American Visions: Readings in American Culture – serie

Critical studies attempting to define and dissect American humor have been published steadily for nearly one hundred years. However, until now, key documents from that history have never been brought together in a single volume for students and scholars. What's So Funny? Humor in American Culture, a collection of 15 essays, examines the meaning of humor and attempts to pinpoint its impact on American culture and society, while providing a historical overview of its progres-sion. Essays from Nancy Walker and Zita Dresner, Joseph Boskin and Joseph Dorinson, William Keough, Roy Blount, Jr., and others trace the development of American humor from the colonial period to the present, focusing on its relationship with ethnicity, gender, violence, and geography. An excellent reader for courses in American studies and American social and cultural history, What's So Funny? explores the traits of the American experience that have given rise to its humor.

Culture. Politics. Thick, impenetrable tension. Post-1945 America. Professor Robert Bresler broaches these interwoven themes in Us vs. Them: American Political and Cultural Conflict from WWII to Watergate, a reader in the American Visions series. Offering a broad overview of the interrelationship of culture and politics in the second half of the twentieth century, Us vs. Them is an exploration of the historical roots of America's current cultural wars. In the extended essay that constitutes the first half of the book, Professor Bresler offers a seamless introduction to the intermingling of American politics and culture, from the rise of an American consensus in the immediate postwar period to its inevitable decline in the 1960s and early 1970s. Part II consists of documents and readings that illustrate and buttress Bresler's argument including political manifestos and excerpts from the works of major essayists such as Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Mary McCarthy, and Norman Podhoretz. Lending a flavor of contemporary debate, this documentary material allows an integrative approach to politics and culture. Valuable for instructors who want to blend political ideas and cultural controversy into their American studies, American history, or political science courses, Us vs. Them gives students a key to understanding contemporary cultural politics. This important compilation is a guide to post-1945 America that places the evolution of political institutions-the presidency, Congress, the courts-within a broad cultural context.

So Glorious a Landscape: Nature and the Environment in American History and Culture surveys the vast and interdiscipli-nary subject of American natural and environmental studies. It examines the literary landscape that has inspired a local, regional, and national sense of place; explores the dynamic meaning and significance of nature across time, place, culture, and gender; and looks at the essence and history of environmental change. The first all-encompassing introductory survey of environ-mental history and cultural studies, this volume provides students and scholars with carefully chosen selections from major essayists, naturalists, preachers, geographers,novelists, scientists, and historians whose works have shaped the fields of literary ecology and environmental history. The essays trace the changing American landscape and ideas about nature from the seventeenth century to the present. By analyzing a range of material, So Glorious a Landscape provides a fresh perspective on what nature is in American life, what forces have shaped its profound place and changing definition, and what the work of environmental historians tells about the relationship of nature, culture, and power in America. So Glorious a Landscape is an excellent resource for courses in American studies, environmental history, and American culture.

A rich and rewarding subject of popular imagination, the United States is compellingly portrayed in this first anthology designed specifically for American studies courses. Offering an indispensable introduction to the long and varied history of generalizing about America, leading scholar Richard Horwitz has compiled the definitive anthology for American studies and American culture courses.Brimming with imaginative selections, the reader contains essays, plays, songs, comedy, legal documents, speeches, and poems by a rich array of authors-both domestic and international-whose writings echo recurring American themes. Collectively, the anthology identifies the ways in which scholars and popularizers have attempted to characterize America.Horwitz's insightful introduction summarizes key themes in the study of American culture as he traces the history of the field as well as current controversies. He avoids heavy jargon yet presents a nuanced view of the foundational works in American studies. Preceding the readings with concise, informative introductions, Horwitz seamlessly guides the reader through this distinctive collection.