Contributions in American Studies - Böcker

Sheds light on the origin and content of French anti-Americanism. In this work, French travel accounts of America have been scrutinized and periodicals in which the work of anti-American intellectuals was frequently serialized have been examined for the years 1917-1932.

Anderson provides an unprecedented probe into the inner workings of the quiz shows. He details their honest beginnings and explains how the practice of supplying answers grew out of a desire to keep popular contestants on the air as long as possible to boost ratings.

Miller examines the evolution of the system in response to climactic social and economic changes and questions how the American political system will adapt to the crisis-filled world of the late twentieth century.

Arthur Selwyn Miller's book, the first biography written about Judge J. Skelly Wright, deals with the important aspects of his career as a jurist and the impact of his decisions on the development of constitutional law. Each chapter deals with a specific area of public law: an explanation of the problem and an evaluation of Judge Wright's interpretation. Included are discussions of racial integration, freedom of speech, national security, crime control, and administrative law, as well as an analysis of judicial reasoning. Noting that Judge Wright's judicial career closely followed lines set forth by the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren, Miller concludes with an evaluation of Judge Wright's entire career.

David G. Pugh examines the evolution and shape of the cult of masculinity in nineteenth-century America. The author contends that the men of the time had been cut loose from their traditional cultural moorings and required a leader with strength, endurance, and bravado. They sought these mythical Jacksonian qualities as a defense against aimless drifting and the anonymity and real dangers of the frontier. Attitudes of nineteenth-century men toward women and heterosexuality are revealed as a web of sexual anxieties, repression, and sublimation that fostered the conviction that manliness could best be achieved through independence from women. Pugh then assesses the impact of the Jacksonian legacy on the latter half of the century, and demonstrates that our modern conceptions of manliness and masculinity are deeply rooted in nineteenth-century prototypes.

Although The Common Law, the seminal work by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., clearly represents the culmination of an intellectual journey, the development of Holmes' thought has not been easily deciphered. Frederic Rogers Kellogg traces Holmes' intellectual path, and asks: why did Holmes write The Common Law? what did he mean by his message that the law has evolved away from moral and toward external standards of liability? how did he arrive at this conclusion? The answers, Dr. Kellogg maintains, are to be found in a series of nine essays that originally appeared in The American Law Review. They show that Holmes was obsessed with elemental questions of pure legal theory and link him closely to the philosophic method of his friend Charles Sanders Peirce. Taken together with Holmes' later work, and viewed in light of American philosophy, these essays establish Holmes as the founder of a distinct approach to jurisprudence and reveal the implications of that approach for Holmes' later contributions to constitutional law.

This important work offers a new view of the Wobblies by examining not only their connection to American culture but their relationship to early twentieth-century American religion. Winters firmly believes that there is a strong religious character in the Wobblies. He focuses on figures such as Eugene Debs and Father Hagerty, depicting them as early pioneers of the unique beliefs the I.W.W. would adopt. He demonstrates and analyzes this religious motif in newspaper articles, speeches, autobiographies, songs, propaganda, and poems. Next, he examines the implications of the 1916 Wobbly-led strike on Minnesota's Mesabi Range for the immigrant Finnish population and its religious values. He concludes by assessing the place of the I.W.W. in American labor history and by scrutinizing the relationship between the Wobblies, progressives, and utopian novelists in the period prior to World War I.

In 1973 the Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision seemed to settle the abortion issue for all time. However, that victory did not win the war, and the impact of that milestone decision still echoes in on-going controversy, litigation, and political maneuvering. In this revised edition, Eva Rubin's discussion of Roe Vs. Wade's far-reaching abortion decision has been updated to bring the litigation and political-judicial controversy up through 1986. This revised account notes the changing character of the controversy and tries to assess the role of the courts in initiating social change and in controlling the impact of divisive political and social issues.

While the attempt to understand Americanness in terms of our beliefs and mentality is all too familiar, Blair's approach to the origins of American culture opens up previously unexplored perspectives. Focusing on the uniquely American tendency to organize cultural artifacts out of component parts rather than structured wholes, he looks at the emergence of this phenomenon as it has affected cultural domains as diverse as manufacturing, architecture, education, and jazz. The significance of modularity opens new perspectives on American culture as a whole.

This study takes an unusual approach to Nathaniel Hawthorne's work by exploring his knowledge and uses of the visual arts. The authors trace Hawthorne's encounters with art in his native New England, highlight his determined effort to acquire a taste for painting at the Manchester Exhibition in 1857, explore his responses to art as he traveled through France and Italy, and discuss his continuing interest in the visual arts once he returned to America. In contrast to those who maintain that Hawthorne had little feeling for and appreciation of the arts, the authors argue that Hawthorne repeatedly tried to acquire a taste for the arts and used them frequently in his letters, tales, and romances. The study is illuminated by photographs of many of the works of art that Hawthorne saw and wrote about.Accompanying the biographical exploration of Hawthorne's quest to learn more about the visual arts is a study of how techniques adopted from the visual arts inform the texture and content of Hawthorne's works. The authors examine each relevant tale and romance, paying particular attention to The Marble Faun, the work which, they assert, most fully exemplifies Hawthorne's knowledge and uses of the visual arts. A special section includes Hawthorne's responses to selected art works as reflected in his fiction and notebooks together with photographs of the works themselves. The volume concludes with a select bibliography and an index that provides ready access to specific areas of the text. Students of the American novel as well as specialists in American studies will find this a useful study of the ways in which the visual arts affect literary craftsmanship.

Mordecai Noah, whose writings span from the 1800s to the 1840s, is the first important Jewish writer to appear on the American scene. In his own time, he was ranked with Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper as among the finest writers of the day. Noah is primarily known today as the visionary who proposed a Jewish homeland, to be called Ararat in upstate New York. But Noah also had a political career which was equally colorful. As American Consul to Tunis, Noah's plan to rescue American sailors held by the Barbary states nearly led to his own imprisonment and death. As Sheriff of New York, Noah freed all debtors when Yellow Fever broke out in the prisons, thereby becoming liable for a small fortune.This volume is the first modern selection of Noah's writings and includes not only some of Noah's better known works such as She Would Be a Soldier (1819), one of the most admired plays of its day, and Discourse on the Restoration of the Jews (1845), Noah's early plea for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in the Middle East. This volume also includes the first complete modern edition of the Ararat proclamation and speech (1825), detailing Noah's utopian scheme for a Jewish homeland in New York; also printed for the first time since its original publication is Noah's recently discovered tract, Address…to Aid in the Erection of the Temple at Jerusalem (1849). Schuldiner and Kleinfeld provide discussions of Noah's life and context for his writings as well as a selected bibliography of key writings by and about Mordecai Noah.