Dutch American Voices

Dutch American Voices PDF Author: Herbert J. Brinks
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501735705
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 512

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Book Description
Brother I cannot tell you what is best for you—staying there or coming here. If it only concerned yourself! would say, stay. But if you are concerned about your descendents I would say, come." Writing from his Michigan farm to relatives back in Overijssel, Jacob Dunnink voiced a perspective at once uniquely his own and typical of his immigrant community in 1856. Dutch American Voices brings together a full spectrum of such perspectives, as expressed in immigrants' letters to their families and friends in the Netherlands. From the terse notes of first-time writers to the polished chronicles of skilled correspondents, the letters are presented in engaging English translations that capture the diversity of their authors' personalities. Herbert J. Brinks has included twenty-three series of letters from the Dutch Immigrant Letter Collection at Calvin College, covering periods of correspondence from three to fifty-seven years. In addition to an introduction to Dutch immigration history, the book provides abundant illustrations and brief biographies of the correspondents. Most write from Dutch American agricultural communities in Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Iowa, but some describe life in cities as far-flung as Paterson, New Jersey; Tampa, Florida; and Oak Harbor, Washington. Rural and urban, Protestant and Catholic, male and female, the letter writers capture moments from their arrival through decades of life in the New World. Affording glimpses into the daily experiences of becoming American, the letters describe the weather, the food, the price of crops, the economics of farm and factory, the peculiarities of neighbors, and the drama of politics. As they bring news of marriages, births, and deaths, sustain family members in faith, or squabble over money, they also offer an intimate view of the strength—and the frailty—of family ties over distance.

Dutch American Voices

Dutch American Voices PDF Author: Herbert J. Brinks
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501735705
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 512

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Book Description
Brother I cannot tell you what is best for you—staying there or coming here. If it only concerned yourself! would say, stay. But if you are concerned about your descendents I would say, come." Writing from his Michigan farm to relatives back in Overijssel, Jacob Dunnink voiced a perspective at once uniquely his own and typical of his immigrant community in 1856. Dutch American Voices brings together a full spectrum of such perspectives, as expressed in immigrants' letters to their families and friends in the Netherlands. From the terse notes of first-time writers to the polished chronicles of skilled correspondents, the letters are presented in engaging English translations that capture the diversity of their authors' personalities. Herbert J. Brinks has included twenty-three series of letters from the Dutch Immigrant Letter Collection at Calvin College, covering periods of correspondence from three to fifty-seven years. In addition to an introduction to Dutch immigration history, the book provides abundant illustrations and brief biographies of the correspondents. Most write from Dutch American agricultural communities in Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Iowa, but some describe life in cities as far-flung as Paterson, New Jersey; Tampa, Florida; and Oak Harbor, Washington. Rural and urban, Protestant and Catholic, male and female, the letter writers capture moments from their arrival through decades of life in the New World. Affording glimpses into the daily experiences of becoming American, the letters describe the weather, the food, the price of crops, the economics of farm and factory, the peculiarities of neighbors, and the drama of politics. As they bring news of marriages, births, and deaths, sustain family members in faith, or squabble over money, they also offer an intimate view of the strength—and the frailty—of family ties over distance.

Silenced Voices

Silenced Voices PDF Author: Inez Hollander
Publisher: Ohio University Press
ISBN: 0896802698
Category : Dutch
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Like a number of Netherlanders in the post-World War II era, Inez Hollander only gradually became aware of her family's connections with its Dutch colonial past, including a Creole great-grandmother. For the most part, such personal stories have been, if not entirely silenced, at least only whispered about in Holland, where society has remained uncomfortable with many aspects of the country's relationship with its colonial empire. Unlike the majority of memoirs that are soaked in nostalgia for tempo dulu, Hollander's story sets out to come to grips with her family's past by weaving together personal records with historical and literary accounts of the period. She seeks not merely to locate and preserve family memories, but also to test them against a more disinterested historical record. Hers is a complicated and sometimes painful personal journey of realization, unusually mindful of the ways in which past memories and present considerations can be intermingled when we seek to understand a difficult past. Silenced Voices is an important contribution to the literature on how Dutch society has dealt with its recent colonial history.

The Dutch American Identity

The Dutch American Identity PDF Author: Terence Schoone-Jongen
Publisher: Cambria Press
ISBN: 1604975652
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 394

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Book Description
Each year, thousands of communities across the United States celebrate their ethnic heritages, values, and identities through the medium of festivals. Drawing together elements of ethnic pride, nostalgia, religious values, economic motives, cultural memory, and a spirit of celebration, these festivals are performances that promote and preserve a community's unique identity and heritage, while at the same time attempting to place the ethnic community within the larger American experience. Although these aims are pervasive across ethnic heritage celebrations, two festivals that appear similar may nevertheless serve radically different social and political aims. Accordingly, The Dutch American Identity examines five Dutch American festivals-three of which are among the oldest ethnic heritage festivals in the United States-in order to determine what such festivals mean and do for the staging communities. Although Dutch Americans were historically among the first ethnic groups to stage ethnic heritage festivals designed to attract outside audiences, and despite the fact that several Dutch American festivals have met with sustained success, little scholarship has focused on this ethnic group's festivals. Moreover, studies that have considered festivals staged by communities of European descent have typically focused on a single festival. The Dutch American Identity thus, on the one hand, seeks to call attention to the historical development and current sociocultural significance of Dutch American heritage festivals. On the other hand, this study aims to elucidate the ties that bind the five communities that stage these festivals together rather than studying one festival in isolation from the others. Creatively combining several methodologies, The Dutch American Identity describes and analyzes how the social, political, and ethical values of the five communities are expressed (performed, acted out, represented, costumed, and displayed) in their respective festivals. Rather than relying on familiar, even stereotypical, notions of "the Midwest," "rural America," "conservative America," etc., that often appear in contemporary political discourse, Schoone-Jongen shows just how complex and contradictory these festivals are in the ways they represent each community. At the same time, by placing these festivals within the context of American history, Schoone-Jongen also demonstrates how and why each festival is a microcosm of particular cultural, social, and political developments in modern America. The Dutch American Identity is an important book for sociology, performance studies, folklore, immigration history, anthropology, and cultural history collections.

Four Centuries of Dutch-American Relations

Four Centuries of Dutch-American Relations PDF Author: Hans Krabbendam
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438430159
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1200

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Book Description
Since Henry Hudson landed on Manhattan in 1609, the peoples of the Netherlands and North America have been inextricably linked. Four Centuries of Dutch-American Relations, written by a team of nearly one hundred Dutch and American scholars, is the first book to offer a comprehensive history of this bilateral relationship. This volume covers the main paths of contacts, conflicts, and common plans, from the first exploratory contacts in the early seventeenth century to the intense and multifaceted exchanges in the early twenty-first. Based on the most up-to-date research, Four Centuries of Dutch-American Relations will be for years to come a valuable and much-used reference work for anyone interested in the history and culture of the United States and the Netherlands and the larger transatlantic interdependent framework in which they are embedded.

American Exceptionalisms

American Exceptionalisms PDF Author: Sylvia Söderlind
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438435762
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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Book Description
An incisive and wide ranging look at a powerful force and myth in American culture and history, American Exceptionalisms reveals the centuries-old persistence of the notion that the United States is an exceptional nation, in being both an example to the world and exempt from the rules of international law. Scholars from North America and Europe trace versions of the rhetoric of exceptionalism through a multitude of historical, cultural, and political phenomena, from John Winthrop's vision of the "cittie on a hill" and the Salem witch trials in the seventeenth century to The Blair Witch Project and Oprah Winfrey's "Child Predator Watch List" in the twenty-first century. The first set of essays focus on constitutive historical moments in the development of the myth, rom early exploration narratives through political debates in the early republic to twentieth-century immigration debates. The latter essays address the role of exceptionalism in the "war on terror" and such cornerstones of modern popular culture such as the horror stories of H.P. Lovecraft, the songs of Steve Earle, and the Oprah Winfrey show. Sylvia Söderlind is Associate Professor of English Language and Literature at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada. She is the author of Margin/Alias: Language and Colonization in Canadian and Québécois Fiction (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991) and articles on American, Canadian and Québécois fiction, "ghostmodernism" and translation, and the politics of metaphor published in, among others, Canadian Review of Comparative Literature, Ariel, Essays in Canadian Writing, Voix et images, RS/SI, New Feminism Review (Japan), ARTES (Sweden). James Taylor Carson is Professor of History and Associate Dean in the Faculty of Arts and Science at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada. His scholarship focuses on the ethnohistory of native peoples in the American South, and he has published two books on the subject, Searching for the Bright Path: The Mississippi Choctaws from Prehistory to Removal (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999) and Making an Atlantic World: Circles, Paths, and Stories from the Colonial South (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2007).

The Professor Is In

The Professor Is In PDF Author: Karen Kelsky
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0553419420
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 450

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Book Description
The definitive career guide for grad students, adjuncts, post-docs and anyone else eager to get tenure or turn their Ph.D. into their ideal job Each year tens of thousands of students will, after years of hard work and enormous amounts of money, earn their Ph.D. And each year only a small percentage of them will land a job that justifies and rewards their investment. For every comfortably tenured professor or well-paid former academic, there are countless underpaid and overworked adjuncts, and many more who simply give up in frustration. Those who do make it share an important asset that separates them from the pack: they have a plan. They understand exactly what they need to do to set themselves up for success. They know what really moves the needle in academic job searches, how to avoid the all-too-common mistakes that sink so many of their peers, and how to decide when to point their Ph.D. toward other, non-academic options. Karen Kelsky has made it her mission to help readers join the select few who get the most out of their Ph.D. As a former tenured professor and department head who oversaw numerous academic job searches, she knows from experience exactly what gets an academic applicant a job. And as the creator of the popular and widely respected advice site The Professor is In, she has helped countless Ph.D.’s turn themselves into stronger applicants and land their dream careers. Now, for the first time ever, Karen has poured all her best advice into a single handy guide that addresses the most important issues facing any Ph.D., including: -When, where, and what to publish -Writing a foolproof grant application -Cultivating references and crafting the perfect CV -Acing the job talk and campus interview -Avoiding the adjunct trap -Making the leap to nonacademic work, when the time is right The Professor Is In addresses all of these issues, and many more.

Alternative Rhetorics

Alternative Rhetorics PDF Author: Laura Gray-Rosendale
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791449738
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
Challenges the traditional rhetorical canon.

The Grasinski Girls

The Grasinski Girls PDF Author: Mary Patrice Erdmans
Publisher: Ohio University Press
ISBN: 0821415816
Category : Michigan
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Annotation Using the oral histories of her mother and aunts, Erdmans explores the private lives of these working-class women in the post-World War II generation and shows how gender, class, ethnicity, and religion shaped their choices.

Wanderwords

Wanderwords PDF Author: Maria Lauret
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 162892165X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
How do (im)migrant writers negotiate their representation of a multilingual world for a monolingual audience? Does their English betray the presence of another language, is that other language erased, or does it appear here and there, on special occasions for special reasons? Do words and meanings wander from one language and one self to another? Do the psychic and cultural worlds of different languages split apart or merge? What is the aesthetic effect of such wandering, splitting, or merging? Usually described as “code-switches” by linguists, fragments of other languages have wandered into American literature in English from the beginning. Wanderwords asks what, in the memoirs, poems, essays, and fiction of a variety of twentieth and twenty first century writers, the function and meaning of such language migration might be. It shows what there is to be gained if we learn to read migrant writing with an eye, and an ear, for linguistic difference and it concludes that, freighted with the other-cultural meanings wrapped up in their different looks and sounds, wanderwords can perform wonders of poetic signification as well as cultural critique. Bringing together literary and cultural theory with linguistics as well as the theory and history of migration, and with psychoanalysis for its understanding of the multilingual unconscious, Wanderwords engages closely with the work of well-known and unheard-of writers such as Mary Antin and Eva Hoffman, Richard Rodriguez and Junot Díaz, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha and Bharati Mukherjee, Edward Bok and Truus van Bruinessen, Susana Chávez-Silverman and Gustavo Perez-Firmat, Pietro DiDonato and Don DeLillo. In so doing, a poetics of multilingualism unfolds that stretches well beyond translation into the lingual contact zone of English-with-other-languages that is American literature, belatedly re-connecting with the world.

Homesickness

Homesickness PDF Author: Susan J. Matt
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199707448
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
Homesickness today is dismissed as a sign of immaturity, what children feel at summer camp, but in the nineteenth century it was recognized as a powerful emotion. When gold miners in California heard the tune "Home, Sweet Home," they sobbed. When Civil War soldiers became homesick, army doctors sent them home, lest they die. Such images don't fit with our national mythology, which celebrates the restless individualism of colonists, explorers, pioneers, soldiers, and immigrants who supposedly left home and never looked back. Using letters, diaries, memoirs, medical records, and psychological studies, this wide-ranging book uncovers the profound pain felt by Americans on the move from the country's founding until the present day. Susan Matt shows how colonists in Jamestown longed for and often returned to England, African Americans during the Great Migration yearned for their Southern homes, and immigrants nursed memories of Sicily and Guadalajara and, even after years in America, frequently traveled home. These iconic symbols of the undaunted, forward-looking American spirit were often homesick, hesitant, and reluctant voyagers. National ideology and modern psychology obscure this truth, portraying movement as easy, but in fact Americans had to learn how to leave home, learn to be individualists. Even today, in a global society that prizes movement and that condemns homesickness as a childish emotion, colleges counsel young adults and their families on how to manage the transition away from home, suburbanites pine for their old neighborhoods, and companies take seriously the emotional toll borne by relocated executives and road warriors. In the age of helicopter parents and boomerang kids, and the new social networks that sustain connections across the miles, Americans continue to assert the significance of home ties. By highlighting how Americans reacted to moving farther and farther from their roots, Homesickness: An American History revises long-held assumptions about home, mobility, and our national identity.