Middle-class America Research Articles

The Clothes Maketh the Cult

The Clothes Maketh the Cult

Interrogating the Myths of Education: Dorothy Bryant'sElla Price's JournalandMiss Giardino

Interrogating the Myths of Education: Dorothy Bryant's<i>Ella Price's Journal</i>and<i>Miss Giardino</i>

Annual Bibliography of Philip Roth Criticism and Resources—2016

Annual Bibliography of Philip Roth Criticism and Resources — 2020 Brittany Hirth (bio) The following is a bibliography of Philip Roth-related texts published during 2020 including books, book chapters, and journal and magazine articles. Individual essays included in books not solely centered on Roth are grouped in “Book Chapters” and are cross-listed according to MLA style. The final section lists a few notable essays. Digital book editions, such as those designed for Amazon’s Kindle and Barnes and Noble’s Nook readers, are not included in this listing, but they can be easily accessed online. Brittany Hirth Brittany Hirth is an Assistant Professor of English in the Department of Arts and Letters at Dickinson State University, where she teaches twentieth century and contemporary American literature. She has published articles on Philip Roth, Jonathan Safran Foer, and Anthony Swofford. BOOKS O’Brien, Dan. Fine Meshwork: Philip Roth, Edna O’Brien, and Jewish-Irish Literature. Syracuse UP, 2020. Google Scholar Taylor, Benjamin. My Friendship with Philip Roth. Penguin, 2020. Google Scholar BOOK CHAPTERS Baumgarten, Murray. “Philip Roth, Jewish Identity, and the Satire of Modern Success.” History and Literature: New Readings of Jewish Texts in Honor of Arnold J. Band, edited by William Cutter and David C. Jacobson, Brown Judaic Studies, 2020, pp. 289–300. Google Scholar Brauner, David. “‘Being Jewish’: Philip Roth, Antisemitism and the Holocaust.” Howard Jacobson, Manchester UP, 2020, pp. 141–97. Google Scholar Coste, Jacques-Henri. “Revisiting Business History through Capitalist Fiction: The Glove-Making Industry in Philip Roth’s American Pastoral.” The Fictions of American Capitalism: Working Fictions and the Economic Novel, edited by Jacques-Henri Coste and Vincent Dussol, Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, pp. 297–317. Google Scholar D’Alfonso, Francesca. “Philip Roth e la fenomenologia della paura: per una lettura del romanzo Nemesis.” Oltre la pandemia: Società, salute, economia e regole nell’era post Covid-19, vol. 1, edited by Gianmaria Palmieri, Editoriale Scientifica, 2020, pp. 781–91. Google Scholar Eaton, Mark. “Secular Theodicy: Saul Bellow, E.L. Doctorow, and Philip Roth.” Religion and American Literature since 1950, Bloomsbury, 2020, pp. 161–99. Google Scholar Hadar, David. “Negotiating Continuity: Writing about Philip Roth in Israel.” Affiliated Identities in Jewish American Literature, Bloomsbury, 2020, pp. 127–41. Google Scholar Kellman, Steven G. “Four Score and Philip Roth.” Rambling Prose: Essays, Trinity UP, 2020, pp. 126–33. Google Scholar Kirsh, Adam. “Goodbye, Columbus and Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth.” The Blessing and the Curse: The Jewish People and Their Books in the Twentieth Century, Norton, 2020, pp. 112–22. Google Scholar Lambert, Josh, Rachel Gordan, Benjamin Schreier, Bettina Hoffman, and Julian Levinson. “Four Approaches to Teaching Goodbye, Columbus.” Teaching Jewish American Literature, edited by Roberta Rosenberg and Rachel Rubinstein, MLA, 2020, pp. 317–27. Google Scholar Maxey, Ruth. “Creating a Usable Past: Writing the Korean War in Contemporary American Fiction.” 21st Century US Historical Fiction: Contemporary Responses to the Past, edited by Ruth Maxey, Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, pp. 149–69. Google Scholar Mitchell, Kaye. “The Shame of Being a Man: Humiliation and/as Heroism.” Writing Shame: Gender, Contemporary Literature and Negative Affect, edited by Kaye Mitchell, Edinburgh UP, 2020, pp. 199–244. Google Scholar Nell, Werner. “Überschaubare Nachbarschaft? Religion, Macht und Sexualität in der Kleinstadt: Eine Adoleszenz-Erzählung von Heinrich Böll mit einem Blick auf Philip Roth.” Kleinstadtliteratur: Erkundungen eines Imaginationsraums ungleichzeitiger Moderne, edited by Werner Nell and Marc Weiland, transcript, 2020, pp. 347–72. Google Scholar Peleg, Yaron. “Writing New Kinds of Jews: A Course in Literary Genetics and Masculinity.” Teaching Jewish American Literature, edited by Roberta Rosenberg and Rachel Rubinstein, MLA, 2020, pp. 183–89. Google Scholar Schreier, Benjamin. “Introduction: What’s the ‘History’ in ‘Jewish American Literary History’ the History Of?” The Rise and Fall of Jewish American Literature: Ethnic Studies and the Challenge of Identity, U of Pennsylvania P, 2020, pp. 1–36. Google Scholar Shostak, Debra. “The Father in the Apocalyptic Imagination — Part Two: Politics and 9/11.” Fictive Fathers in the Contemporary American Novel, Bloomsbury, 2020, pp. 171–96. Google Scholar ———. “Middle-Class America at Mid-Century.” Fictive Fathers in the Contemporary American Novel, Bloomsbury, 2020, pp. 51–92. Google Scholar Wasserman, Sarah. “Counterhistory, Counterfact, Counterobject: Philip K...

The Critical Significance of Middle Class America for a Collective U.S. Prosperity and Socioeconomic Sustainability

The Critical Significance of Middle Class America for a Collective U.S. Prosperity and Socioeconomic Sustainability

Authority, disciplinary intimacy & parenting in middle-class America

Children learn about authority first from their parents. A shift in orientation to authority occurred during middle-class formation in the mid-nineteenth century U.S., a style of parenting described as ‘disciplinary intimacy.’ A century later disciplinary intimacy, or ‘child-centered’ parenting characterized childrearing advice across American society. Simultaneously, distrust of all institutions in the liberal democratic state accelerated, causing questioning and confusion at every level of society. In family life, disciplinary practices once considered necessary, such as corporal punishment, came to be regarded as harsh and responsible for authoritarianism. Child-centered parenting, while discouraging ‘restrictive’ childrearing practices, gave little direction about constructive correctives, which fueled parental anxiety even as developmentalists temporarily resolved the decades-long controversy about restrictive vs. ‘permissive’ parenting. By the 1990s a debate formerly contrasting working- and middle-class childrearing values was overshadowed by a second shift focused on children’s school success as earlier considerations of authority and discipline faded from view. As concern spreads about the rise of authoritarianism across the West, the politics of parenting may once again preoccupy social scientists who worry about the nascence of sectarianism, xenophobia, and bellicose nationalism.

David B. Potts. Wesleyan University, 1910–1970: Academic Ambition and Middle-Class America. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2015. 677 pp. Hardcover $45.00.

David B. Potts. Wesleyan University, 1910–1970: Academic Ambition and Middle-Class America. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2015. 677 pp. Hardcover $45.00.

Ah, Wilderness!

Ah, Wilderness!

Wesleyan University, 1910–1970: Academic Ambition and Middle-Class America

Wesleyan University, 1910–1970: Academic Ambition and Middle-Class America

Shifting blame: Buprenorphine prescribers, addiction treatment, and prescription monitoring in middle-class America.

Growing nonmedical prescription opioid analgesic use among suburban and rural Whites has changed the public's perception of the nature of opioid addiction, and of appropriate interventions. Opioid addiction has been recast as a biological disorder in which patients are victims of their neurotransmitters and opioid prescribers are irresponsible purveyors of dangerous substances requiring controls. This framing has led to a different set of policy responses than the "War on Drugs" that has focused on heroin trade in poor urban communities; in response to prescription opioid addiction, prescription drug monitoring programs and tamper-resistant opioid formulations have arisen as primary interventions in place of law enforcement. Through the analysis of preliminary findings from interviews with physicians who are certified to manage opioid addiction with the opioid pharmaceutical buprenorphine, we argue that an increase in prescriber monitoring has shifted the focus from addicted people to prescribers as a threat, paradoxically driving users to illicit markets and constricting their access to pharmaceutical treatment for opioid addiction. Prescriber monitoring is also altering clinical cultures of care, as general physicians respond to heightened surveillance and the psychosocial complexities of treating addiction with either rejection of opioid dependent patients, or with resourceful attempts to create support systems for their treatment where none exists.

Wizards of Washington The United States Supreme Court on Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl

In 2013 the U.S. Supreme Court issued a 5-4 opinion in an Indian adoption case that sent shock waves through the Indian community particularly Indian law scholars. The case involved an unwed non-Indian mother and a Cherokee tribal member father and a newborn child that has come to be known as Baby Girl. At issue was a law passed in 1978 that provides special rights to Indian children and Indian parents. The Indian Child Welfare Act (PL95-608) came about as a result of an astonishing number of Indian Children being removed from their families by state child protection agencies without due process being provided to the family. Private adoption agencies and adoption lawyers seized on the opportunity because there was a large unmet need for adoptable children in the country. The Congress in its findings indicated that state agencies were indiscriminately removing Indian children based on standards of white middle class America which opponents argued should not be applied to Indian children. There is a plethora of literature to document the heartbreak and tragedies that resulted. Since the 2013 decision, Indian law scholars have been unrelenting in their criticism of the Courts opinion. Scholars have accused the Court of everything from incompetence to sympathy for the adopting parents to outright defying the will of Congress. Even the Court dissent made some of these accusations. Justice Thomas; a long time critique of the plenary power of Congress in Indian affairs, wrote in his separate concurring opinion that “…constitutional avoidance compels this outcome”. He provides a lengthy reasoning of why Congress lacks plenary power over Indian affairs then states “Because the Court’s plausible interpretation of the relevant sections of the ICWA avoids these constitutional problems, I concur”. Then in a second concurring opinion Justice Breyer states “we should decide no more than is necessary”. He then goes on to explain how ICWA remains intact and is still a valuable law.While some commentators have touched on these aspects of the decision, few have thoroughly analyzed it and none have reached the conclusion I have reached. It is my contention that constitutional avoidance is the heart of this case as well as the Court’s desire to embrace the purpose of the ICWA but at the same time send a message to Congress that they have overstepped their bounds. I can almost envision Chief Justice Roberts telling Justice Alito to write the details of the opinion then telling Justice Thomas to justify the basis then telling Justice Breyer to signal that ICWA is still alive and well.

Elinor Ochs and Tamar Kremer-Sadlik (Eds.), "Fast-Forward Family. Home, Work, and Relationships in Middle-Class America." Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2013, 297 pp.

Elinor Ochs and Tamar Kremer-Sadlik (Eds.), "Fast-Forward Family. Home, Work, and Relationships in Middle-Class America." Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2013, 297 pp.

Wesleyan University, 1910-1970: Academic Ambition and Middle-Class America

Book Review| October 01 2015 Wesleyan University, 1910-1970: Academic Ambition and Middle-Class America Wesleyan University, 1910-1970: Academic Ambition and Middle-Class America, David B. Potts. BRUCE M. STAVE BRUCE M. STAVE Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Connecticut History Review (2015) 54 (2): 320–321. https://doi.org/10.2307/44370314 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation BRUCE M. STAVE; Wesleyan University, 1910-1970: Academic Ambition and Middle-Class America. Connecticut History Review 1 January 2015; 54 (2): 320–321. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/44370314 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressConnecticut History Review Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2015 The Association for the Study of Connecticut History2015 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

A Black Fly in White Milk: The 1999 Women’s World Cup, Briana Scurry, and the Politics of Inclusion

Abstract Briana Scurry’s world-class save in the penalty shootout of the 1999 Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) Women’s World Cup provided the opportunity for the U.S. women’s national team to win their second World Cup championship. However, Scurry’s exceptional athletic feat was scarcely noted, as media outlets were more inclined to select images of Brandi Chastain’s emotional celebration. Situated in a particular historical neoliberal context characterized by postfeminist and postracial politics, Scurry’s mediated representation served to market this team to a global audience. I use a critical and oppositional reading of major U.S. sport magazines, daily U.S. national newspapers, and Nike advertisements to uncover and foreground decentered and obscured narratives. This analysis reveals the selective and strategic ways Scurry’s blackness and femininity were made to matter (and not matter) in order for a neoliberal, white, middle-class America to appear as an open, inclusive, and color-blind society while limiting Scurry to a precarious and restricted space within this American imaginary.

What America also Read: Australian Historical Fiction in the American Marketplace, 1927–48

My title refers to Gordon Hutner's 2009 study What America Read: Taste, Class, and Novel, 1920-1960, an impressively detailed account of middle-class realist fiction and its reception United states across middle decades of twentieth century. Hutner's object of study is not genre fiction but vast middle ground of better novels that were often widely read but have largely disappeared from view both mainstream and revisionary literary histories. over recent decades, of course, an enormous amount of critical effort has gone into reclaiming texts and authors excluded from canon on grounds of gender, race, or political bias, and no less into reclaiming genre fiction, but Hutner is interested a different kind of exclusion. middle-class realist novels he analyses were not marginal; were mainstream: they occupied very center of literary landscape [. . .] widely read, easily comprehensible fiction that Americans chose for their and literary entertainment (1). final phrase expresses his argument for their reclamation, and What America Read provides a rich study of rise and fall of middle-class novels and book talk that surrounded them, the sound of culture conversing with (45).And yet what's striking, at least from an outsider's perspective, is that apart from a few passing references to British and european books, Hutner's novels are all American, as if American readers were reading only American fiction. Hutner knows this was not case; nonetheless he remarks that of most surprising things for Americanist of today is to discover abiding interest of New York Times and other papers in english literature, especially contemporary fiction-Virginia Woolf and Ford Madox Ford to be sure, but also writers whose reputations have generally not survived, like Frank swinnerton, Rose Macaulay, and Margaret Kennedy, standing side by side with Joseph Conrad (64). that it is surprising rather than just what we'd expect is testimony to force of canonization and national literary accounting; fact, presence of British American bestseller lists peaked interwar years: twenty-eight percent of annual top one hundred titles across 1920s and 1930s, with figures such as John Galsworthy appearing multiple times (sutherland 11-13). And to anticipate my own argument, this was market or book world which novels were received. Although Britishness of British was often marked for American reviewers, were reviewed less as foreign than as that might also participate conversation middle-class America was having with itself.Hutner's argument means his primary focus is fiction written for American middle-class, by American middle class, about American middle class (8). But American publishers were also publishing foreign, mostly British into this same middle-class market, and this transatlantic trade included a small but significant f low of titles that also peaked years when, for Hutner, middle-class realism was dominant. American readers, short, were also reading novels, sometimes large numbers and sometimes a way that brought them, too, into conversations American culture was having with itself. these novels seldom entered American market as literature, but rather as part of regular turnover of books of week, as more or less ephemeral sources of edification and literary entertainment. Having said that, what is striking about this period longer history of American reception of is degree to which idea of Australian literature did fact present itself to critics and reviewers.IIFrom late 1920s to mid-1940s, a series of ambitious novels were released new American editions. period stands out clearly from what had occurred earlier and what followed. …

Sweet Dreams: The World of Patsy Cline ed. by Warren R. Hofstra (review)

Sweet Dreams: The World of Patsy Cline. Edited by Warren R. Hofstra. (Music in American Life.) Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013. [xiii, 198 p. ISBN 9780252037719 (hard- cover), $85; ISBN 9780252079306 (pa- perback), $25; ISBN 9780252094989 (e-book), $22.50.]. Illustrations, biblio- graphic references, index.Few country singers are as well-known outside country music fan circles as Patsy Cline. Her crossover hits, tragic death in a plane crash, and revival through a biopic and a postage stamp have made her an iconic figure in American popular culture. hit recordings (especially Crazy and I Fall to Pieces) are prime examples of the Nashville Sound, a production aes- thetic that eschewed fiddles and nasal vo- cals for a sophisticated soundscape of soft backing vocals and piano. It was this pop- oriented sound, often augmented by string arrangements, that opened the doors for Cline and others to cross over onto the pop charts during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Since a revival of her music begin- ning in the late 1970s, Cline has held an unshakable position in the pantheon of classic country stars while her songs stand as an antithesis to the music of newer inau- thentic artists. Cline was also arguably the first female country star who launched her career without being a sidekick to a male star, being a member of a professional mu- sical family, or singing an answer song.In the history of country music scholar- ship, histories and topical studies dominate over close readings of single artists or the songs they produce. Projects that remedy the imbalance include work by Jocelyn R. Neal (The Songs of Jimmie Rodgers: A Legacy in Country [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009] ), Jonathan Silver- man (Nine Choices: Johnny Cash and American Culture [Amherst: University of Massa- chusetts Press, 2010]), and Marcus Eli Desmond Harmon (Harris/Cash: Identity, Loss, and Mourning at the Borders of Country Music [Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 2011]). In this new volume on Cline, a focused analysis of one artist's career again reaps rewards. Warren Hofstra's edited collection Sweet Dreams: The World of Patsy Cline lifts the veil of star- dom to reveal the social forces that made Cline a success. The topic of the book is not so much music as the transfor- mation of working-class Southerners into middle-class American consumers. This transformation changed how country musi- cians became stars and the way that country audiences interacted with their music. Cline took advantage of growing television ownership and the nationalization of popu- lar culture to stake her claim on a middle- class lifestyle. Unlike collections whose con- tributions gather loosely around a common theme, Sweet Dreams advances a unified ar- gument throughout, that Cline's own dreams for success and material comfort evolved side by side with the emergent American dream of middle-class (p- 3).The authors of Sweet Dreams hail from a variety of disciplines, but what they have produced is an accessible work of social and cultural history, albeit lacking in critical theory. The book presents 1940s and 1950s America through detailed analyses of sev- eral spheres of society that tracked with own experiences. After an editor's introduction, the book opens with a short statement by Bill C. Malone that lays out one of the main presumptions of the rest of the book, that commercial country music depended upon modernization, especially in the South. With chapters on the geogra- phy of class in hometown of Winchester, Virginia, the importance of respectability to one's acceptance by middle-class America, and television's pop- ularity in the Washington, D.C. metropoli- tan area, the book outlines the terms on which Cline could begin her music career. The authors do not take the position that class and gender lines are rigid, however, but that the postwar economy provided a great opportunity for fluctuation that could complicate an identity like at every turn. …

Cuban and Afro-Caribbean immigrants: an analysis of educational attainment and assimilation in the USA

Using the children of immigrants longitudinal study, this research focuses on the extent to which race, class and gender are related to the educational attainment and upward mobility of second-generation Caribbean immigrants within the USA. I employ the classical and contemporary assimilation models as the theoretical framework to explain the degree to which Caribbean immigrants are attaining college degrees or higher within the dominant culture. Research findings indicate that though there is no difference between males and females in educational attainment among the second-generation Caribbean immigrant population, racial and ethnic self-identity and parents’ socio-economic status are significantly related to the academic achievement of these immigrants during young adulthood. This research further illustrates that discrimination is not significantly related to the educational attainment and the subsequent upward mobility of second-generation Caribbean immigrants; even though the respondents indicate that they have in fact been exposed to racial and ethnic discrimination within the USA. These results subsequently challenge the segmented assimilation model which argues that the new wave of immigrants is likely to experience downward assimilation due to the colour of their skin, which successively leads to their inability to integrate into white middle-class America.

Fast-forward family: home, work, and relationships in middle-class America

List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Note to the Reader Introduction Elinor Ochs and Tamar Kremer-Sadlik 1. Coming Home Elinor Ochs and Belinda Campos 2. At Home Anthony P. Graesch 3. Dinner Elinor Ochs and Margaret Beck 4. Mountains of Things Jeanne E. Arnold 5. Housework Wendy Klein, Carolina Izquierdo, and Thomas N. Bradbury 000 6. Chores Wendy Klein and Marjorie Harness Goodwin 7. Homework and Recreation Tamar Kremer-Sadlik and Kris Gutierrez 8. Nurturing Marjorie Harness Goodwin and Charles Goodwin 9. Stress Rena Repetti, Darby Saxbe, and Shu-wen Wang 10. Health as a Family Matter Linda C. Garro 11. Time for Family Tamar Kremer-Sadlik 12. The Good Enough Family Elinor Ochs and Tamar Kremer-Sadlik Appendix: The CELF Study References List of Contributors Index

Avenging ‘Bridget’: Irish domestic servants and middle-class America in the short stories of Maeve Brennan

This article will examine the representation of Irish women servants in Maeve Brennan's short stories, first published in The New Yorker in the 1950s, and collected in The Rose Garden (2001). The Irish ‘Bridget’, the most publicly visible, if troubling, image of Irish womanhood in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America, has received much-needed attention from historians and social scientists in the last decade, and is a central figure in discussions of Irish women and diasporic identity in the American context. Drawing on this body of work, and focusing in detail on key stories from the collection, including ‘The Bride’, ‘The View from the Kitchen’, ‘The Anachronism’, ‘The Divine Fireplace’, and ‘The Servants’ Dance', I argue that Brennan's reimagining of the Irish Bridget can be approached as a form of feminist revisionism, as Brennan's stories enter into a charged dialogue with the history of imagining the Irish woman servant as an undesirable but necessary presence in middle-class American domestic culture. Brennan's self-reflexive reworking of this paradigm is informed by her work as a satirist for The New Yorker, and proves an effective means of writing back to this problematic history, as she takes up recognisable tropes and motifs from earlier representations of Bridget in popular and literary culture, and alters them in knowing and subversive ways.

Broke: how debt bankrupts the middle class

About 1.5 million households filed bankruptcy in the last year, making bankruptcy as common as college graduation and divorce. The recession has pushed more and more families into financial collapse-with unemployment, declines in retirement wealth, and falling house values destabilizing the American middle class. Broke explores the consequences of this unprecedented growth in consumer debt and shows how excessive borrowing undermines the prosperity of middle class America. While the recession that began in mid-2007 has widened the scope of the financial pain caused by overindebtedness, the problem predated that large-scale economic meltdown. And by all indicators, consumer debt will be a defining feature of middle-class families for years to come. The staples of middle-class life-going to college, buying a house, starting a small business-carry with them more financial risk than ever before, requiring more borrowing and new riskier forms of borrowing. This book reveals the people behind the statistics, looking closely at how people get to the point of serious financial distress, the hardships of dealing with overwhelming debt, and the difficulty of righting one's financial life. In telling the stories of financial failures, this book exposes an all-too-real part of middle-class life that is often lost in the success stories that dominate the American economic narrative.Authored by experts in several disciplines, including economics, law, political science, psychology, and sociology, Broke presents analyses from an original, proprietary data set of unprecedented scope and detail, the 2007 Consumer Bankruptcy Project. Topics include class status, home ownership, educational attainment, impacts of self-employment, gender differences, economic security, and the emotional costs of bankruptcy. The book makes judicious use of illustrations to present key findings and concludes with a discussion of the implications of the data for contemporary policy debates.

Play Things: Children’s Racialized Mechanical Banks and Toys, 1880–1930

The reproduction of racism and class-based oppression are taught to children through various cultural media, including toys and games. Between 1880 and 1930, the popularity of racialized toys and banks were fear-based responses to the perceived encroachment by “foreign and exotic” migrations of African American, Chinese, Irish and Native Americans into the cultural landscape of white middle-class America. This article analyzes how artifacts associated with children, such as mechanical banks, clockwork figures, and other toys are part of a larger cultural structure that viewed race and class as inseparable, and that these objects were essential in the development of a learned habitus that exposed white middle class children in the Victorian era to a racially and class oriented world. We argue that these objects reflect both the times in which they were made, and illuminate the relationship between adults and a newfound emphasis on children and childhood, in which toys serves as symbolic mediators of culture.