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American intellectual history : a very short introduction / Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen.

Oxford Very Short Introductions Available online

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Format:
Book
Author/Creator:
Ratner-Rosenhagen, Jennifer, author.
Series:
Very short introductions.
Very Short Introduction
Language:
English
Subjects (All):
United States--Intellectual life.
United States.
Physical Description:
1 online resource (181 pages)
Place of Publication:
New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2021.
Summary:
Long before the United States was a nation, it was a set of ideas, projected onto the New World by European explorers with centuries of belief and thought in tow. From this foundation of expectation and experience, America and American thought grew in turn, enriched by the bounties of the Enlightenment, the philosophies of liberty and individuality, the tenets of religion, and the doctrines of republicanism and democracy. In engaging and accessible prose, Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen's introduction to American thought considers how notions about freedom and belonging, the market and morality - and even truth - have commanded generations of Americans and been the cause of fierce debate.
Contents:
Intro
Cover
American Intellectual History: A Very Short Introduction
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
List of illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1: World of empires: precontact-1740
Intellectual consequences of the Americas for Europe
Native and European intellectual exchanges
Puritan intellectual order in a disordered American world
Chapter 2: America and the transatlantic Enlightenment: 1741-1800
The transatlantic republic of letters
The enlightened eye and its blind spots
Revolutionary republicanism
Thomas Paine and the war of ideas
Chapter 3: From republican to Romantic: 1800-1850
Made in America, 1.0
The making of Transcendentalism
The split screen of the Southern mind
Woman thinking
Chapter 4: Contests of intellectual authority: 1850-90
The scientific reception of Darwin's Origin of Species
Of faith and finches
Varieties of evolutionary social thought
Chapter 5: Modernist revolts: 1890-1920
The World's Columbian Exposition: a festival of ideas
Pragmatism: a new theory of knowledge and a new idea of "truth"
From pragmatism to progressivism
The politics of cultural pluralism
Chapter 6: Roots and rootlessness: 1920-45
The shadows of modernization
From the lost generation to the founding of an African American renaissance
Intellectual underpinnings of the New Deal
Intellectual exiles arrive in America
Chapter 7: The opening of the American mind: 1945-70
The postwar expansion of intellectual opportunity
Postwar political commentary: left, right, and "vital center"
Quests for authenticity
Religion and the intellectuals
Chapter 8: Against universalism: 1962-90s
1962 or thereabouts
The American discovery of postmodernism
Identity politics and the culture wars.
Epilogue: Rethinking America in an age of globalization
or, the conversation continues
References
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Further reading
Index.
Notes:
Description based on print version record.
ISBN:
0-19-062244-X
0-19-062245-8
OCLC:
1264471760

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