National Imaginaries American Identities

Download or read book National Imaginaries, American Identities written by Larry J. Reynolds and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-09 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the American Revolution to the present, the United States has enjoyed a rich and persuasive visual culture. These images have constructed, sustained, and disseminated social values and identities, but this unwieldy, sometimes untidy form of cultural expression has received less systematic attention than other modes of depicting American life. Recently, scholars in the humanities have developed a new critical approach to reading images and the cultural work they perform. This practice, American cultural iconography, is generating sophisticated analyses of how images organize our public life. The contributions to this volume exhibit the extraordinary scope and interpretive power of this interdisciplinary study while illuminating the dark corners of the nation's psyche. Drawing on such varied texts and visual media as daguerreotypes, political cartoons, tourist posters, and religious artifacts, these essays explore how pictures and words combine to teach us who we are and who we are not. They examine mimesis in elegant portraits of black Freemasons, industrial-age representations of national parks, and postwar photographs of atomic destruction. They consider how visual culture has described and disclosed the politics of racialized sexuality, whether subconsciously affirming it in the shadows of film noir or deliberately contesting it through the interethnic incest of John Sayles's Lone Star. Students of literature, film, and history will find that these essays extend the frontier of American studies. The contributors are Maurice Wallace, Dennis Berthold, Alan Trachtenberg, Shirley Samuels, Jenny Franchot, Cecelia Tichi, Eric Lott, Bryan C. Taylor, and José E. Limón.

Download or read book Sound, Image, and National Imaginary in the Construction of Latin/o American Identities written by Héctor Fernández L'Hoeste and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2017-12-26 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sound, Image, and National Imaginary in the Construction of Latin/o American Identities addresses a gap in the many narratives discussing the cultural histories of Latin American nations, particularly in terms of the birth, configuration, and perpetuation of national identities. It argues that these processes were not as gradual or constrained as traditionally conceived. The actual circumstances dictating the adoption of particular technologies for the representation of national ideas shifted and varied according to many factors including local circumstances, political singularities, economic disparities, and highly individualized cultural transitions. This book proposes a model of chronology that is valid not only for nations that underwent strong processes of nationalism during the early or mid-twentieth century, but also for those that experienced highly idiosyncratic cultural, economic, and political development into the early twenty-first century.

Download or read book American Indians and the American Imaginary written by Pauline Turner Strong and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-11-17 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American Indians and the American Imaginary considers the power of representations of Native Americans in American public culture. The book's wide-ranging case studies move from colonial captivity narratives to modern film, from the camp fire to the sports arena, from legal and scholarly texts to tribally-controlled museums and cultural centres. The author's ethnographic approach to what she calls "representational practices" focus on the emergence, use, and transformation of representations in the course of social life. Central themes include identity and otherness, indigenous cultural politics, and cultural memory, property, performance, citizenship and transformation. American Indians and the American Imaginary will interest general readers as well as scholars and students in anthropology, history, literature, education, cultural studies, gender studies, American Studies, and Native American and Indigenous Studies. It is essential reading for those interested in the processes through which national, tribal, and indigenous identities have been imagined, contested, and refigured.

Download or read book Theatre and Nation written by Nadine Holdsworth and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2010-06-30 with total page 87 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How has theatre engaged with the nation-state and helped to formulate national identities? What impact have migration and globalisation had on the relationship between theatre and nation? Theatre & Nation explores how theatre institutions, playwrights, theatre-makers and performance artists engage with the nation, nationalism and national identity in their work. The book argues that theatrical representations of the nation are constantly in flux and that the way theatre engages with the nation changes according to different geographical, political, economic, social and cultural circumstances. Foreword by Nicholas Hytner.

Download or read book Freedom's Empire written by Laura Anne Doyle and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2008-01-11 with total page 596 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sweeping argument that from the mid-seventeenth century until the mid-twentieth, the English-language novel encoded ideas equating race with liberty.

Download or read book Deforming American Political Thought written by Michael J. Shapiro and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2006-10-20 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By affirming the relativity of the American historical imagination, political theorist Michael J. Shapiro offers a powerful polemic against ethnocentric interpretations of American culture and politics. Deforming American Political Thought analyzes issues that range from the nature of Thomas Jefferson's vision of an egalitarian nation to the persistence of racial inequality. Shapiro offers a multifaceted argument that transcends the myopic scope of traditional political discourse. Deforming American Political Thought illustrates the various ways in which history, architecture, film, music, literature, and art provide approaches to the comprehension of diverse facets of American political thought from the founding to the present. Using these seemingly disparate disciplines as a framework, Shapiro paints a picture of American political philosophy that is as distinctive as it enlightening. Shapiro explores the historically vital role of dissenting points of view in American politics and asserts its continuing importance in today's political landscape. Exploring such diverse works as slave narratives, contemporary films, genre fiction, and blues and jazz music, Shapiro reveals that there have always been dissenting voices casting doubt on the moral purpose and exceptionalism of the American mind. An unprecedented inquiry into American politics, Deforming American Political Thought will surely serve to reinvigorate discussions about the essence of American political thought.

Download or read book American Noir Film written by M. Keith Booker and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2024-11-19 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A deep dive into classic noir films and how filmmakers today are refreshing and updating the genre for new generations. Publishers Weekly praises the book, noting, "Cinephiles will be enthralled.” Booklist calls it a "riveting history of the film noir genre" in a starred review, saying, "This is one of the best, best written, most insightful analyses of film noir, and it demands to be read by fans of film history.” In American Film Noir, M. Keith Booker introduces readers to the cult-favorite genre of film noir and discusses the ongoing power and popularity of the genre’s key elements and themes in modern films, often considered neo-noir, well into the twenty-first century. Booker covers a wide range of noir favorites, from the early classics The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep, to late twentieth-century neo-noir such as Chinatown,and ultimately newer iterations of the genre as seen in such films as Inherent Vice, Promising Young Woman, and Uncut Gems. American Film Noir contains three separate parts, each exploring crucial categories of noir: the detective film, the lost man film, and femme fatale films. Within each section, Booker discusses the essential classic noir films that embody these themes as well as neo-noir films that invite viewers to analyze how the traditional components of noir have evolved with filmmaking. Finally, each section concludes with twenty-first-century films that evoke noir elements while refreshing the genre and enhancing viewers’ appreciation of the originals that inspired them—what Booker terms “revisionary noir.” Whether new to noir films, students of the genre, or long-time fans, readers will be sure to learn what makes this genre so special, discover why filmmakers keep coming back to it, and find a new favorite movie to add to their shelves.