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Two centuries ago, native New Yorker Washington Irving exploded
onto the literary scene of Europe with the publication of his
breakout collection of stories, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon,
Gent. Published in England and America in 1819 -1820, and
universally praised for its inventive characters and soul-searching
qualities, including the immortal tales "Rip Van Winkle" and "The
Legend of Sleepy Hollow," the volume enjoyed remarkable
transatlantic success, allowing Irving to become the first of his
nation to support himself as a professional author. In this
distinctive collection, historians and literary scholars come
together to reassess Irving's imaginative world and complex
cultural legacy. Alternately a satirist and a nostalgia merchant,
Irving was ever absorbed in reconstituting a lost past, which the
volume dubs "Rip Van Winkle's Republic." The assembled scholars
explore issues of Anglo-American culture, the power of imagery,
race, and the treatment of time and history in Irving's vast body
of literature, as well as his status as a bibliophile, an
antiquarian, and a prominent figure in an age of literary
celebrity. Edited by acclaimed historians Andrew Burstein and Nancy
Isenberg, Rip Van Winkle's Republic marks a rediscovery of this
marvelous author of social satire and fabled tales of the past.
The New York Times Bestseller, with a new preface from the author
"This estimable book rides into the summer doldrums like rural
electrification. . . . It deals in the truths that matter."-Dwight
Garner, The New York Times "This eye-opening investigation into our
country's entrenched social hierarchy is acutely relevant."-O, The
Oprah Magazine "White Trash will change the way we think about our
past and present." -T. J. Stiles, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of
Custer's Trials In her groundbreaking bestselling history of the
class system in America, Nancy Isenberg, co-author of The Problem
of Democracy, takes on our comforting myths about equality,
uncovering the crucial legacy of the ever-present, always
embarrassing-if occasionally entertaining-poor white trash. "When
you turn an election into a three-ring circus, there's always a
chance that the dancing bear will win," says Isenberg of the
political climate surrounding Sarah Palin. And we recognize how
right she is today. Yet the voters that put Trump in the White
House have been a permanent part of our American fabric, argues
Isenberg. The wretched and landless poor have existed from the time
of the earliest British colonial settlement to today's hillbillies.
They were alternately known as "waste people," "offals," "rubbish,"
"lazy lubbers," and "crackers." By the 1850s, the downtrodden
included so-called "clay eaters" and "sandhillers," known for
prematurely aged children distinguished by their yellowish skin,
ragged clothing, and listless minds. Surveying political rhetoric
and policy, popular literature and scientific theories over four
hundred years, Isenberg upends assumptions about America's
supposedly class-free society--where liberty and hard work were
meant to ensure real social mobility. Poor whites were central to
the rise of the Republican Party in the early nineteenth century,
and the Civil War itself was fought over class issues nearly as
much as it was fought over slavery. Reconstruction pitted poor
white trash against newly freed slaves, which factored in the rise
of eugenics--a widely popular movement embraced by Theodore
Roosevelt that targeted poor whites for sterilization. These poor
were at the heart of New Deal reforms and LBJ's Great Society; they
haunt us in reality TV shows like Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and Duck
Dynasty. Marginalized as a class, white trash have always been at
or near the center of major political debates over the character of
the American identity. We acknowledge racial injustice as an ugly
stain on our nation's history. With Isenberg's landmark book, we
will have to face the truth about the enduring, malevolent nature
of class as well.
The New York Times Bestseller A ground-breaking history of the
class system in America, which challenges popular myths about
equality in the land of opportunity. In this landmark book, Nancy
Isenberg argues that the voters who boosted Trump all the way to
the White House have been a permanent part of the American fabric,
and reveals how the wretched and landless poor have existed from
the time of the earliest British colonial settlements to today's
hillbillies. Poor whites were central to the rise of the Republican
Party in the early nineteenth century and the Civil War itself was
fought over class issues nearly as much as it was fought over
slavery. Reconstruction pitted white trash against newly freed
slaves, which factored in the rise of eugenics - a widely popular
movement embraced by Theodore Roosevelt that targeted poor whites
for sterilization. These poor were at the heart of New Deal reforms
and Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society; they are now offered up as
entertainment in reality TV shows, and the label is applied to
celebrities ranging from Dolly Parton to Bill Clinton. Marginalized
as a class, white trash have always been at or near the centre of
major political debates over the character of the American
identity. Surveying political rhetoric and policy, popular
literature and scientific theories over four hundred years,
Isenberg upends assumptions about America's supposedly class-free
society - where liberty and hard work were meant to ensure real
social mobility - and forces a nation to face the truth about the
enduring, malevolent nature of class.
Mortal Remains Death in Early America Edited by Nancy Isenberg and
Andrew Burstein "An important book that introduces new methods of
analyzing death in early American history. . . . The book
illustrates the profound ways that experiences with death and the
imagery associated with death influenced not only religion but also
other issues--national politics, gender politics, and race
relations--that are easy to relate to our contemporary concerns.
Isenberg's and Burnstein's work makes a significant contribution to
the discussion of death and dying in American history and its value
for interdisciplinary study."--"Journal of the American Academy of
Religion" "These 12 short, highly focused essays analyze how
experiences with death and the imagery associated with it
influenced US culture before 1860. . . . Recommended."--"Choice"
""Mortal Remains" has set an impressive standard for scholarship on
death in early America."--"Journal of American History" ""Mortal
Remains," a collection of twelve essays on death in
English-speaking America from the late 1600s to the middle decades
of the 1800s, offers a sampling of current cultural historical
scholarship and concerns."--"Pennsylvania Magazine of History and
Biography" "Mortal Remains" introduces new methods of analyzing
death and its crucial meanings over a 240-year period, from 1620 to
1860, untangling its influence on other forms of cultural
expression, from religion and politics to race relations and the
nature of war. In this volume historians and literary scholars join
forces to explore how, in a medically primitive and politically
evolving environment, mortality became an issue that was
inseparable from national self-definition. Attempting to make sense
of their suffering and loss while imagining a future of cultural
permanence and spiritual value, early Americans crafted metaphors
of death in particular ways that have shaped the national
mythology. As the authors show, the American fascination with
murder, dismembered bodies, and scenes of death, the allure of
angel sightings, the rural cemetery movement, and the enshrinement
of George Washington as a saintly father, constituted a distinct
sensibility. Moreover, by exploring the idea of the vanishing
Indian and the brutality of slavery, the authors demonstrate how a
culture of violence and death had an early effect on the American
collective consciousness. "Mortal Remains" draws on a range of
primary sources--from personal diaries and public addresses, satire
and accounts of sensational crime--and makes a needed contribution
to neglected aspects of cultural history. It illustrates the
profound ways in which experiences with death and the imagery
associated with it became enmeshed in American society, politics,
and culture. Nancy Isenberg and Andrew Burstein are coholders of
the Mary Frances Barnard Chair in Nineteenth-Century American
History at the University of Tulsa. Isenberg is the author of "Sex
and Citizenship in Antebellum America," winner of the 1999 SHEAR
book prize. Burstein is the author of several books, including
"America's Jubilee." 2002 264 pages 6 x 9 20 illus. ISBN
978-0-8122-3678-1 Cloth $55.00s 36.00 ISBN 978-0-8122-1823-7 Paper
$24.95s 16.50 World Rights American History, Cultural Studies Short
copy: "These 12 short, highly focused essays analyze how
experiences with death and the imagery associated with it
influenced US culture before 1860."--"Choice"
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Left Elsewhere (Paperback)
Elizabeth Catte, Deborah Chasman, Joshua Cohen, Michael Kazin, Nancy Isenberg
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R404
R305
Discovery Miles 3 050
Save R99 (25%)
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Out of stock
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Ancient Rome has always been considered a compendium of City and
World. In the Renaissance, an era of epistemic fractures, when the
clash between the 'new science' (Copernicus, Galileo, Vesalius,
Bacon, etcetera) and the authority of ancient texts produced the
very notion of modernity, the extended and expanding geography of
ancient Rome becomes, for Shakespeare and the Elizabethans, a
privileged arena in which to question the nature of bodies and the
place they hold in a changing order of the universe. Drawing on the
rich scenario provided by Shakespeare's Rome, and adopting an
interdisciplinary perspective, the authors of this volume address
the way in which the different bodies of the earthly and heavenly
spheres are re-mapped in Shakespeare's time and in early modern
European culture. More precisely, they investigate the way bodies
are fashioned to suit or deconstruct a culturally articulated
system of analogies between earth and heaven, microcosm and
macrocosm. As a whole, this collection brings to the fore a wide
range of issues connected to the Renaissance re-mapping of the
world and the human. It should interest not only Shakespeare
scholars but all those working on the interaction between sciences
and humanities.
With this book, Nancy Isenberg illuminates the origins of the
women's rights movement. Rather than herald the singular
achievements of the 1848 Seneca Falls convention, she examines the
confluence of events and ideas--before and after 1848--that, in her
view, marked the real birth of feminism. Drawing on a wide range of
sources, she demonstrates that women's rights activists of the
antebellum era crafted a coherent feminist critique of church,
state, and family. In addition, Isenberg shows, they developed a
rich theoretical tradition that influenced not only subsequent
strains of feminist thought but also ideas about the nature of
citizenship and rights more generally. By focusing on rights
discourse and political theory, Isenberg moves beyond a narrow
focus on suffrage. Democracy was in the process of being redefined
in antebellum America by controversies over such volatile topics as
fugitive slave laws, temperance, Sabbath laws, capital punishment,
prostitution, the Mexican War, married women's property rights, and
labor reform--all of which raised significant legal and
constitutional questions. These pressing concerns, debated in
women's rights conventions and the popular press, were inseparable
from the gendered meaning of nineteenth-century citizenship.
|Illuminates the origins of American feminism by showing how
antebellum feminists moved beyond suffrage to influence thinking
about the nature of citizenship and rights more generally.
From the author of White Trash and The Problem of Democracy, a
controversial challenge to the views of the Founding Fathers
offered by Ron Chernow and David McCullough Lin-Manuel Miranda's
play "Hamilton" has reignited interest in the founding fathers; and
it features Aaron Burr among its vibrant cast of characters. With
Fallen Founder, Nancy Isenberg plumbs rare and obscure sources to
shed new light on everyone's favorite founding villain. The Aaron
Burr whom we meet through Isenberg's eye-opening biography is a
feminist, an Enlightenment figure on par with Jefferson, a patriot,
and-most importantly-a man with powerful enemies in an age of
vitriolic political fighting. Revealing the gritty reality of
eighteenth-century America, Fallen Founder is the authoritative
restoration of a figure who ran afoul of history and a much-needed
antidote to the hagiography of the revolutionary era.
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