Ari Helo - An Unfamiliar America: Essays in American Studies

This collection focuses on conceptions of the unfamiliar from the viewpoint of mainstream American history: aliens, immigrants, ethnic groups, and previously unencountered ideas and ideologies in Trumpian America. The book suggests bringing historical thinking back to the center of American Studies, given that it has recently been challenged by the influential memory studies boom. As much as identity-building appears to be the central concern for much of the current practice in American history writing, it is worth keeping in mind that historical truth may not always directly contribute to ones identity-building. The researchers constant quest for truth does not equate to already possessing it. History changes all the time because it consists of our constant reinterpretation of the past. It is only the past that does not change. This collection aims at keeping these two apart while scrutinizing a variety of contested topics in American history, including xenophobic attitudes toward eighteenth-century university professors, Apache masculinity, the Ku Klux Klan, Tom Waitss lyrics, and the politics of the Trump era.

Ari Helo is a Senior University Lecturer in North American Studies at the University of Helsinki.

Mikko Saikku is the McDonnell Douglas Professor of American Studies at the University of Helsinki.

The Pragmatic Tradition in the Age of McCarthyism

U.S. World War II Memory, 1984 and Beyond

Spears of Promise, Shields of Truth

Georgia and South Carolina, ca. 1700ca. 1820

Supervisors, Enslaved Labourers, and the Plantation Enterprise

Essays in American Studies

For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Advances-in-American-History/book-series/RAAH

First published 2021

by Routledge

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and by Routledge

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2021 selection and editorial matter, Ari Helo and Mikko Saikku; individual chapters, the contributors

The right of Ari Helo and Mikko Saikku to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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Names: Helo, Ari, editor. | Saikku, Mikko, editor.

Title: An unfamiliar America: essays in American studies /
edited by Ari Helo and Mikko Saikku.

Other titles: Essays in American studies

Description: New York, NY: Routledge, 2021. | Series:
Routledge advances in American history; 18 | Includes
bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020024637 (print) | LCCN 2020024638
(ebook) | ISBN 9780367551414 (hbk) | ISBN 9781003092131
(ebk) | ISBN 9781000218312 (adobe pdf) | ISBN
9781000218329 (mobi) | ISBN 9781000218336 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: XenophobiaUnited StatesHistory. |
RacismUnited StatesHistory. | United StatesRace
relationsHistory. | United StatesEthnic relationsHistory. |
MinoritiesUnited StatesSocial conditions. | Minorities
Civil rightsUnited StatesHistory. | United StatesPolitics
and government2017 | Christianity and politicsUnited
States. | National characteristics, American.

Classification: LCC E184.A1 .U48 2021 (print) | LCC E184.A1
(ebook) | DDC 305.800973dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020024637

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020024638

ISBN: 978-0-367-55141-4 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-003-09213-1 (ebk)

Typeset in Sabon

by codeMantra

Mark A. Brandon has been a history lecturer at the Anglo-American University in Prague for nearly 18 years. He earned his PhD from Ludwig-Maximilians Universitt (Graduate School of Language and Literature Amerika-Institut) in Munich. His research deals with Ale Hrdlika, early American anthropology, and the construction of race. It emphasizes Hrdlikas Czech-American identity as central to his conception of racial categories. With the support of Ludwig-Maximilians Universitt, Brandon has recently conducted research on the Hrdlika Papers at the Anthropological Archives of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. He was born in the United States, but has lived most of his adult life in the Czech Republic. He holds a Masters Degree in Early Modern European History, but today his research interests are the history of race, anthropology, and immigration in the United States in the first half of the twentieth century.

William H. Chafe is the Alice Mary Baldwin Professor of History (emeritus) at Duke University. He is the author and editor of 13 books. His work has focused on civil rights history, womens history, and modern political history. He helped to start the Duke Oral History Program, the Center for the Study of Civil Rights and Race Relations, the Duke-UNC Center for Research on Women, and the Center for Documentary Studies. He chaired the Duke history department from 1990 to 1995, and was Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and Vice-Provost for Undergraduate Education from July 1, 1995, to July 1, 2004. His book on the Greensboro sit-ins, Civilities and Civil Rights: Greensboro, North Carolina and the Black Struggle for Freedom, won the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award in 1981. His book Never Stop Running: Allard K. Lowenstein and the Struggle to Save American Liberalism won the Sydney Hillman Book Award in 1993. The book he co-authored with Robert Korstad and Raymond Gavins, Remembering Jim Crow, won the Lillian Smith Book Award in 2003. Chafe served as president of the Organization of American Historians in 19992000. During the past decade, he has increasingly been involved in a comparative study of the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa and the civil rights movement in America.

Elliott J. Gorn is the Joseph Gagliano Professor of American Urban History at Loyola University Chicago. His books and articles embrace multiple aspects of American culture, particularly the history of various social groups in American cities since 1800. His five major books examine various aspects of cultural history in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century United States, including