might live in harmony with the Mennonite ideal to 'live in the world but not of it.'

American Diversity

Demographers explore population diversity in the United States.

Postfeminist News

Examines the representation of women in the media.

Intentional Community

Uses classical anthropological theory to understand “intentional communities” in the United States.