Our America : nativism, modernism, and pluralism / Walter Benn Michaels.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Michaels, Walter Benn.

Series:

Post-contemporary interventions.

Post-contemporary interventions

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Nativism.

Modernism (Literature)--United States.

Modernism (Literature).

Cultural pluralism--United States.

Cultural pluralism.

United States--Civilization--1918-1945.

United States.

United States--Race relations.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (201 p.)

Place of Publication:

Durham : Duke University Press, [1995]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Michaels contends that the aesthetic movement of modernism and the social movement of nativism came together in the 1920s in their commitment to resolve the meaning of identity - linguistic, national, cultural, and racial. Just as the Johnson Immigration act of 1924, which excluded aliens, and the Indian Citizenship Act of the same year, which honored the truly native, reconceptualized national identity, so the major texts of American writers such as Cather, Faulkner, Hurston, and Williams reinvented identity as an object of pathos - something that can be lost or found, defended or betrayed. Our America is both a history and a critique of this invention, tracing its development from the white supremacism of the Progressive period through the cultural pluralism of the Twenties.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Land of the Kike Home of the Wop

Nation or Empire?

The Rising Tide

The Vanishing American

A Family Matter

The First American

Difference Not Inferiority

My Country, Right or Wrong

The Psychology of Imitation

Aboriginal America

Passing

Heritage

Our America

Notes

Index

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (pages [143]-182) and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780822320647

0822320649

9780822397434

0822397439

OCLC:

603818388