Keywords for American Cultural Studies

Front Cover
Bruce Burgett, Glenn Hendler
NYU Press, Oct 1, 2007 - Literary Criticism - 288 pages

Explore the Keywords Collaborative interactive website at keywords.nyupress.org

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a “keyword” is “a word that is of great importance or significance.” On the web, “keywords“ organize vast quantities of complex information. Keywords for American Cultural Studies offers these features and more to its readers, providing indispensable meditations on terms and concepts used in cultural studies, American studies, and beyond.

Collaborative in design and execution, Keywords for American Cultural Studies collects sixty-four new essays from interdisciplinary scholars, each on a single term such as “America,” “body,” “ethnicity,” and “religion.” Alongside “community,” “immigration,” “queer,” and many others, these words are the nodal points in many of today’s most dynamic and vexed discussions of political and social life, both inside and outside of the academy.

Here are essays by scholars working in literary studies and political economy, cultural anthropology and ethnic studies, African American history and performance studies, gender studies and political theory.

Some entries are explicitly argumentative, others are more descriptive. Throughout, readers will find clear, challenging, critically engaged thinking and writing. Keywords for American Cultural Studies provides an accessible A-to-Z survey of prevailing academic buzzwords, and a flexible tool for carving out new areas of inquiry. It is equally useful for college students who are trying to understand what their teachers are talking about, for general readers who want to know what’s new in scholarly research, and for professors who just want to keep up.

Contributors:

Vermonja R. Alston, Lauren Berlant, Mary Pat Brady, Laura Briggs, Bruce Burgett, Christopher Castiglia, Russ Castronovo, Eva Cherniavsky, Krista Comer, Micaela di Leonardo, Brent Hayes Edwards, Robert Fanuzzi, Rod Ferguson, Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Elizabeth Freeman, Kevin Gaines, Rosemary Marangoly George, Kirsten Silva Gruesz, Sandra M. Gustafson, Matthew Pratt Guterl, Judith Halberstam, Glenn Hendler, Grace Kyungwon Hong, June Howard, Janet R. Jakobsen, Susan Jeffords, Walter Johnson, Miranda Joseph, Moon-Ho Jung, Carla Kaplan, David Kazanjian, Kanta Kochhar-Lindgren, Eric Lott, Lisa Lowe, Eithne Luibhéid, Susan Manning, Curtis Marez, Meredith L. McGill, Timothy Mitchell, Fred Moten, Christopher Newfield, Donald E. Pease, Pamela Perry, Carla L. Peterson, Vijay Prashad, Chandan Reddy, Bruce Robbins, David F. Ruccio, Susan M. Ryan, David S. Shields, Caroline Chung Simpson, Nikhil Pal Singh, Siobhan B. Somerville, Amy Dru Stanley, Shelley Streeby, John Kuo Wei Tchen, Paul Thomas, Priscilla Wald, Michael Warner, Robert Warrior, Alys Eve Weinbaum, Henry Yu, George Yúdice, and Sandra A. Zagarell.

From inside the book

Contents

Keywords An Introduction
1
1 Abolition
7
2 Aesthetics
10
3 African
12
4 America
16
5 Asian
22
6 Body
26
7 Border
29
34 Indian
132
35 Interiority
135
36 Internment
137
37 Liberalism
139
38 Literature
145
39 Market
149
40 Marriage
152
41 Mestizoa
156

8 Capitalism
32
9 Citizenship
37
10 City
42
11 Civilization
44
12 Class
49
13 Colonial
52
14 Community
57
15 Contract
60
16 Coolie
64
17 Corporation
66
18 Culture
71
19 Democracy
76
20 Dialect
80
21 Diaspora
81
22 Disability
85
23 Domestic
88
24 Economy
92
25 Empire
95
26 Environment
101
27 Ethnicity
103
28 Exceptionalism
108
29 Family
112
30 Gender
116
31 Globalization
120
32 Identity
123
33 Immigration
127
42 Modern
160
43 Nation
164
44 Naturalization
170
45 Orientalism
174
46 Performance
177
47 Property
180
48 Public
183
49 Queer
187
50 Race
191
51 Reform
196
52 Region
199
53 Religion
201
54 Science
205
55 Secularism
209
56 Sentiment
213
57 Sex
217
58 Slavery
221
59 Society
225
60 South
230
61 State
233
62 War
236
63 West
238
64 White
242
Works Cited
247
About the Contributors
283
Copyright

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About the author (2007)

Bruce Burgett is Dean and Professor in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington, Bothell, graduate faculty in the Department of English at the University of Washington, Seattle, and co-director of the UW graduate Certificate in Public Scholarship. He is the author of Sentimental Bodies: Sex, Gender, and Citizenship in the Early Republic.

Glenn Hendler is Associate Professor and Chair in the English Department at Fordham University, where he also teaches in the American Studies Program. He is the author of Public Sentiments: Structures of Feeling in Nineteenth-Century American Literature.

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