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.

Memoir meets cultural criticism in this examination of American popular culture at the end of the century.

Examines the effects of globalization on three New York communities—Utica, Cooperstown, and Hartwick.

Demographers explore population diversity in the United States.

Examines the representation of women in the media.

Looks at changing conceptions of spinsterhood in modern American culture.

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

Uses Michael Jordan as a vehicle for viewing the broader social, economic, political, and technological concerns that frame contemporary culture.

Reinterprets important works of the social criticism of Emerson and Thoreau as being based in defense of community.

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."

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.

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.

Examines how both negative and positive stereotypes of the "Indian" have influenced the study of Native American religions.

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.

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.