Placing America

Placing America PDF Author: Michael Fuchs
Publisher: transcript Verlag
ISBN: 3839420806
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 215

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Book Description
In »Call Me Ishmael«, Charles Olson exclaims »SPACE to be the central fact to man born in America«. Indeed, from the start, history and identity in America have been intricately tied to issues of space: from the idea of the »city upon a hill« to the transnational (soft) power of the United States, space has always served as an important parameter of power gained or lost and of the struggles to maintain or resist it. With contributions that range from the construction of America in (European) academic discourses to children's fiction, this collection provides an extensive and insightful study of how space influences our understanding of America.

Placing America

Placing America PDF Author: Michael Fuchs
Publisher: transcript Verlag
ISBN: 3839420806
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 215

Get Book Here

Book Description
In »Call Me Ishmael«, Charles Olson exclaims »SPACE to be the central fact to man born in America«. Indeed, from the start, history and identity in America have been intricately tied to issues of space: from the idea of the »city upon a hill« to the transnational (soft) power of the United States, space has always served as an important parameter of power gained or lost and of the struggles to maintain or resist it. With contributions that range from the construction of America in (European) academic discourses to children's fiction, this collection provides an extensive and insightful study of how space influences our understanding of America.

Downtown America

Downtown America PDF Author: Alison Isenberg
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226385094
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 462

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Book Description
Downtown America was once the vibrant urban center romanticized in the Petula Clark song—a place where the lights were brighter, where people went to spend their money and forget their worries. But in the second half of the twentieth century, "downtown" became a shadow of its former self, succumbing to economic competition and commercial decline. And the death of Main Streets across the country came to be seen as sadly inexorable, like the passing of an aged loved one. Downtown America cuts beneath the archetypal story of downtown's rise and fall and offers a dynamic new story of urban development in the United States. Moving beyond conventional narratives, Alison Isenberg shows that downtown's trajectory was not dictated by inevitable free market forces or natural life-and-death cycles. Instead, it was the product of human actors—the contested creation of retailers, developers, government leaders, architects, and planners, as well as political activists, consumers, civic clubs, real estate appraisers, even postcard artists. Throughout the twentieth century, conflicts over downtown's mundane conditions—what it should look like and who should walk its streets—pointed to fundamental disagreements over American values. Isenberg reveals how the innovative efforts of these participants infused Main Street with its resonant symbolism, while still accounting for pervasive uncertainty and fears of decline. Readers of this work will find anything but a story of inevitability. Even some of the downtown's darkest moments—the Great Depression's collapse in land values, the rioting and looting of the 1960s, or abandonment and vacancy during the 1970s—illuminate how core cultural values have animated and intertwined with economic investment to reinvent the physical form and social experiences of urban commerce. Downtown America—its empty stores, revitalized marketplaces, and romanticized past—will never look quite the same again. A book that does away with our most clichéd approaches to urban studies, Downtown America will appeal to readers interested in the history of the United States and the mythology surrounding its most cherished institutions. A Choice Oustanding Academic Title. Winner of the 2005 Ellis W. Hawley Prize from the Organization of American Historians. Winner of the 2005 Lewis Mumford Prize for Best Book in American Planning History. Winner of the 2005 Historic Preservation Book Price from the University of Mary Washington Center for Historic Preservation. Named 2005 Honor Book from the New Jersey Council for the Humanities.

Placing Latin America

Placing Latin America PDF Author: Edward L. Jackiewicz
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 1442212446
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
This comprehensive study offers a thematic approach to Latin America, focusing on the dynamic connections between people, places, and environments rather than on pre-defined notions about the region. The book’s well-rounded and accessible analysis includes discussions of borders and migration; transnationalism and globalization; urbanization and the material, environmental and social landscapes of cities; and the connections between economic development and political change. The authors also explore social and cultural themes such as the illegal drug trade, tourism, children, and cinema. Offering a nuanced and clear perspective, this book will be a valuable resource for all those interested in the politics, economy, and society of a rapidly globalizing continent. Contributions by: Fernando J. Bosco, J. Christopher Brown, James Craine, Altha J. Cravey, Giorgio Hadi Curti, James Hayes, Edward L. Jackiewicz, Thomas Klak, Mirek Lipinski, Regan M. Maas, Araceli Masterson-Algar, Kent Mathewson, Sarah A. Moore, Linda Quiquivix, Zia Salim, Kate Swanson, and Benjamin Timms.

Place and Belonging in America

Place and Belonging in America PDF Author: David Jacobson
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 0801876060
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
How did the American people come to develop a moral association with this land, such that their very experience of nationhood was rooted in, and their republican virtues depended upon, that land? And what is happening now as the exclusivity of that moral linkage between people and land becomes ever more attenuated? In Place and Belonging in America, David Jacobson addresses the evolving relationship between geography and citizenship in the United States since the nation's origins. Americans have commonly assumed that only a people rooted in a bounded territory could safeguard republican virtues. But, as Jacobson argues, in the contemporary world of transnational identities, multiple loyalties, and permeable borders, the notion of a singular territorial identity has lost its resonance. The United States has come to represent a diverse quilt of cultures with varying ties to the land. These developments have transformed the character of American politics to one in which the courts take a much larger role in mediating civic life. An expanding web of legal rights enables individuals and groups to pursue their own cultural and social ends, in contrast to the civic republican practice of an active citizenry legislating its collective life. In the first part of his sweeping study, Jacobson considers the origins of the uniquely American sense of place, exploring such components as the Puritans and their religious vision of the New World; the early Republic and agrarian virtue as extolled in the writings of Thomas Jefferson; the nationalization of place during the Civil War; and the creation of post-Civil War monuments and, later, the national park system. The second part of Place and Belonging in America concerns the contemporary United States and its more complex interactions between space and citizenship. Here Jacobson looks at the multicultural landscape as represented by the 1991 act of Congress that changed the name of the Custer Battlefield National Monument to Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument and the subsequent construction of a memorial honoring the Indian participants in the battle; the Vietnam Veterans Memorial; and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. He also reflects upon changing patterns of immigration and settlement. At once far-reaching and detailed, Place and Belonging in America offers a though-provoking new perspective on the myriad, often spiritual connections between territoriality, national identity, and civic culture.

A Place at the Table

A Place at the Table PDF Author: Maria Fleming
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195150368
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 153

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Book Description
Examines the efforts of many different people in American history to secure equal treatment in such areas as religion, voting rights, education, housing, and employment.

Re-Placing America

Re-Placing America PDF Author: Ruth Hsu
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824823641
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
This collection of essays and poems examines various recent literary texts and cultural arenas in North America and the Asia and Pacific regions for what they reveal of the ongoing struggles of indigenous people and people of colour for justice and autonomy.

Why Place Matters

Why Place Matters PDF Author: Wilfred M. McClay
Publisher: Encounter Books
ISBN: 1594037183
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
Contemporary American society, with its emphasis on mobility and economic progress, all too often loses sight of the importance of a sense of “place” and community. Appreciating place is essential for building the strong local communities that cultivate civic engagement, public leadership, and many of the other goods that contribute to a flourishing human life. Do we, in losing our places, lose the crucial basis for healthy and resilient individual identity, and for the cultivation of public virtues? For one can’t be a citizen without being a citizen of some place in particular; one isn’t a citizen of a motel. And if these dangers are real and present ones, are there ways that intelligent public policy can begin to address them constructively, by means of reasonable and democratic innovations that are likely to attract wide public support? Why Place Matters takes these concerns seriously, and its contributors seek to discover how, given the American people as they are, and American economic and social life as it now exists—and not as those things can be imagined to be in some utopian scheme—we can find means of fostering a richer and more sustaining way of life. The book is an anthology of essays exploring the contemporary problems of place and placelessness in American society. The book includes contributions from distinguished scholars and writers such as poet Dana Gioia (former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts), geographer Yi-Fu Tuan, urbanist Witold Rybczynski, architect Philip Bess, essayists Christine Rosen and Ari Schulman, philosopher Roger Scruton, transportation planner Gary Toth, and historians Russell Jacoby and Joseph Amato.

Placing Latin America

Placing Latin America PDF Author: Ed Jackiewicz
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442212438
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
This comprehensive study offers a thematic approach to Latin America, focusing on the dynamic connections between people, places, and environments rather than on pre-defined notions about the region. The book s well-rounded and accessible analysis includes discussions of borders and migration; transnationalism and globalization; urbanization and the material, environmental and social landscapes of cities; and the connections between economic development and political change. The authors also explore social and cultural themes such as the illegal drug trade, tourism, children, and cinema. Offering a nuanced and clear perspective, this book will be a valuable resource for all those interested in the politics, economy, and society of a rapidly globalizing continent. Contributions by: Fernando J. Bosco, J. Christopher Brown, James Craine, Altha J. Cravey, Giorgio Hadi Curti, James Hayes, Edward L. Jackiewicz, Thomas Klak, Mirek Lipinski, Regan M. Maas, Araceli Masterson-Algar, Kent Mathewson, Sarah A. Moore, Linda Quiquivix, Zia Salim, Kate Swanson, and Benjamin Timms."

Placing Latin America

Placing Latin America PDF Author: Edward L. Jackiewicz
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538126311
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Placing Latin America offers a thematic approach to the study of the diverse geographies of a globalizing region. This comprehensive text focuses on the dynamic connections between people, places, and environments rather than on predefined notions about the region. The book’s well-rounded and accessible analysis includes discussions of borders and migration, transnationalism and globalization, urbanization and landscapes of cities, the connections between economic development and political change, the physical environment and human-environmental interactions, and natural resources in the context of a global economy. The authors also explore social and cultural themes such as the illegal drug trade, social movements, tourism, and children and young people. Providing a nuanced and clear perspective, this book will be an invaluable guide for all those interested in the politics, economy, and society of a rapidly changing continent.

A Nation Among Nations

A Nation Among Nations PDF Author: Thomas Bender
Publisher: Hill and Wang
ISBN: 1429927593
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
A provocative book that shows us why we must put American history firmly in a global context–from 1492 to today. Immerse yourself in an insightful exploration of American history in A Nation Among Nations. This compelling book by renowned author Thomas Bender paints a different picture of the nation's history by placing it within the broader canvas of global events and developments. Events like the American Revolution, the Civil War, and subsequent imperialism are examined in a new light, revealing fundamental correlations with simultaneous global rebellions, national redefinitions, and competitive imperial ambitions. Intricacies of industrialization, urbanization, laissez-faire economics, capitalism, socialism, and technological advancements become globally interconnected phenomena, altering the solitary perception of these being unique American experiences. A Nation Among Nations isn’t just a history book–it's a thought-provoking journey that transcends geographical boundaries, encouraging us to delve deeper into the globally intertwined series of events that spun the American historical narrative.