Keywords for American Cultural Studies

Keywords

by Bruce Burgett (Editor), Glenn Hendler (Editor)

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.

Genres: Nonfiction, Theory, Reference, Cultural, American, Cultural Studies

288 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2007

Reviews

[sdw · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am totally enamored of this book right now. This book consists of a series of sharp smart concise and thoughtful definitions/discussions of keywords like nation, immigration, marriage, and democracy explained in terms of their usage in American Studies scholarship by major scholars in each subfield. This is one handbook/reference book you need on your shelf.

[Serenity · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great info and relevance

[Aria · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very good introduction for a scholar of or outside american or cultural studies for a general flavor of what discussions exist in the genres and what sorts of questions might be useful to further the field in future research. The major benefit of this book is its breadth; a large swath of disciplines and analysis methods are employed by the authors to deliver thought-provoking essays on the selected keywords. The failing of this book is that while it covers many things well, it leaves no room for active discussion of what is not included in the discussion - each essay is just that, an essay by a single author and while they reflect the field, they may not reflect the entire field represented by each keyword. Still very much worth the read alone and for discussion, and as a companion to Raymond Williams' work.

[Joseph · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice little encyclopedia in the spirit of Raymond Williams' Keywords; but not as good as Keywords in Children's Literature, forthcoming from NYU P, edited by Lissa Paul and Philip Nel, and featuring a chapter on Aesthetics by yours truly!

[joyce]

this book is really helpful.

[Sam Grace]

Read the bit on citizenship. I guess it was useful, but I felt it was far from complete.

I really liked Henry Yu's thing on Ethnicity, too.

[Kristin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant book. A terrific contribution to American Studies. Could have been twice its length. Wish I had the $$ in my budget to give a copy to every American Studies major.

[Leon]

read: “Identity” by Carla Kaplan, “Intersectionality” by Daniel Martinez Hosang

[Mills College Library]

428.1 K449 2014