Addresses the relationships between what modern-day experts say to each other and to their constituencies Technical Knowledge in American Culture addresses the relationships between what modern-day experts say to each other and to their constituencies and whether what they say and do relates to the larger culture, society, and era. These essays challenge the social impact model by looking at science, technology, and medicine not as social activities but as intellectual activities.
A must-read for parents and teachers, this major bestseller reveals how cultural literacy is the hidden key to effective education and presents 5000 facts that every literate American should know. In this forceful manifesto Professor E. D. Hirsch, Jr., argues that children in the United States are being deprived of the basic knowledge that would enable them to function in contemporary society. They lack cultural literacy: a grasp of background information that writers and speakers assume their audience already has. Even if a student has a basic competence in the English language, he or she has little chance of entering the American mainstream without knowing what a silicon chip is, or when the Civil War was fought. An important work that has engendered a nationwide debate on our educational standards, Cultural Literacy is a required reading for anyone concerned with our future as a literate nation.
As a meeting point for world cultures, the USA is characterized by its breadth and diversity. Acknowledging that diversity is the fundamental feature of American culture, this volume is organized around a keen awareness of race, gender, class and space and with over 1,200 alphabetically-arranged entries - spanning 'the American century' from the end of World War II to the present day - the Encyclopedia provides a one-stop source for insightful and stimulating coverage of all aspects of that culture. Entries range from short definitions to longer overview essays and with full cross-referencing, extensive indexing, and a thematic contents list, this volume provides an essential cultural context for both teachers and students of American studies, as well as providing fascinating insights into American culture for the general reader. The suggestions for further reading, which follows most entries, are also invaluable guides to more specialized sources.
This set surveys American misogyny in all its cultural forms, from popular music, film, and education to healthcare, politics, and business. The work also assesses proposals to confront and reduce such expressions of hatred. The essays contained in this two-volume set explore misogyny within various areas of American culture to demonstrate its pervasiveness and identify common foundations of its many presentations. Beyond a basic definition of misogyny, which includes hatred of women and girls and the ways in which this hatred and distrust influences action, speech, discrimination, policy, and culture in the United States, this project also aims to expand and complicate definitions of misogyny in order to provide readers with a robust introduction to and understanding of the larger topic. Given the current political and cultural climate and the more frequent and widespread use of the term "misogyny" by various media outlets and voters during the 2016 presidential election, this book has the potential both to contribute to ongoing conversations on misogyny and, among its intended audience of advanced high school, beginning college students and the general public, to inform a shift currently unfolding in public conversation on the topic.
Contents: Foreword ix; I. Social Science in Crisis 1; II. The Concept of "Culture" 11; III. The Pattern of American Culture 54; IV. The Social Sciences as Tools 114; V. Values and the Social Sciences 180; VI. Some Outrageous Hypotheses 202; Index 251 Originally published in 1939. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
This book analyses the American way of war within the context of Clausewitzian theory. In doing so, it draws conclusions about the origins, viability, and technical feasibility of America‘s current strategic approach.The author argues that the situation in which America has found itself in Iraq is the direct result of a culturally predisposed incli
Grappling with the contemporary Latin American literary climate and its relationship to the pervasive technologies that shape global society, this book visits Latin American literature, technology, and digital culture from the post-boom era to the present day. The volume examines literature in dialogue with the newest media, including videogames, blogs, electronic literature, and social networking sites, as well as older forms of technology, such as film, photography, television, and music. Together, the essays interrogate how the global networked subject has affected local political and cultural concerns in Latin America. They show that this subject reflects an affective mode of knowledge that can transform the way scholars understand the effects of reading and spectatorship on the production of political communities. The collection thus addresses a series of issues crucial to current and future discussions of literature and culture in Latin America: how literary, visual, and digital artists make technology a formal element of their work; how technology, from photographs to blogs, is represented in text, and the ramifications of that presence; how new media alters the material circulation of culture in Latin America; how readership changes in a globalized electronic landscape; and how critical approaches to the convergences, boundaries, and protocols of new media might transform our understanding of the literature and culture produced or received in Latin America today and in the future.
The latest vocabulary of key terms in American Studies Since its initial publication, scholars and students alike have turned to Keywords for American Cultural Studies as an invaluable resource for understanding key terms and debates in the fields of American studies and cultural studies. As scholarship has continued to evolve, this revised and expanded second edition offers indispensable meditations on new and developing concepts used in American studies, cultural studies, and beyond. 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. Designed as a print-digital hybrid publication, Keywords collects more than 90 essays30 of which are new to this edition—from interdisciplinary scholars, each on a single term such as “America,” “culture,” “law,” and “religion.” Alongside “community,” “prison,” "queer," “region,” 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. The Keywords website, which features 33 essays, provides pedagogical tools that engage the entirety of the book, both in print and online. The publication brings together 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. All are clear, challenging, and critically engaged. As a whole, 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.
