A compilation of recent acquisitions by the MSU Libraries.
After the Flood : Irish America, 1945-1960
American Latvians : Politics of a Refugee Community
Beyond the American Pale : the Irish in the West, 1845-1910
Contours of White Ethnicity : Popular Ethnography and the Making of Usable Pasts in Greek America
A History of the Polish Americans
The Irish Bridget: Irish Immigrant Women in Domestic Service in America, 1840-1930
Italian Americans : Bridges to Italy, Bonds to America
Italian immigrant radical culture : the idealism of the sovversivi in the United States, 1890-1940
Ukrainians of Metropolitan Detroit
All Michigan specific titles are listed under the Reference Tools tab.
After the Flood : Irish America, 1945-1960 / editors, James Silas Rogers, Matthew J. O'Brien. Dublin ; Portland, OR : Irish Academic Press, 2009. 223pp. Main Library E184.I6 A14 2009 : These essays examine diverse elements of the Irish American Experience in the fifteen years after World War II. It emphasises the transition through which the diaspora were moving with focus on social and political developments.
The American Irish : a History / Kevin Kenny. Harlow, England ; New York : Longman, 2000. 328pp. Main Library E184.I6 K47 2000 : Beginning in the 18th century, the author studies the migration of the Irish to the United States, covering the period of the famine, the Irish in Ireland and America from 1900-1940 and finally, the period since World War II.
American Latvians : Politics of a Refugee Community / Ieva Zake. New Brunswick : Transaction Publishers, c2010. Main Library E184.L4 Z35 2010 : This book analyzes the political experience of a small and unique American ethnic group---American Latvians. This community was constituted by post-World War II political refugees, who fled Communism and arrived in the United States seeking safety and protection. For decades, they insisted on preserving their ethic identity and therefore did not call themselves Latvian Americans. Instead, they formed a distinctive double identity, that is, they blended into American society economically and socially, but refused to became assimilated culturally and politically. The book offers a detailed look into the life of this community of political refugees, which also provides a novel perspective on the Cold War as experienced by certain ethnic groups....From a theoretical point of view, the book makes two major contributions. First, it reasserts the need to understand the generalized category of "white Americans" or "white ethnics" with more nuance and attention to differences, and, second, it strengthens the so-called realist claim that refugees are not like other immigrants. In order to achieve these goals, the book provides compelling descriptions and interpretations of the most politically relevant moments in the experience of American Latvians in the period between the 1950s and the 1990s. Concretely, the book deals with topics such as the American Latvians' anti-communist activism, the impact of the hunt for Nazis on Latvian emigres, the Soviet Union's anti-emigre propaganda campaigns, and the exiled Latvians' involvement in the politics of national liberation in Latvia....The author strives to reveal the complexity of the refugee experience in the United States during the Cold War and its aftermath. Since such aspects of the life of ethnic groups in the United States have not been sufficiently studied, this book makes a substantial contribution to a fuller understanding of American immigration history and sociology of ethnic groups. It is well written, expertly organized, and will be of interest to a large readership at many levels of academia.
Angry White Men : American Masculinity at the End of an Era / by Michael Kimmel. New York : Nation Books, [2013] 314pp. Main Library HQ1090.3 .K55175 2013 : "[W]e can't come off as a bunch of angry white men." Robert Bennett, chairman of the Ohio Republican Party One of the enduring legacies of the 2012 Presidential campaign was the demise of the white American male voter as a dominant force in the political landscape. On election night, after Obama was announced the winner, a distressed Bill O'Reilly lamented that he didn't live in "a traditional America anymore." He was joined by others who bellowed their grief on the talk radio airwaves, the traditional redoubt of angry white men. Why were they so angry? Sociologist Michael Kimmel, one of the leading writers on men and masculinity in the world today, has spent hundreds of hours in the company of America's angry white men - from white supremacists to men's rights activists to young students -in pursuit of an answer. Angry White Men presents a comprehensive diagnosis of their fears, anxieties, and rage. Kimmel locates this increase in anger in the seismic economic, social and political shifts that have so transformed the American landscape. Downward mobility, increased racial and gender equality, and a tenacious clinging to an anachronistic ideology of masculinity has left many men feeling betrayed and bewildered. Raised to expect unparalleled social and economic privilege, white men are suffering today from what Kimmel calls "aggrieved entitlement": a sense that those benefits that white men believed were their due have been snatched away from them. Angry White Men discusses, among others, the sons of small town America, scarred by underemployment and wage stagnation. When America's white men feel they've lived their lives the 'right' way - worked hard and stayed out of trouble - and still do not get economic rewards, then they have to blame somebody else. Even more terrifying is the phenomenon of angry young boys. School shootings in the United States are not just the work of "misguided youth" or "troubled teens"--they're all committed by boys. These alienated young men are transformed into mass murderers by a sense that using violence against others is their right. The future of America is more inclusive and diverse. The choice for angry white men is not whether or not they can stem the tide of history: they cannot. Their choice is whether or not they will be dragged kicking and screaming into that inevitable future, or whether they will walk openly and honorably - far happier and healthier incidentally - alongside those they've spent so long trying to exclude.
Becoming old stock : the paradox of German-American identity / Russell A. Kazal. Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, [2004] 383pp. Main Library F158.9.G3 K39 2004 : More Americans trace their ancestry to Germany than to any other country. Arguably, German Americans form America's largest ethnic group. Yet they have a remarkably low profile today, reflecting a dramatic, twentieth-century retreat from German-American identity. In this age of multiculturalism, why have German Americans gone into ethnic eclipse--and where have they ended up? Becoming Old Stock represents the first in-depth exploration of that question. The book describes how German Philadelphians reinvented themselves in the early twentieth century, especially after World War I brought a nationwide anti-German backlash. Using quantitative methods, oral history, and a cultural analysis of written sources, the book explores how, by the 1920s, many middle-class and Lutheran residents had redefined themselves in "old-stock" terms--as "American" in opposition to southeastern European "new immigrants." It also examines working-class and Catholic Germans, who came to share a common identity with other European immigrants, but not with newly arrived black Southerners. Becoming Old Stock sheds light on the way German Americans used race, American nationalism, and mass culture to fashion new identities in place of ethnic ones. It is also an important contribution to the growing literature on racial identity among European Americans. In tracing the fate of one of America's largest ethnic groups, Becoming Old Stock challenges historians to rethink the phenomenon of ethnic assimilation and to explore its complex relationship to American pluralism.
Beyond the American Pale : the Irish in the West, 1845-1910 / David M. Emmons. Norman : University of Oklahoma Press, c2010. 472pp. Main Library F596.3.I6 E48 2010 : Beyond the American Pale: The Irish in the West 1845-1910 is a thoughtful, in-depth historical discussion of the role that (overwhelmingly Catholic) Irish Americans played on the Western frontier. Even though Irish-American immigration during the era is best known for being concentrated in the East and Midwest, Catholic Irish-Americans played a critical role out west, particularly when it came to doing the jobs that Protestant settlers often found difficult or dangerous - Irish-Americans contributed to building railroads, digging hard rocks, manning the army posts, and other taxing toil. From surveying patterns of Irish migration to scrutinizing the lasting effects of Protestant cultural suspicion and prejudice against their Catholic neighbors, Beyond the American Pale paints a vivid chronicle and portrait.
The bourgeois frontier : French towns, French traders, and American expansion / Jay Gitlin. New Haven : Yale University Press, c2010. 269pp. F596.3.F8 G585 2010 Online : Histories tend to emphasize conquest by Anglo-Americans as the driving force behind the development of the American West. In this fresh interpretation, Jay Gitlin argues that the activities of the French are crucial to understanding the phenomenon of westward expansion. The Seven Years War brought an end to the French colonial enterprise in North America, but the French in towns such as New Orleans, St. Louis, and Detroit survived the transition to American rule. French traders from Mid-America such as the Chouteaus and Robidouxs of St. Louis then became agents of change in the West, perfecting a strategy of "middle grounding" by pursuing alliances within Indian and Mexican communities in advance of American settlement and re-investing fur trade profits in land, town sites, banks, and transportation. The Bourgeois Frontier provides the missing French connection between the urban Midwest and western expansion.
The Columbia Guide to Irish American History / Timothy Meagher. New York : Columbia University Press, c2005. 398pp. Main Library E184.I6 M43 2005 : Over the past 30 years, Irish American historiography has grown immensely. The body of scholarly knowledge is so broad and its underlying interpretations so nuanced that graduate and undergraduate students and even some academics can be easily overwhelmed. With this in mind, Meagher (Catholic Univ.) has succinctly organized Irish American studies by time periods, issues, and themes. This is no small feat, because, as the author explains, Irish American history is riddled with paradoxes and immune to facile generalizations. This excellent piece of scholarship examines Irish migration to the US from the Colonial era to the present. The author provides in-depth, to the point, and particularly well-balanced assessments of gender and family, politics, nationalism, and race, and deftly sorts through the most controversial topics and many minor but equally interesting ones. Moreover, Meagher frequently points out areas that require further academic attention. The book includes sections on important people, organizations, events, and terms; a chronology of Irish America; and an annotated bibliography. This book is indispensable for collections on Irish American history and politics.
Coming Apart : the State of White America, 1960-2010 / Charles Murray. New York, N.Y. : Crown Forum, [2012] 407pp. Main Library E184.A1 M895 2012 : Explains why white America has become fractured and divided in education and class. In Coming Apart, Charles Murray explores the formation of American classes that are different in kind from anything we have ever known, focusing on whites as a way of driving home the fact that the trends he describes do not break along lines of race or ethnicity. Drawing on five decades of statistics and research, Coming Apart demonstrates that a new upper class and a new lower class have diverged so far in core behaviors and values that they barely recognize their underlying American kinship--divergence that has nothing to do with income inequality and that has grown during good economic times and bad. The top and bottom of white America increasingly live in different cultures, Murray argues, with the powerful upper class living in enclaves surrounded by their own kind, ignorant about life in mainstream America, and the lower class suffering from erosions of family and community life that strike at the heart of the pursuit of happiness. That divergence puts the success of the American project at risk.
The construction of whiteness : an interdisciplinary analysis of race formation and the meaning of a white identity / edited by Stephen Middleton, David R. Roediger, and Donald M. Shaffer. Jackson : University Press of Mississippi Jackson, [2016] 267pp. Main Library HT1575 .C66 2016 (Also available online) : This volume collects interdisciplinary essays that examine the crucial intersection between whiteness as a privileged racial category and the various material practices (social, cultural, political, and economic) that undergird white ideological influence in America. In truth, the need to examine whiteness as a problem has rarely been grasped outside academic circles. The ubiquity of whiteness--its pervasive quality as an ideal that is at once omnipresent and invisible--makes it the very epitome of the mainstream in America. And yet the undeniable relationship between whiteness and inequality in this country necessitates a thorough interrogation of its formation, its representation, and its reproduction. Essays here seek to do just that work. Editors and contributors interrogate whiteness as a social construct, revealing the underpinnings of narratives that foster white skin as an ideal of beauty, intelligence, and power. Contributors examine whiteness from several disciplinary perspectives, including history, communication, law, sociology, and literature. Its breadth and depth makes The Construction of Whiteness a refined introduction to the critical study of race for a new generation of scholars, undergraduates, and graduate students. Moreover, the interdisciplinary approach of the collection will appeal to scholars in African and African American studies, ethnic studies, cultural studies, legal studies, and more. This collection delivers an important contribution to the field of whiteness studies in its multifaceted impact on American history and culture.
Contours of White Ethnicity : Popular Ethnography and the Making of Usable Pasts in Greek America / Yiorgos Anagnostou. Athens [Ohio] : Ohio University Press, c2009. 284pp. Main Library E184.G7 A53 2009 : Explores the construction of ethnic history and reveals how and why white ethnics selectively retain, rework, or reject their pasts. Challenging the tendency to portray Americans of European background as a uniform cultural category, the author demonstrates how a generalized view of American white ethnics misses the specific identity issues of particular groups as well as their internal differences....Interdisciplinary in scope, Contours of White Ethnicity uses the example of Greek America to illustrate how the immigrant past can be used to combat racism and be used to bring about solidarity between white ethnics and racial minorities. Illuminating the importance of the past in the construction of ethnic identities today, Anagnostou presents the politics of evoking the past to create community, affirm identity, and nourish reconnection with ancestral roots, then identifies the struggles to neutralize oppres sive pasts....Although it draws from the scholarship on a specific ethnic group, Contours of White Ethnicity exhibits a sophisticated, interdisciplinary methodology, which makes it of particular interest to scholars researching ethnicity and race in the United States and for those charting the directions of future research for white ethnicities.
Finns in the United States : a history of settlement, dissent, and integration / edited by Auvo Kostiainen. East Lansing, Michigan : Michigan State University Press, [2014] 342pp. Main Library E184.F5 F55 2014: Late-arriving immigrants during the Great Migration, Finns were, comparatively speaking, a relatively small immigrant group, with about 350,000 immigrants arriving prior to World War II. Nevertheless, because of their geographic concentration in the Upper Midwest in particular, their impact was pronounced. They differed from many other new immigrant groups in a number of ways, including the fact that theirs is not an Indo-European language, and many old-country cultural and social features reflect their geographic location in Europe, at the juncture of East and West. A fresh and up-to-date analysis of Finnish Americans, this insightful volume lays the groundwork for exploring this unique culture through a historical context, followed by an overview of the overall composition and settlement patterns of these newcomers. The authors investigate the vivid ethnic organizations Finns created, as well as the cultural life they sought to preserve and enhance while fitting into their new homeland. Also explored are the complex dimensions of Finnish-American political and religious life, as well as the exodus of many radical leftists to Soviet Karelia in the 1930s. Through the lens of multiculturalism, transnationalism, and whiteness studies, the authors of this volume present a rich portrait of this distinctive group.
A History of the Polish Americans / John J. Bukowczyk ; with a new introduction by the author. New Brunswick, NJ : Transaction Publishers, c2008. 192pp. Main Library E184.P7 B84 2008 : They came to find work, a decent place and way to live, to join family already settled, to marry, to escape persecution. So far the list of reasons why people from Poland came to the US seems to be fairly typical. But in the second generation many of the native born abandoned time-tested traditions and appropriated those of the assimilated American, sans hyphen. Bukowczyk not only describes the cultural change encountered by the emigrants but also the myths, symbols, values and beliefs that literally kept them alive. He also notes which traditions tended to stick and why, making this a model study of the organizations and institutions first and second generations created and maintained to keep some part of Polish emigrant culture active in the US.
History of White People / Nell Irvin Painter. New York : W W Norton, 2011. 496pp. Main Library E184.A1 P29 2011 : Traces the idea of a white race, showing how the origins of the American identity were tied to the elevation of white skin as the embodiment of beauty, power, and intelligence, and how even intellectuals insisted that only Anglo Saxons were truly American.
How the Scots made America / Michael Fry. New York : Thomas Dunne Books, 2005. 242pp. Main Library E184.S3 F79 2005 : Ever since they first set foot in the new world alongside the Viking explorers the Scots have left their mark. In this entertaining and informative book, historian Michael Fry shows how Americans of Scottish heritage helped shape this country, from its founding days to the present. They were courageous pioneers, history-changing revolutionaries, great Presidents, doughty fighters, inspiring writers, learned teachers, intrepid explorers, daring frontiersmen, and of course buccaneering businessmen, media moguls, and capitalists throughout American history.... The Scots' unflappable spirit and hardy disposition helped them take root among the earliest settlements and become some of the British colonies' foremost traders. During the Revolution, the teachings of the great Scottish philosophers and economists would help to shape the democracy that thrived in America as in no other part of the world. America may have separated from the British Empire, but the Scottish influence on the young continent never left.... Armed with an inimitable range of historical knowledge, Fry charts the exchange of ideas and values between the Scotland and America that led to many of the greatest achievements in business, science, and the arts. Finally, he takes readers into the twentieth century, in which the Scots serve as the ideal example of a people that have embraced globalization without losing their sense of history, culture and national identity.... Scottish Americans have been incomparable innovators in every branch of American society, and their fascinating story is brilliantly captured in this new book by one of Scotland's leading historians. How the Scots Made America is not only a must-read for all those with Scottish ancestry but for anyone interested in knowing the full story behind the roots of the American way of life.
I Go to America : Swedish American Women and the Life of Mina Anderson / Joy K. Lintelman. Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2012. 288pp. On order : Near the end of her life, Mina Anderson penned a lively memoir that helped Swedish novelist Vilhelm Moberg create "Kristina," the central female character of his beloved emigrant novels, a woman who constantly yearns for her homeland. But Mina's story was quite different.... Showcasing her previously untranslated memoir, I Go To America traces Mina's trip across the Atlantic to Wisconsin and then the Twin Cities, where she worked as a domestic servant, and her move to rural Mille Lacs County, where she and her husband worked a farm, raised seven children, and contributed to rural Swedish community life.... Mina herself writes about how grateful she was for the opportunity to be in America, where the pay was better, class differences were unconfining, and children—girls included—had the chance for a good education. In her own words, "I have never regretted that I left Sweden. I have had it better here." Author Joy Lintelman greatly expands upon Mina's memoir, detailing the social, cultural, and economic realities experienced by countless Swedish women of her station. Lintelman offers readers both an intimate portrait of Mina Anderson and a window into the lives of the nearly 250,000 young, single Swedish women who immigrated to America from 1881 to 1920 and whose courage, hard work, and pragmatism embody the American dream.
Irish American Chronicle / primary consultant, Thomas Fleming ; essayist and consultant, Terry J. Golway ; contributing writers, Dan Brekke ... [et al.]. Lincolnwood, Ill. : Legacy Pub., Publications International, Ltd., 2009. 448pp. Main Library E184.I6 F595 2009 : The Irish American Chronicle begins with an absorbing history of Ireland and chronicles the Irish in America from the Revolutionary War to the present. Hundreds of Irish Americans are profiled, from presidents John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan to automaker Henry T. Ford, activist Mother Jones, and writer Anna Quindlen. In words and pictures, the Irish American Chronicle relates the complete Irish American experience, including these topics:
The Irish Democratic Party s rise to power, beginning with the story of Honest John Kelly and Tammany Hall.
Irish American movie stars such as Buster Keaton, Maureen O'Hara, James Cagney, and Grace Kelly.
The men of the Civil War's Irish Brigade and World War I's Fighting 69th.
The proud tradition of Notre Dame football.
Riverdance, Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes, and the works of Eugene O Neill and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
The Irish Americans : a history / Jay P. Dolan. New York : Bloomsbury Press, 2008. 352pp. Main Library E184.I6 D59 2008 : Follows the Irish from their first arrival in the American colonies through the bleak days of the potato famine, the decades of ethnic prejudice and nativist discrimination, the rise of Irish political power, and on to the historic moment when John F. Kennedy was elected to this highest office in the land.
Irish Americans : the History and Culture of a People / William E. Watson and Eugene J. Halus, Jr., editors. Santa Barbara, California : ABC-CLIO, LLC, [2015] 511pp. Main Library E184.I6 I664 2015 : Part I. Context of Irish American emigration: coming to America -- Part II. Political activity and economic life: business endeavors and involvement in American politics -- Part III. Cultural and religious life: people, institutions, and organizations -- Part IV. Arts and sciences, sports and popular culture: people and expressions of identity.
The Irish Bridget: Irish Immigrant Women in Domestic Service in America, 1840-1930 / Margaret Lynch-Brennan and Maureen O'Rourke Murphy. Syracuse University Press, 2009. 232pp. Main Library HD6072.2.U5 L96 2009 : "Bridget" was the Irish immigrant service girl who worked in American homes from the second half of the nineteenth century into the early years of the twentieth. She is widely known as a pop culture cliché: the young girl who wreaks havoc in middle-class American homes. Now, in the first book-length treatment of the topic, Margaret Lynch-Brennan tells the real story of such Irish domestic servants, often in their own words, providing a richly detailed portrait of their lives and experiences. Many of the socially marginalized Irish immigrant women of this era made their living in domestic service. In contrast to immigrant men, who might have lived in a community with their fellow Irish, these women lived and worked in close contact with American families. Lynch-Brennan reveals the essential role this unique relationship played in shaping the place of the Irish in America today. Such women were instrumental in making the Irish presence more acceptable to earlier established American groups. At the same time, it was through the experience of domestic service that many Irish were acculturated, as these women absorbed the middle-class values of their patrons and passed them on to their own children. Drawing on personal correspondence and other primary sources, Lynch-Brennan gives voice to these young Irish women and celebrates their untold contribution to the ethnic history of the
United States. In addition, recognizing the interest of scholars in contemporary domestic services, she devotes one chapter to comparing "Bridget's" experience to that of other ethnic women over time in domestic service in America.
The Italian Americans : a History / Maria Laurino. New York : W. W. Norton & Company, [2015] 308pp. Main Library E184.I8 L387 2015 : In this richly researched, beautifully designed and illustrated volume, Maria Laurino strips away stereotypes and nostalgia to tell the complicated, centuries-long story of the true Italian-American experience.Looking beyond the familiar Little Italys and stereotypes fostered by The Godfather and The Sopranos, Laurino reveals surprising, fascinating lives: Italian-Americans working on sugar-cane plantations in Louisiana to those who were lynched in New Orleans; the banker who helped rebuild San Francisco after the great earthquake; families interned as "enemy aliens" in World War II. From anarchist radicals to "Rosie the Riveter" to Nancy Pelosi, Andrew Cuomo, and Bill de Blasio; from traditional artisans to rebel songsters like Frank Sinatra, Dion, Madonna, and Lady Gaga, this book is both exploration and celebration of the rich legacy of Italian-American life.Readers can discover the history chronologically, chapter by chapter, or serendipitously by exploring the trove of supplemental materials. These include interviews, newspaper clippings, period documents, and photographs that bring the history to life.
Italian Americans : Bridges to Italy, Bonds to America / edited by Luciano J. Iorizzo and Ernest E. Rossi. Youngstown, N.Y. : Tenio Press, c2010. 315pp. Main Library E184.I8 I73 2010 : In this volume attesting to the Italian American influence on the United States, nine professors of Italian American studies and a curator of an ethnic museum provide original essays on the Italian American experience, using the theme bridges to Italy and bonds to America. Drawing from a wide variety of primary sources, such as census tracts, local directories, diaries, voting records, newspaper accounts, personal interviews and scholarly and polemical books and articles, the authors show how Italian Americans adapted, through work, prejudice, strife, and advancement, to the social and political life in America while still retaining an element of Italianita. Italian Americans were key components in the early years of jazz history in the 1920s and 1930s. This study adds some balance to the development of jazz by tracing the bonds that Italian Americans formed with Black musicians and their pioneering use of the guitar and violin. An obvious example of the theme of this book is a study of Italian prisoners of World War II, who were transported to the United States and settled in a camp in Texas. The author shows how they helped farmers by their work and how artists among them helped decorate a local church with paintings and murals. A comparison of the Italian and Mexican immigration to the United States shows the similarity and differences of these two groups over time. An examination of the proposition that Mexicans are like Italians is examined in detail. A bibliographical study of the "southern question" in Italian history shows the explosive forces that erupted during and after Italian unification. Italians and Italian Americans are still debating whether this incorporation of the Italian south into the kingdom of Italy was detrimental to the people who lived there and contributed to the massive emigration that followed. This study is an outgrowth of a desire by scholars to honor the passing of Professor Salvatore Mondello, coauthor of the national bestseller The Italian Americans. One of a few historians of Italian American immigration who appeared on the scene in the late 1950s and early 1960s he approached the subject with enthusiasm, passion, and a relentless search for relevant material marked by digging into primary sources, rooting out individuals who had lived through the immigrant experience and pouring over the contemporary accounts found in newspapers and magazines. Sal was one of the first to see the important link between railroads and Italian American settlements. He saw that the rail lines accelerated the Italians' movement beyond the large cities in the coastal areas. They used the railroads as the means to establish new lives in many urban and rural communities across the country.
Italian immigrant radical culture : the idealism of the sovversivi in the United States, 1890-1940 / Marcella Bencivenni. New York : New York University Press, c2011. 279pp. Main Library E184.I8 B46 2011 : Maligned by modern media and often stereotyped, Italian Americans possess a vibrant, if largely forgotten, radical past. In Italian Immigrant Radical Culture, Marcella Bencivenni delves into the history of the sovversivi, a transnational generation of social rebels, and offers a fascinating portrait of their political struggle as well as their milieu, beliefs, and artistic creativity in the United States....As early as 1882, the sovversivi founded a socialist club in Brooklyn. Radical organizations then multiplied and spread across the country, from large urban cities to smaller industrial mining areas. By 1900, thirty official Italian sections of the Socialist Party along the East Coast and countless independent anarchist and revolutionary circles sprang up throughout the nation. Forming their own alternative press, institutions, and working class organizations, these groups created a vigorous movement and counterculture that constituted a significant part of the American Left until World War II....Italian Immigrant Radical Culture compellingly documents the wide spectrum of this oppositional culture and examines the many cultural and artistic forms it took, from newspapers to literature and poetry to theater and visual art. As the first cultural history of Italian American activism, it provides a richer understanding of the Italian immigrant experience while also deepening historical perceptions of radical politics and culture.
The Journey of the Italians in America / Vincenza Scarpaci ; foreword by Gary R. Mormino. Gretna, La. : Pelican Pub. Co., 2008. 319pp. Main Library E184.I8 S26 2008 : A photographic history of Italian-American life. The Italian imprint on North America that began centuries ago with the voyages of Christopher Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, and Giovanni da Verrazzano continues in every aspect of American life today. This book celebrates the contributions Italians made in the areas of agriculture, cuisine, industry, religion, sports, architecture, the arts, and politics, and how they preserved their culture while establishing their presence in America. Beginning with the first major wave of immigration in the 1870s, this book portrays Italian-American hardships and successes, along with the lifestyles, organizations, and businesses they created in communities throughout the country. Four hundred photographs from public and private collections portray this colorful ethnic group in settings from the crowded streets of Naples to crowded ships bound for America, to Californian farmers and family celebrations in New York.
A new language, a new world : Italian immigrants in the United States, 1890-1945 / Nancy C. Carnevale. Urbana : University of Illinois Press, c2009. 243pp. Main Library E184.I8 C29 2009 : An examination of Italian immigrants and their children in the early twentieth century, A New Language, A New World is the first full-length historical case study of one immigrant group's experience with language in America. Incorporating the interdisciplinary literature on language within a historical framework, Nancy C. Carnevale illustrates the complexity of the topic of language in American immigrant life. By looking at language from the perspectives of both immigrants and the dominant culture as well as their interaction, this book reveals the role of language in the formation of ethnic identity and the often coercive context within which immigrants must negotiate this process.
Making the Irish American : history and heritage of the Irish in the United States / edited by J.J. Lee and Marion R. Casey. New York : New York University Press, [2006] 733pp. Main Library E184.I6 M23 2006 (Also available online) : Featuring 29 classic and original essays on the turbulent, vital, and fascinating story of the Irish in America. The contributors include Linda Dowling Almeida, Margaret Lynch-Brennan, Marion R. Casey, David Noel Doyle, Pete Hamill, Kevin Kenny, Rebecca S. Miller, Mick Moloney, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Peter Quinn, and Calvin Trillin. All it takes is one St. Patrick's Day in the United States to realize that the Irish did not dissolve into the melting pot, they took possession of it. Few other immigrant peoples have exerted such pervasive influence, have left so deep an impression, have made their values and concerns so central to the destiny of their new country. In Making the Irish American , J.J. Lee and Marion R. Casey offer a feast of twenty-nine perspectives on the turbulent, vital, endlessly fascinating story of the Irish in America. Combining original research with reprints of classic works, these essays and articles extend far beyond a survey to offer a truly rich understanding of the Irish immigrant impact on America, and America's impact on the Irish immigrant. Here the reader will find a brisk, compact history of Ireland itself, and a wide-ranging critique of Irish American historiography, as well as explorations of the multiple complications of religion, reflected in the fluctuating, and sometimes tempestuous, relations between Catholic and Protestant Irish and Scotch-Irish. The authors explore the various channels through which the Irish, men and women, have made their mark, from politics to labor organization, from domestic service to popular and traditional music, from sport to step dancing. Classic reprints include Daniel Patrick Moynihan's study of the Irish in New York, Pete Hamill's memoir of President Kennedy--recollecting the responses around him in Belfast at the time of the assassination--Calvin Trillin's New Yorker profile of Judge James J. Comerford, long the iron-handed boss of New York's St. Patrick's Day parade, and Peter Quinn's meditations on the essence of Irish America, past, present and future. They all offer sparkling insights into the evolving tension between becoming American and becoming Irish American. Making the Irish American is monumental in the best sense--serious but accessible, wide-ranging and far-reaching and enriched by seventy unique illustrations. This exciting and challenging collection belongs on the bookshelf of everyone interested in not only the Irish American, but the American story, of which they form so vivid and prominent a part.
The Old Country and the New : Essays on Swedes and America / H. Arnold Barton. Carbondale : Southern Illinois University Press, [2007] 293pp. Main Library E184.S23 B28 2007 : This notable collection of seventeen essays and six editorials by renowned Swedish American historian H. Arnold Barton was compiled from writings published between 1974 and 2005. The result of three decades of extensive research in the United States and Sweden, The Old Country and the New: Essays on Swedes and America, covers Swedish emigration to North America as well as the history and culture of Swedes in their new country.... In this rich mosaic of American ethnicity and cultural history, Barton analyzes the multifaceted Swedish emigration/immigration story. Essays include a survey of the historiography of emigration from the Scandinavian countries and the Scandinavian immigration to North America, Swedish emigration before 1846, and the Eric-Janssonist religious sect and its colony at Bishop Hill, Illinois.... Because Swedish immigrants were highly literate people, they wrote numerous letters describing their experiences to relatives and friends at home. What these letters related—or omitted—is the subject of another essay. Barton discusses Swedish immigrants who returned permanently to their homeland, affecting both the old country and the new. He also traces relations between the United States and Sweden, post—World War II Swedish immigration, and genealogy as history.... Offering a broad Scandinavian American ethnic perspective, The Old Country and the New appeals to both scholars and lay readers. Sixteen illustrations and a complete bibliography of Barton’s publications on Swedish American history and culture enhance the volume.
The Polish American encyclopedia / general editor, James S. Pula ; associate editors, M.B.B. Biskupski [and others]. Jefferson, N.C. : McFarland & Co., Publishers, [2011] 585pp. E184.P7 P6833 2011 Online Resource : At least nine million Americans trace their roots to Poland, and Polish Americans have contributed greatly to American history and society. During the largest period of immigration to the United States, between 1870 and 1920, more Poles came to the United States than any other national group except Italians. Additional large-scale Polish migration occurred in the wake of World War II and during the period of Solidarity's rise to prominence. This encyclopedia features three types of entries: thematic essays, topical entries, and biographical profiles. The essays synthesize existing work to provide interpretations of, and insight into, important aspects of the Polish American experience. The topical entries discuss in detail specific places, events or organizations such as the Polish National Alliance, Polish American Saturday Schools, and the Latimer Massacre, among others. The biographical entries identify Polish Americans who have made significant contributions at the regional or national level either to the history and culture of the United States, or to the development of American Polonia.
Routledge History of Italian Americans. / William J. Connell. Routledge, 2017. 692pp. Main Library E184.I8 R74 2018 : The Routledge History of Italian Americans weaves a narrative of the trials and triumphs of one of the nation’s largest ethnic groups. This history, comprising original essays by leading scholars and critics, addresses themes that include the Columbian legacy, immigration, the labor movement, discrimination, anarchism, Fascism, World War II patriotism, assimilation, gender identity and popular culture. This landmark volume offers a clear and accessible overview of work in the growing academic field of Italian American Studies. Rich illustrations bring the story to life, drawing out the aspects of Italian American history and culture that make this ethnic group essential to the American experience.
Scottish Emigration to Colonial America, 1607-1785 / David Dobson. University of Georgia Press, 2004. 280pp. On order. :Before 1650, only a few hundred Scots had trickled into the American colonies, but by the early 1770s the number had risen to 10,000 per year. A conservative estimate of the total number of Scots who settled in North America prior to 1785 is around 150,000.... Who were these Scots? What did they do? Where did they settle? What factors motivated their emigration? Dobson's work, based on original research on both sides of the Atlantic, comprehensively identifies the Scottish contribution to the settlement of North America prior to 1785, with particular emphasis on the seventeenth century.
The Soviet Jewish Americans / Annelise Orleck ; photographs by Elizabeth Cooke. Westport, Conn. : Greenwood Press, 1999. 216pp. Main Library E184.J5 O68 1999 : This lively, moving narrative provides the first comprehensive account of the emigration of nearly 500,000 Soviet Jews to the United States between 1967 and 1997. By weaving a wide variety of immigrant voices and photographs together with historical, journalistic, social service, and psychological studies of Soviet Jewish immigration, this book offers a comprehensive and highly readable introduction to the history, politics, and culture of this important new American population. Topics covered include the varied reasons for their exodus from the Soviet Union, what they found in the United States, the communities they created there, and the cultural problems they encountered. The author, an expert on this group, dispels stereotypical notions about Soviet Jewish immigrants by exploring the tremendous social, political, and cultural diversity of the nearly half million Soviet Jews now living in the United tates.
White cargo : the forgotten history of Britain's White slaves in America / Don Jordan and Michael Walsh. Washington Square, N.Y. : New York University Press, 2008. 320pp. Main Library E446 .J665 2007 (Also available online) : Thousands of Britons lived and died in bondage in Britain's American colonies.
White Like Me : Race, Racism & White Privilege in America / Media Education Foundation Production. [San Francisco, California, USA] : Kanopy Streaming, 2014. 1 online resource (1 streaming video file, 66 min.) : White Like Me, based on the work of acclaimed anti-racist educator and author Tim Wise, explores race and racism in the US through the lens of whiteness and white privilege. In a stunning reassessment of the American ideal of meritocracy and claims that we've entered a post-racial society, Wise offers a fascinating look back at the race-based white entitlement programs that built the American middle class, and argues that our failure as a society to come to terms with this legacy of white privilege continues to perpetuate racial inequality and race-driven political resentments today. For years, Tim Wisés bestselling books and spellbinding lectures have challenged some of our most basic assumptions about race in America. White Like Me is the first film to bring the full range of his work to the screen ́to show how white privilege continues to shape individual attitudes, electoral politics, and government policy in ways too many white people never stop to think about.
White Like Me : Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son / Tim Wise. Brooklyn, NY : Soft Skull Press, [2008] 191pp. Main Library E185.615 .W565 2008 : Racial privilege shapes the lives of white Americans in every facet of life, from employment and education to housing and criminal justice. Using stories from his own life, Tim Wise shows that racism not only burdens people of color, but also benefits those who are "white like him" -- whether or not they're actively racist. Using stories instead of stale statistics, Wise weaves a compelling narrative that assesses the magnitude of racial privilege and is at once readable and scholarly, analytical yet accessible.
Whiteness of a different color : European immigrants and the alchemy of race / Matthew Frye Jacobson. Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1998. 338pp. Main Library E184.E95 J33 1998 (Also available online) : America's racial odyssey is the subject of this remarkable work of historical imagination. Matthew Frye Jacobson argues that race resides not in nature but in the contingencies of politics and culture. In ever-changing racial categories we glimpse the competing theories of history and collective destiny by which power has been organized and contested in the United States. Capturing the excitement of the new field of "whiteness studies" and linking it to traditional historical inquiry, Jacobson shows that in this nation of immigrants "race" has been at the core of civic assimilation: ethnic minorities in becoming American were reracialized to become Caucasian. He provides a counterhistory of how nationality groups such as the Irish or Greeks became Americans as racial groups like Celts or Mediterraneans became Caucasian. Jacobson tracks race as a conception and perception, emphasizing the importance of knowing not only how we label one another but also how we see one another, and how that racialized vision has largely been transformed in this century. The stages of racial formation--race as formed in conquest, enslavement, imperialism, segregation, and labor migration--are all part of the complex, and now counterintuitive, history of race. Whiteness of a Different Color traces the fluidity of racial categories from an immense body of research in literature, popular culture, politics, society, ethnology, anthropology, cartoons, and legal history, including sensational trials like the Leo Frank case and the Draft Riots of 1863.
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