History and American Studies Books

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  Changing Cultural Landscapes of South Korea

  Niki J.P. Alsford and Nora Hui-Jung Kim

  This book provides a comprehensive exploration of the profound transformations in the cultural and physical landscapes of South Korea, with an interdisciplinary approach that draws from anthropology, sociology, and human geography. The authors delve into the dynamic interplay between tradition and modernity in a nation that has experienced rapid development, technological innovation, and significant socio-cultural changes. With contributions from experts across various fields, this book examines how South Korea’s distinctive path of modernization is reshaping both the tangible and intangible aspects of its society. Organized around four key themes—Gender and the Media Landscape, Religion and Social Movements, the Ethno-racial Landscape, and the Traditional Landscape—it presents diverse perspectives on the interconnected forces driving rapid societal change.

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  Proximity to Power: Rethinking Race and Place in Alexandria, Virginia

  Krystyn R. Moon

  Located just across the Potomac River from Washington, DC, Alexandria, Virginia, has long held a unique sociopolitical position due to its proximity to the nation’s capital. This unexplored relationship had a profound impact on African Americans' access to schools, transportation, and other resources in comparison to other southern towns and cities. Proximity to Power examines the history of Alexandria’s African American community from the mid-nineteenth century to the twenty-first century, focusing on its dynamic relationship with the federal government before, during, and after the Civil War. Krystyn R. Moon highlights the long-standing advocacy and agency of Alexandria’s Black residents, adding further nuance to our understanding of the relationship between race and place.

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  Social Problems: A Human Rights Perspective

  Eric Bonds

  Social Problems: A Human Rights Perspective, Second Edition evaluates U.S. society through an international human rights framework. The book provides a critical discussion about what rights mean, along with a sociological exploration of power and inequality to explain why human rights are so often violated or left ignored and unfulfilled in the United States.

  In each chapter, the book offers numerous policy alternatives that could provide a pathway toward the increased fulfillment of rights, while also stressing the important role that nonviolent social movements have had, and must have in the future, in achieving greater justice, dignity, well being, and environmental protection in our society.

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  Selling the Sights: The Invention of the Tourist in American Culture

  Will Mackintosh

  In the early nineteenth century, thanks to a booming transportation industry, Americans began to journey away from home simply for the sake of traveling, giving rise to a new cultural phenomenon —the tourist.

  In Selling the Sights, Will B. Mackintosh describes the origins and cultural significance of this new type of traveler and the moment in time when the emerging American market economy began to reshape the availability of geographical knowledge, the material conditions of travel, and the variety of destinations that sought to profit from visitors with money to spend. Entrepreneurs began to transform the critical steps of travel—deciding where to go and how to get there—into commodities that could be produced in volume and sold to a marketplace of consumers. The identities of Americans prosperous enough to afford such commodities were fundamentally changed as they came to define themselves through the consumption of experiences.

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  Remember Little Rock

  Erin Krutko Devlin

  In Remember Little Rock, Erin Krutko Devlin explores public memories surrounding the iconic Arkansas school desegregation crisis of 1957 and shows how these memories were vigorously contested and sometimes deployed against the cause. Delving into a wide variety of sources, from memoirs to televised docudramas, commemoration ceremonies, and the creation of Little Rock High museums, Devlin reveals how many white moderates proclaimed Little Rock a victory for civil rights and educational equality even as segregation persisted. At the same time, African American activists, students, and their families asserted their own stories in the ongoing fight for racial justice.

  Devlin also demonstrates that public memory directly bears on law and policy. She argues that the triumphal narrative of civil rights has been used to stall school desegregation, support tokenism, and to roll back federal court oversight of school desegregation, voter registration, and efforts to promote diversity in public institutions.

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  Communism on Tomorrow Street: Mass Housing and Everyday Life after Stalin

  Steven E. Harris

  This fascinating and deeply researched book examines how, beginning under Khrushchev in 1953, a generation of Soviet citizens moved from the overcrowded communal dwellings of the Stalin era to modern single-family apartments, later dubbed khrushchevka. Arguing that moving to a separate apartment allowed ordinary urban dwellers to experience Khrushchev’s thaw, Steven E. Harris fundamentally shifts interpretation of the thaw, conventionally understood as an elite phenomenon.

  Harris focuses on the many participants eager to benefit from and influence the new way of life embodied by the khrushchevka, its furniture, and its associated consumer goods. He examines activities of national and local politicians, planners, enterprise managers, workers, furniture designers and architects, elite organizations (centrally involved in creating cooperative housing), and ordinary urban dwellers.

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  Take Care of the Living: Reconstructing Confederate Veteran Families in Virginia

  Jeffrey W. McClurken

  Take Care of the Living assesses the short- and long-term impact of the war on Confederate veteran families of all classes in Pittsylvania County and Danville, Virginia. Using letters, diaries, church minutes, and military and state records, as well as close analysis of the entire 1860 and 1870 Pittsylvania County manuscript population census, McClurken explores the consequences of the war for over three thousand Confederate soldiers and their families. The author reveals an array of strategies employed by those families to come to terms with their postwar reality, including reorganizing and reconstructing the household, turning to local churches for emotional and economic support, pleading with local elites for financial assistance or positions, sending psychologically damaged family members to a state-run asylum, and looking to the state for direct assistance in the form of replacement limbs for amputees, pensions, and even state-supported homes for old soldiers and widows.

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  Reconstruction

  Claudine L. Ferrell

  Few periods in American history have aroused as much debate as the years immediately after the Civil War, those commonly referred to simply as Reconstruction. The victorious North had to determine how to treat the vanquished South and how to make a nation whole once again. The divisive issues of freedom and civil rights became even more complex than before the War and dominated national politics. Also at stake was the balance of power among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government. Before it was all over, a president was impeached (though not convicted), and a rigorous plan for Reconstruction was enacted, then allowed to fade as white Southerners regained power and instituted repressive Jim Crow governments. This resource provides an overview essay on the period, six essays on various aspects of Reconstruction, a section of biographies of important players, and selected and introduced primary documents.