English Ethnicity and Culture in North America

English Ethnicity and Culture in North America
Author: David T. Gleeson
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2017-10-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 1611177871

Ten scholars examine English identity, what makes it distinct, and its role in shaping American culture To many, English immigrants contributed nothing substantial to the varied palette of ethnicity in North America. While there is wide recognition of German American, French American, African American, and Native American cultures, discussion of English Americans as a distinct ethnic group is rare. Yet the historians writing in English Ethnicity and Culture in North America show that the English were clearly immigrants too in a strange land, adding their own hues to the American and Canadian characters. In this collection, editor David T. Gleeson and other contributors explore some of the continued links between England, its people, and its culture with North America in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These essays challenge the established view of the English having no "ethnicity," highlighting the vibrancy of the English and their culture in North America. The selections also challenge the prevailing notion of the English as "invisible immigrants." Recognizing the English as a distinct ethnic group, similar to the Irish, Scots, and Germans, also has implications for understanding American identity by providing a clearer picture of how Americans often have defined themselves in the context of Old World cultural traditions. Several contributors to English Ethnicity and Culture in North America track the English in North America from Episcopal pulpits to cricket fields and dance floors. For example Donald M. MacRaild and Tanja Bueltmann explore the role of St. George societies before and after the American Revolution in asserting a separate English identity across class boundaries. In addition Kathryn Lamontagne looks at English ethnicity in the working-class culture and labor union activities of workers in Fall River, Massachusetts. Ultimately all the work included here challenges the idea of a coherent, comfortable Anglo-cultural mainstream and indicates the fluid and adaptable nature of what it meant and means to be English in North America.

Colonial Complexions

Colonial Complexions
Author: Sharon Block
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2018-05
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0812250060

How did descriptions of individuals' appearance reinforce emergent categories of race? In Colonial Complexions, more than 4000 advertisements for runaway slaves and servants reveal how colonists transformed seemingly observable characteristics into racist reality.

A Peculiar Mixture

A Peculiar Mixture
Author: Jan Stievermann
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 294
Release: 2015-06-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 0271063009

Through innovative interdisciplinary methodologies and fresh avenues of inquiry, the nine essays collected in A Peculiar Mixture endeavor to transform how we understand the bewildering multiplicity and complexity that characterized the experience of German-speaking people in the middle colonies. They explore how the various cultural expressions of German speakers helped them bridge regional, religious, and denominational divides and eventually find a way to partake in America’s emerging national identity. Instead of thinking about early American culture and literature as evolving continuously as a singular entity, the contributions to this volume conceive of it as an ever-shifting and tangled “web of contact zones.” They present a society with a plurality of different native and colonial cultures interacting not only with one another but also with cultures and traditions from outside the colonies, in a “peculiar mixture” of Old World practices and New World influences. Aside from the editors, the contributors are Rosalind J. Beiler, Patrick M. Erben, Cynthia G. Falk, Marie Basile McDaniel, Philip Otterness, Liam Riordan, Matthias Schönhofer, and Marianne S. Wokeck.

American Nations

American Nations
Author: Colin Woodard
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 401
Release: 2012-09-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 0143122029

• A New Republic Best Book of the Year • The Globalist Top Books of the Year • Winner of the Maine Literary Award for Non-fiction Particularly relevant in understanding who voted for who during presidential elections, this is an endlessly fascinating look at American regionalism and the eleven “nations” that continue to shape North America According to award-winning journalist and historian Colin Woodard, North America is made up of eleven distinct nations, each with its own unique historical roots. In American Nations he takes readers on a journey through the history of our fractured continent, offering a revolutionary and revelatory take on American identity, and how the conflicts between them have shaped our past and continue to mold our future. From the Deep South to the Far West, to Yankeedom to El Norte, Woodard (author of American Character: A History of the Epic Struggle Between Individual Liberty and the Common Good) reveals how each region continues to uphold its distinguishing ideals and identities today, with results that can be seen in the composition of the U.S. Congress or on the county-by-county election maps of any hotly contested election in our history.

Albion's Seed

Albion's Seed
Author: David Hackett Fischer
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 981
Release: 1991-03-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 019974369X

This fascinating book is the first volume in a projected cultural history of the United States, from the earliest English settlements to our own time. It is a history of American folkways as they have changed through time, and it argues a thesis about the importance for the United States of having been British in its cultural origins. While most people in the United States today have no British ancestors, they have assimilated regional cultures which were created by British colonists, even while preserving ethnic identities at the same time. In this sense, nearly all Americans are "Albion's Seed," no matter what their ethnicity may be. The concluding section of this remarkable book explores the ways that regional cultures have continued to dominate national politics from 1789 to 1988, and still help to shape attitudes toward education, government, gender, and violence, on which differences between American regions are greater than between European nations.

Race in North America

Race in North America
Author: Audrey Smedley
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 391
Release: 2018-04-20
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0429974418

This sweeping work traces the idea of race for more than three centuries to show that 'race' is not a product of science but a cultural invention that has been used variously and opportunistically since the eighteenth century. Updated throughout, the fourth edition of this renowned text includes a compelling new chapter on the health impacts of the racial worldview, as well as a thoroughly rewritten chapter that explores the election of Barack Obama and its implications for the meaning of race in America and the future of our racial ideology.

The Long Process of Development

The Long Process of Development
Author: Jerry F. Hough
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 459
Release: 2015-04-30
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1107670411

This groundbreaking book examines the history of Spain, England, the United States, and Mexico to explain why development takes centuries.

A Different Mirror

A Different Mirror
Author: Ronald Takaki
Publisher: eBookIt.com
Total Pages: 787
Release: 2012-06-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 1456611062

Takaki traces the economic and political history of Indians, African Americans, Mexicans, Japanese, Chinese, Irish, and Jewish people in America, with considerable attention given to instances and consequences of racism. The narrative is laced with short quotations, cameos of personal experiences, and excerpts from folk music and literature. Well-known occurrences, such as the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, the Trail of Tears, the Harlem Renaissance, and the Japanese internment are included. Students may be surprised by some of the revelations, but will recognize a constant thread of rampant racism. The author concludes with a summary of today's changing economic climate and offers Rodney King's challenge to all of us to try to get along. Readers will find this overview to be an accessible, cogent jumping-off place for American history and political science plus a guide to the myriad other sources identified in the notes.

America's British Culture

America's British Culture
Author: Russell Kirk
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 183
Release: 2017-07-12
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1351532200

It is an incontestable fact of history that the United States, although a multiethnic nation, derives its language, mores, political purposes, and institutions from Great Britain. The two nations share a common history, religious heritage, pattern of law and politics, and a body of great literature. Yet, America cannot be wholly confident that this heritage will endure forever. Declining standards in education and the strident claims of multiculturalists threaten to sever the vital Anglo-American link that ensures cultural order and continuity. In "America's British Culture", now in paperback, Russell Kirk offers a brilliant summary account and spirited defense of the culture that the people of the United States have inherited from Great Britain. Kirk discerns four essential areas of influence. The language and literature of England carried with it a tradition of liberty and order as well as certain assumptions about the human condition and ethical conduct. American common and positive law, being derived from English law, gives fuller protection to the individual than does the legal system of any other country. The American form of representative government is patterned on the English parliamentary system. Finally, there is the body of mores - moral habits, beliefs, conventions, customs - that compose an ethical heritage. Elegantly written and deeply learned, "America's British Culture" is an insightful inquiry into history and a plea for cultural renewal and continuity. Adam De Vore in "The Michigan Review" said of the book: "A compact but stimulating tract...a contribution to an over-due cultural renewal and reinvigoration...Kirk evinces an increasingly uncommon reverence for historical accuracy, academic integrity and the understanding of one's cultural heritage," and Merrie Cave in "The Salisbury Review" said of the author: "Russell Kirk has been one of the most important influences in the revival of American conservatism since the fifties. [Kirk] belongs to an

Coming to America (Second Edition)

Coming to America (Second Edition)
Author: Roger Daniels
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 532
Release: 2002-10-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 006050577X

With a timely new chapter on immigration in the current age of globalization, a new Preface, and new appendixes with the most recent statistics, this revised edition is an engrossing study of immigration to the United States from the colonial era to the present.