The Public Mind and the Politics of Postmillennial U.S.-American Writing

The Public Mind and the Politics of Postmillennial U.S.-American Writing PDF Author: Jolene Mathieson
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110771357
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
The Anglia Book Series (ANGB) offers a selection of high quality work on all areas and aspects of English philology. It publishes book-length studies and essay collections on English language and linguistics, on English and American literature and culture from the Middle Ages to the present, on the new English literatures, as well as on general and comparative literary studies, including aspects of cultural and literary theory.

The Public Mind and the Politics of Postmillennial U.S.-American Writing

The Public Mind and the Politics of Postmillennial U.S.-American Writing PDF Author: Jolene Mathieson
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110771357
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 296

Get Book

Book Description
The Anglia Book Series (ANGB) offers a selection of high quality work on all areas and aspects of English philology. It publishes book-length studies and essay collections on English language and linguistics, on English and American literature and culture from the Middle Ages to the present, on the new English literatures, as well as on general and comparative literary studies, including aspects of cultural and literary theory.

Imagining a Great Republic

Imagining a Great Republic PDF Author: Thomas E. Cronin
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538105721
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 469

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Book Description
In the first comprehensive reading of dozens of American literary and social culture classics, Tom Cronin, one of America’s most astute students of the American political tradition, tells the story of the American political experiment through the eyes of forty major novelists, from Harriet Beecher Stowe to Hunter S. Thompson. They have been moral and civic consciousness-raisers as we have navigated the zigs and zags, the successes and setbacks, and the slow awkward evolution of the American political experiment. Constitutional democracy, equal justice for all, the American Dream, and American Exceptionalism are all part of our country’s narrative. But, as Imagining a Great Republic explains, there has never been just a single American narrative—we have competing stories, just as we have competing American Dreams and competing ways of imagining a more perfect political union. Recognizing and understanding these competing values is a key part of being American. Cronin’s book explains how this is possible and why we should all be proud to be American.

The State of the American Mind

The State of the American Mind PDF Author: Mark Bauerlein
Publisher: Templeton Foundation Press
ISBN: 159947459X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
In 1987, Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind was published; a wildly popular book that drew attention to the shift in American culture away from the tenants that made America—and Americans—unique. Bloom focused on a breakdown in the American curriculum, but many sensed that the issue affected more than education. The very essence of what it meant to be an American was disappearing. That was over twenty years ago. Since then, the United States has experienced unprecedented wealth, more youth enrolling in higher education than ever before, and technology advancements far beyond what many in the 1980s dreamed possible. And yet, the state of the American mind seems to have deteriorated further. Benjamin Franklin’s “self-made man” has become a man dependent on the state. Independence has turned into self-absorption. Liberty has been curtailed in the defense of multiculturalism. In order to fully grasp the underpinnings of this shift away from the self-reliant, well-informed American, editors Mark Bauerlein and Adam Bellow have brought together a group of cultural and educational experts to discuss the root causes of the decline of the American mind. The writers of these fifteen original essays include E. D. Hirsch, Nicholas Eberstadt, and Dennis Prager, as well as Daniel Dreisbach, Gerald Graff, Richard Arum, Robert Whitaker, David T. Z. Mindich, Maggie Jackson, Jean Twenge, Jonathan Kay, Ilya Somin, Steve Wasserman, Greg Lukianoff, and R. R. Reno. Their essays are compiled into three main categories: · States of Mind: Indicators of Intellectual and Cognitive Decline These essays broach specific mental deficiencies among the population, including lagging cultural IQ, low Biblical literacy, poor writing skills, and over-medication. · Personal and Cognitive Habits/Interests These essays turn to specific mental behaviors and interests, including avoidance of the news, short attention spans, narcissism, and conspiracy obsessions. · National Consequences These essays examine broader trends affecting populations and institutions, including rates of entitlement claims, voting habits, and a low-performing higher education system. The State of the American Mind is both an assessment of our current state as well as a warning, foretelling what we may yet become. For anyone interested in the intellectual fate of America, The State of the American Mind offers an accessible and critical look at life in America and how our collective mind is faring.

Public Access

Public Access PDF Author: Michael Berube
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 0860916782
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
In the years of the Reagan–Bush era, the controversy over ‘political correctness’ erupted on American campuses, spreading to the mainstream media as right-wing pundits like Dinesh D’Souza and Roger Kimball prosecuted their publicity campaign against progressive academics. Michael Bérubé’s brilliant new book explains how and why the political correctness furore emerged, and how the right’s apparent stranglehold on popular opinion about the academy can be loosened. Traversing the terrain of contemporary cultural criticism, Bérubé examines the state of cultural studies, the significance of postmodernism, the continuing debate over multicultural curricula, and the recent revisions of literary history in American studies. Also included is Bérubé’s witty and self-deprecating autobiographical reflection on why interpretive theory has emerged as an indispensable part of education in the humanities over the past decade Public Access insists that academics must exercise more responsibility towards the publics who underwrite but often misunderstand their work and its significance. Taken seriously as a potential audience, Bérubé argues, such publics can be weaned from their present inclination to believe the distortions and half-truths peddled by the right’s ideologues. The goal of such ‘public access’ criticism is not just a better environment for teachers and scholars, but a world in which education itself achieves its proper place in a society committed to equality of opportunity and true critical thinking.

Encyclopedia of Religion in American Politics

Encyclopedia of Religion in American Politics PDF Author: Jeffrey Schultz
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313371768
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 424

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Book Description
Today, such issues as abortion, capital punishment, sex education, racism, prayer in public schools, and family values keep religion and politics closely entwined in American public life. This encyclopedia is an A-to-Z listing of a broad range of topics related to religious issues and politics, ranging from the religious freedom sought by the Pilgrims in the 1620s to the rise of the religious right in the 1980s.

Gather at the River

Gather at the River PDF Author: Hal Crowther
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807131008
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 185

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Book Description
To read Hal Crowther is to find yourself agreeing with views on topics you never knew you cared so much about. In Gather at the River, Crowther extends the wide-angle vision of Southern life presented in his highly acclaimed collection Cathedrals of Kudzu. He cuts to the heart of recent political, religious, and cultural issues but pauses to appreciate the sweet things that the South has to offer, like music, baseball, great writers, and strong women. Some of these essays invite debate. Crowther gives a balanced perspective on the tragedy of the Branch Davidians at Waco, shedding light on a different world of religiosity and revealing urban media prejudices for what they are. He describes the unique heroism of a fallen Marine in the Iraq war, a war fought by one class and promoted by another. And his solution to racial conflict -- interracial procreation -- will jump-start readers' sensibilities. In other chapters, Crowther discusses the grim portrayal of the South in early film and the triumphs of Southern music. His literary essays include appreciations of William Faulkner, Thomas Wolfe, Elizabeth Spencer, and Wendell Berry, and a biting lampoon of exhibitionist memoirs. Among the Southerners Crowther profiles with pride are the art historian and Museum of Modern Art curator Kirk Varnedoe; the great, cursed baseball player Shoeless Joe Jackson; the curmudgeonly realist H. L. Mencken; and the singer Dolly Parton, whose candid artifice inspires the author's litmus test for Southern authenticity.

The Failed Individual

The Failed Individual PDF Author: Katharina Motyl
Publisher: Campus Verlag
ISBN: 359350782X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
The freedom of the individual to aim high is a deeply rooted part of the American ethos but we rarely acknowledge its flip side: failure. If people are responsible for their individual successes, is the same true of their failures? The Failed Individual brings together a variety of disciplinary approaches to explore how people fail in the United States and the West at large, whether economically, politically, socially, culturally, or physically. How do we understand individual failure, especially in the context of the zero-sum game of international capitalism? And what new spaces of resistance, or even pleasure, might failure open up for people and society?

Entangled Memories

Entangled Memories PDF Author: Marius Henderson
Publisher: Universitatsverlag Winter
ISBN: 9783825366780
Category : Collective memory
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
In a global age, Holocaust commemoration has undergone a process of cosmopolitanization which manifests itself on many levels such as in the emergence of a supranational Holocaust memory and in a transnationally inflected canon of Holocaust art. The objective of the collection is to explore the entangled migrating memories of the Holocaust in North America, Western and Eastern Europe, and Israel by investigating two thematic aspects: First, the specifics of national commemorative cultures and their historical variability and, second, the interplay between national, local and global perspectives in the medial construction of the historical event. Entangled Memories opens up a range of perspectives by re-conceptualizing the practices, conditions, and transformations of Holocaust remembrance within the framework of a dynamic global cultural, intellectual, literary and political history.

Our Fears Made Manifest

Our Fears Made Manifest PDF Author: Ashley Jae Carranza
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476679312
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
The beginning of the 21st century was a time of unprecedented events in American society: Y2K, 9/11 and the wars that followed, partisan changes in government and the rapid advancements of the Internet and mass consumerism. In the two decades since, popular culture--particularly film--has manifested the underlying anxieties of the American psyche. This collection of new essays examines dozens of movies released 1998-2020 and how they drew upon and spoke to mass cultural fears. Contributors analyze examples across a range of genres--horror, teen rom-coms, military flicks, slow-burns, and animated children's films--covering topics including gender and sexuality, environmental politics, technophobia, xenophobia, and class and racial inequality.

Anointed with Oil

Anointed with Oil PDF Author: Darren Dochuk
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 1541673948
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 688

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Book Description
A groundbreaking new history of the United States, showing how Christian faith and the pursuit of petroleum fueled America's rise to global power and shaped today's political clashes Anointed with Oil places religion and oil at the center of American history. As prize-winning historian Darren Dochuk reveals, from the earliest discovery of oil in America during the Civil War, citizens saw oil as the nation's special blessing and its peculiar burden, the source of its prophetic mission in the world. Over the century that followed and down to the present day, the oil industry's leaders and its ordinary workers together fundamentally transformed American religion, business, and politics -- boosting America's ascent as the preeminent global power, giving shape to modern evangelical Christianity, fueling the rise of the Republican Right, and setting the terms for today's political and environmental debates. Ranging from the Civil War to the present, from West Texas to Saudi Arabia to the Alberta Tar Sands, and from oil-patch boomtowns to the White House, this is a sweeping, magisterial book that transforms how we understand our nation's history.