Rethinking home : a case for writing local history / Joseph A. Amato.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Amato, Joseph Anthony.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Land settlement--Minnesota--Historiography.

Land settlement.

Local history--Philosophy.

Local history.

Minnesota--Civilization--Historiography.

Minnesota.

Minnesota--History, Local--Philosophy.

Marshall (Minn.)--Historiography.

Marshall (Minn.).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (263 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Berkeley : University of California Press, c2002.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Joseph A. Amato proposes a bold and innovative approach to writing local history in this imaginative, wide-ranging, and deeply engaging exploration of the meaning of place and home. Arguing that people of every place and time deserve a history, Amato draws on his background as a European cultural historian and a prolific writer of local history to explore such topics as the history of cleanliness, sound, anger, madness, the clandestine, and the environment in southwestern Minnesota. While dedicated to the unique experiences of a place, his lively work demonstrates that contemporary local history provides a vital link for understanding the relation between immediate experience and the metamorphosis of the world at large. In an era of encompassing forces and global sensibilities, Rethinking Home advocates the power of local history to revivify the individual, the concrete, and the particular. This singular book offers fresh perspectives, themes, and approaches for energizing local history at a time when the very notion of place is in jeopardy. Amato explains how local historians shape their work around objects we can touch and institutions we have directly experienced. For them, theory always gives way to facts. His vivid portraits of individual people, places, situations, and cases (which include murders, crop scams, and taking custody of the law) are joined to local illustrations of the use of environmental and ecological history. This book also puts local history in the service of contemporary history with the examination of recent demographic, social, and cultural transformations. Critical concluding chapters on politics and literature--especially Sinclair Lewis's Main Street and Longfellow's Hiawatha--show how metaphor and myth invent, distort, and hold captive local towns, peoples, and places.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Maps

Foreword

Introduction: The Concept and the Practitioners of Local History

1. A Place Called Home

2. Grasses, Waters, and Muskrats: A Region's Compasses

3. The Rule of Market and the Law of the Land

4. Writing History through the Senses: Sounds

5. Anger: Mapping the Emotional Landscape

6. The Clandestine

7. Madness

8. Madame Bovary and a Lilac Shirt: Literature and Local History

9. The Red Rock: Inventing Peoples and Towns

10. Business First and Always

Conclusion: The Plight of the Local Historian

Notes

Acknowledgments and Sources

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 193-219) and index.

Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.

ISBN:

9786612762611

9781597348652

1597348651

9780520936331

0520936337

9781282762619

1282762613

OCLC:

475928843