TAMST 210: American Cultures and Perspectives: Class, Ethnicity, Gender, and Race: Scholarly Books and Anthologies
Books in the UW Tacoma Library
This is a small variety of books that might apply to what you are researching. To search for your own more focused topic, use the library search bar and add your keywords, such as "american studies" AND "meritocracy." You can narrow your search by location, date of publication, topics, and other limiters.
Books about America and Issues of Race
A Companion to African-American Studies by
A Companion to African-American Studies is an exciting andcomprehensive re-appraisal of the history and future of AfricanAmerican studies. Contains original essays by expert contributors in the field ofAfrican-American Studies Creates a groundbreaking re-appraisal of the history and futureof the field Includes a series of reflections from those who establishedAfrican American Studies as a bona fide academic discipline Captures the dynamic interaction of African American Studieswith other fields of inquiry.
Call Number: E184.7 .C65 2006ISBN: 9780631235163Publication Date: 2006
American Multicultural Studies by
This anthology provides an interdisciplinary study of multicultural studies in the United States. It centers on how race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, and cultural diversity are examined and discussed in the academic field of American multicultural studies. It seeks to bring together foundational works of scholars writing within the framework of a fairly new and exciting area of study that develops across disciplines, rather than representing a discipline in itself. Each section of the book will tackle one specific theme. The themes are race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, and cultural diversity. The intention of the essays within each theme is to provide students, professors, and public readers with analytical tools that are necessary to conceptualize these issues within the broader framework of American multicultural studies. This anthology will consist of five main sections. Each section covers the broad topics of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and cultural diversity as themes in American multicultural studies. Each section will comprise of 5-7 essays written by scholars from various research backgrounds including women studies, political science, sociology, literature, cultural studies, communication studies, anthropology, and philosophy.
Call Number: E184.A1 A636644 2013ISBN: 9781412998024Publication Date: 2012
Asian American Studies by
This anthology is the perfect introduction to Asian American studies, as it both defines the field across disciplines and illuminates the centrality of the experience of Americans of South Asian, East Asian, Southeast Asian, and Filipino ancestry to the study of American culture, history, politics, and society. The reader is organized into two parts: "The Documented Past" and "Social Issues and Literature." Within these broad divisions, the subjects covered include Chinatown stories, nativist reactions, exclusionism, citizenship, immigration, community growth, Asia American ethnicities, racial discourse and the Civil Rights movement, transnationalism, gender, refugees, anti-Asian American violence, legal battles, class polarization, and many more. Among the contributors are such noted scholars as Gary Okihiro, Michael Omi, Yen Le Espiritu, Lisa Lowe, and Ronald Takaki; writers such as Sui Sin Far, Bienvenido Santos, Sigrid Nunez, and R. Zamora Linmark, as well as younger, emerging scholars in the field.
Call Number: E184.A75 A8417 2000ISBN: 0813527252Publication Date: 2000
Latinos : Remaking America by
Latinos are the fastest growing ethnic group in the United States and will comprise a quarter of the country's population by mid-century. The process of Latinization, the result of globalization and the biggest migration flow in the history of the Americas, is indeed reshaping the character of the U.S. This landmark book brings together some of the leading scholars now studying the social, cultural, racial, economic, and political changes wrought by the experiences, travails, and fortunes of the Latino population. It is the most definitive and comprehensive snapshot available of Latinos in the United States today. How are Latinos and Latinas changing the face of the Americas? What is new and different about this current wave of migration? In this pathbreaking book social scientists, humanities scholars, and policy experts examine what every citizen and every student needs to know about Latinos in the U.S., covering issues from historical continuities and changes to immigration, race, labor, health, language, education, and politics. Recognizing the diversity and challenges facing Latinos in the U.S., this book addresses what it means to define the community as such and how to move forward on a variety of political and cultural fronts. All of the contributions to Latinos are original pieces written especially for this volume.
Call Number: E184.S75 L37 2002ISBN: 0520234863Publication Date: 2002
Whitewashing Race by
White Americans, abetted by neo-conservative writers of all hues, generally believe that racial discrimination is a thing of the past and that any racial inequalities that undeniably persist--in wages, family income, access to housing or health care--can be attributed to African Americans' cultural and individual failures. If the experience of most black Americans says otherwise, an explanation has been sorely lacking--or obscured by the passions the issue provokes. At long last offering a cool, clear, and informed perspective on the subject, this book brings together a team of highly respected sociologists, political scientists, economists, criminologists, and legal scholars to scrutinize the logic and evidence behind the widely held belief in a color-blind society--and to provide an alternative explanation for continued racial inequality in the United States. While not denying the economic advances of black Americans since the 1960s, Whitewashing Race draws on new and compelling research to demonstrate the persistence of racism and the effects of organized racial advantage across many institutions in American society--including the labor market, the welfare state, the criminal justice system, and schools and universities. Looking beyond the stalled debate over current antidiscrimination policies, the authors also put forth a fresh vision for achieving genuine racial equality of opportunity in a post-affirmative action world.
Call Number: E185.615 .W465 2003ISBN: 0520237064Publication Date: 2003
From Daniel Boone to Captain America by
From nineteenth-century American art and literature to comic books of the twentieth century and afterwards, Chad A. Barbour examines in From Daniel Boone to Captain America the transmission of the ideals and myths of the frontier and playing Indian in American culture. In the nineteenth century, American art and literature developed images of the Indian and the frontiersman that exemplified ideals of heroism, bravery, and manhood, as well as embodying fears of betrayal, loss of civilization, and weakness. In the twentieth century, comic books, among other popular forms of media, would inherit these images. The Western genre of comic books participated fully in the common conventions, replicating and perpetuating the myths and ideals long associated with the frontier in the United States. A fascination with Native Americans also emerged in comic books devoted to depicting the Indian past of the US In such stories, the Indian remains a figure of the past, romanticized as a lost segment of US history, ignoring contemporary and actual Native peoples. Playing Indian occupies a definite subgenre of Western comics, especially during the postwar period when a host of comics featuring a "white Indian" as the hero were being published. Playing Indian migrates into superhero comics, a phenomenon that heightens and amplifies the notions of heroism, bravery, and manhood already attached to the white Indian trope. Instances of superheroes like Batman and Superman playing Indian correspond with depictions found in the strictly Western comics. The superhero as Indian returned in the twenty-first century via Captain America, attesting to the continuing power of this ideal and image.
Call Number: PN6725 .B33 2016ISBN: 9781496806840Publication Date: 2016
Books on American Economics
King and the Other America by
"An elegant and timely history of how black intellectuals have long made a case for the intersections between class and race."--The Nation "A meticulously researched look into the development of King's thought. . . . Laurent's important new book highlights the depth of the wisdom and organizing skill he brought to the movement for economic justice."--The Progressive Shortly before his assassination, Martin Luther King Jr. called for a radical redistribution of economic and political power to transform the whole of society. In 1967, he envisioned and designed the Poor People's Campaign, an interracial effort that was carried out after his death. This campaign brought together impoverished Americans of all races to demand better wages, better jobs, better homes, and better education. King and the Other America explores this overlooked and obscured episode of the late civil rights movement, deepening our understanding of King's commitment to social justice and also of the long-term trajectory of the civil rights movement. Digging into earlier radical arguments about economic inequality across America, which King drew on throughout his entire political and religious life, Sylvie Laurent argues that the Poor People's Campaign was the logical culmination of King's influences and ideas, which have had lasting impact on young activists and the public. Fifty years later, growing inequality and grinding poverty in the United States have spurred new efforts to rejuvenate the campaign. This book draws the connections between King's perceptive thoughts on substantive justice and the ongoing quest for equality for all.
Call Number: HN90.S6 L35 2018ISBN: 9780520288560Publication Date: 2019
America's New Downtowns by
What makes a good downtown, and why? Are today's downtowns, with their waterfront parks, festival markets, sports arenas, and cultural centers, more vibrant and lively than the "central business districts" of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? Was there ever a "golden age" of downtowns? In this book, noted urban scholar Larry Ford casts a critical and practiced eye on sixteen contemporary urban centers to offer an expert's view of the best--and worst--of downtown America. Ford begins with a brief history of U.S. urban development. He then explains his criteria for evaluating downtowns before proceeding with an on-the-street examination of the featured sixteen cities. Each is rated based on use of physical site, particularly for housing (unlike suburbs, Ford notes, most downtowns are located in challenging physical locales, such as harbors, rivers, hills, or peninsulas), street morphology, civic space, functional aspects (office space, retail stores, and convention centers), and the support districts in the fringe areas surrounding the downtown core. Ford concludes with a suggested model of downtown structure based upon the case studies and with a look at the possible effects of increasing globalization on the downtowns of the late twenty-first century. This book will appeal to those interested in urban studies, landscape studies, American studies, architecture, historic preservation and planning, and urban geography. Featured cities: Atlanta, Baltimore, Charlotte, Cleveland, Columbus, Denver, Indianapolis, Minneapolis, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Portland, Providence, San Antonio, San Diego, Seattle, and St. Louis
Call Number: HT167 .F675 2003ISBN: 0801871638Publication Date: 2003
Inequality in America by
Why does inequality have such a hold on American society and public policy? And what can we, as citizens, do about it? Inequality in America takes an in-depth look at individual-level and systemic inequality, focusing in particular on race, poverty, and gender, across a wide range of issues from housing and education to crime, employment and health. Caliendo shows how individual-level prejudice and systemic inequality are interrelated, how individual beliefs and attitudes can affect public opinion and lawmakers’ policy solutions and how systemic barriers to advancement as a result of these policies then contribute to individual perceptions, creating a cycle of disadvantage and advantage that can be difficult to break, though not impossible. Feature boxes throughout the book offer insight into key public figures who have worked to combat inequality and suggestions for individual action. Concise and written in an accessible manner, Inequality in America paves the way for students to think critically about the effects of the attitudes, behaviors and structures of inequality.
Call Number: HN90.S6 C35 2015ISBN: 9780813344980Publication Date: 2012
Facing up to the American Dream by
The ideology of the American dream--the faith that an individual can attain success and virtue through strenuous effort--is the very soul of the American nation. According to Jennifer Hochschild, we have failed to face up to what that dream requires of our society, and yet we possess no other central belief that can save the United States from chaos. In this compassionate but frightening book, Hochschild attributes our national distress to the ways in which whites and African Americans have come to view their own and each other's opportunities. By examining the hopes and fears of whites and especially of blacks of various social classes, Hochschild demonstrates that America's only unifying vision may soon vanish in the face of racial conflict and discontent. Hochschild combines survey data and vivid anecdote to clarify several paradoxes. Since the 1960s white Americans have seen African Americans as having better and better chances to achieve the dream. At the same time middle-class blacks, by now one-third of the African American population, have become increasingly frustrated personally and anxious about the progress of their race. Most poor blacks, however, cling with astonishing strength to the notion that they and their families can succeed--despite their terrible, perhaps worsening, living conditions. Meanwhile, a tiny number of the estranged poor, who have completely given up on the American dream or any other faith, threaten the social fabric of the black community and the very lives of their fellow blacks. Hochschild probes these patterns and gives them historical depth by comparing the experience of today's African Americans to that of white ethnic immigrants at the turn of the century. She concludes by claiming that America's only alternative to the social disaster of intensified racial conflict lies in the inclusiveness, optimism, discipline, and high-mindedness of the American dream at its best.
Call Number: E185.615 .H55 1995ISBN: 0691029571Publication Date: 1995
Our Kids : The American Dream in Crisis by
A groundbreaking examination of the growing inequality gap from the bestselling author of Bowling Alone: why fewer Americans today have the opportunity for upward mobility. It's the American dream: get a good education, work hard, buy a house, and achieve prosperity and success. This is the America we believe in-a nation of opportunity, constrained only by ability and effort. But during the last twenty-five years we have seen a disturbing "opportunity gap" emerge. Americans have always believed in equality of opportunity, the idea that all kids, regardless of their family background, should have a decent chance to improve their lot in life. Now, this central tenet of the American dream seems no longer true or at the least, much less true than it was. Robert Putnam-about whom The Economist said, "his scholarship is wide-ranging, his intelligence luminous, his tone modest, his prose unpretentious and frequently funny"-offers a personal but also authoritative look at this new American crisis. Putnam begins with his high school class of 1959 in Port Clinton, Ohio. By and large the vast majority of those students-"our kids"-went on to lives better than those of their parents. But their children and grandchildren have had harder lives amid diminishing prospects. Putnam tells the tale of lessening opportunity through poignant life stories of rich and poor kids from cities and suburbs across the country, drawing on a formidable body of research done especially for this book. Our Kids is a rare combination of individual testimony and rigorous evidence. Putnam provides a disturbing account of the American dream that should initiate a deep examination of the future of our country.
Call Number: HN90.S65 P88 2015ISBN: 9781476769899Publication Date: 2015
Seeking the American Dream : a sociological inquiry by
Historically, the United States has been viewed by generations of immigrants as the land of opportunity, where through hard work one can prosper and make a better life. The American Dream is perhaps the United States' most common export. For many Americans, though, questions remain about whether the American Dream can be achieved in the twenty-first century. Americans, faced with global competition and increased social complexity, wonder whether their dwindling natural resources, polarized national and local politics, and often unregulated capitalism can support the American Dream today. This book examines the ideas and experiences that have formed the American Dream, assesses its meaning for Americans, and evaluates its prospects for the future.
Call Number: HN59.2 .H384 2016ISBN: 9781137540249Publication Date: 2016-04-12
Books on American Meta Narratives
The Myths That Made America by
This essential introduction to American Studies examines the core foundational myths which the nation is based upon and which still determine discussions of US-American identities today. These myths include the myth of discovery, the Pocahontas myth, the myth of the Promised Land, the myth of the founding fathers, the frontier myth, the myth of the American Dream, and the myth of the melting pot. The chapters provide an extended analysis of each of these myths, using examples from popular culture, literature, memorial culture, school books, and every-day life. Including visual material as well as study questions, this book will be of interest to any student of American Studies and will foster an understanding of America as an imagined community by analyzing the foundational role of myths in the process of nation building.
Call Number: E169.12 .P385 2014ISBN: 9783837614855Publication Date: 2014
The Frontier Experience and the American Dream by
The frontier has evoked a set of images, attitudes, and assumptions that have shaped a peculiarly American literary heritage. This volume reconsiders the whole of American literary tradition by focusing on the imaginative impact of the frontier mythology. Exploring the aesthetic implications of frontier experience, these essays also illustrate the vigorous debate among scholars regarding canon formation. Long dominated by the works of white males from the northeastern region of the country, the American literary canon continues to expand to include works by minorities, women, and authors from various parts of the nation. The eighteen scholars represented here focus on the importance of frontier mythology to many American writers, both traditional and new, thus providing meaningful context for further altering the American canon to include their works. The authors emphasize frontier mythology's central role in the literary dialogue as they discuss such topics as contemporary fiction, regional literature, nature writing, drama, film, and science fiction and focus on writers ranging from Mary Rowlandson and Emily Dickinson to N. Scott Momaday and Rolando Hinojosa. Taken as a whole, this collection asserts that frontier experience has historically created a symbolic vocabulary that is intrinsically dialectical, having elicited ironic responses from the different perspectives of women and minority writers, for example. Scholars and students of American literature will also see from these essays that frontier mythology in American literary tradition shows remarkable continuity, and that an understanding of the dialectical and dialogic nature of this inherited literary tradition will expand the canon and enrich the interpretations of the American dream.
Call Number: PS169.F7 F76 1989ISBN: 0890963983Publication Date: 1989
Seduced, Abandoned, and Reborn by
Seduced, Abandoned, and Reborn exposes the fears expressed by elders about young people in the early American republic. Those authors, educators, and moral reformers who aspired to guide youth into respectable stations perceived new dangers in the decades following independence. Battling a range of seducers in the burgeoning marketplace of early America, from corrupt peers to licentious prostitutes, from pornographic authors to firebrand preachers, these self-proclaimed moral guardians crafted advice and institutions for youth, hoping to guide them safely away from harm and toward success. By penning didactic novels and advice books while building reform institutions and colleges, they sought to lead youth into dutiful behavior. But, thrust into the market themselves, these moral guides were forced to compromise their messages to find a popular audience. Nonetheless, their calls for order did have lasting impact. In urban centers in the Northeast, middle-class Americans became increasingly committed to their notions of chastity, piety, and hard work. Focusing on popular publications and large urban centers, Hessinger draws a portrait of deeply troubled reformers, men and women, who worried incessantly about the vulnerability of youth to the perils of prostitution, promiscuity, misbehavior, and revolt. Benefiting from new insights in cultural history, Seduced, Abandoned, and Reborn looks at the way the categories of gender, age, and class took rhetorical shape in the early republic. In trying to steer young adults away from danger, these advisors created values that came to define the emerging middle class of urban America.
Call Number: HQ796 .H465 2005ISBN: 0812238796Publication Date: 2005
The Meritocracy Myth by
A third edition of this textbook is now available. The Meritocracy Myth challenges the widely held American belief in meritocracy that people get out of the system what they put into it based on individual merit. Fully revised and updated throughout, the second edition includes compelling new case studies, such as the impact of social and cultural capital in the cases of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, and new material on current topics such as the impact of the financial and credit crisis, intergenerational mobility, and the impact of racism and sexism. The Meritocracy Myth examines talent, attitude, work ethic, and character as elements of merit and evaluates the effect of non-merit factors such as social status, race, heritage, and wealth on meritocracy. A compelling book on an often-overlooked topic, the first edition was highly regarded and proved a useful examination of this classic American ideal."
Call Number: HN90.S65 M35 2009ISBN: 9780742561670Publication Date: 2009
Social Class by
Class differences permeate the neighborhoods, classrooms, and workplaces where we lead our daily lives. But little is known about how class really works, and its importance is often downplayed or denied. In this important new volume, leading sociologists systematically examine how social class operates in the United States today. Social Class argues against the view that we are becoming a classless society. The authors show instead the decisive ways social class matters--from how long people live, to how they raise their children, to how they vote. The distinguished contributors to Social Class examine how class works in a variety of domains including politics, health, education, gender, and the family. Michael Hout shows that class membership remains an integral part of identity in the U.S.--in two large national surveys, over 97 percent of Americans, when prompted, identify themselves with a particular class. Dalton Conley identifies an intangible but crucial source of class difference that he calls the "opportunity horizon"--children form aspirations based on what they have seen is possible. The best predictor of earning a college degree isn't race, income, or even parental occupation--it is, rather, the level of education that one's parents achieved. Annette Lareau and Elliot Weininger find that parental involvement in the college application process, which significantly contributes to student success, is overwhelmingly a middle-class phenomenon. David Grusky and Kim Weeden introduce a new model for measuring inequality that allows researchers to assess not just the extent of inequality, but also whether it is taking on a more polarized, class-based form. John Goldthorpe and Michelle Jackson examine the academic careers of students in three social classes and find that poorly performing students from high-status families do much better in many instances than talented students from less-advantaged families. Erik Olin Wright critically assesses the emphasis on individual life chances in many studies of class and calls for a more structural conception of class. In an epilogue, journalists Ray Suarez, Janny Scott, and Roger Hodge reflect on the media's failure to report hardening class lines in the United States, even when images on the nightly news--such as those involving health, crime, or immigration--are profoundly shaped by issues of class. Until now, class scholarship has been highly specialized, with researchers working on only one part of a larger puzzle. Social Class gathers the most current research in one volume, and persuasively illustrates that class remains a powerful force in American society.
Call Number: HN90.S6 S545 2008ISBN: 9780871545060Publication Date: 2008
