A richly diverse gathering of new and familiar voices, on subjects new and old, The Harper Single Volume American Literature takes the reader on a journey through America's literary past and ever-projecting future. Eleven cultural portfolios provide windows into historic moments in our literary past and present; superbly informative and readable period introductions further deepen the reader's understanding of the America from which this literature evolved. Five great plays, an unprecedented wealth of complete works, approximately one hundred carefully chosen black and white images - a collection both deeper and broader than other single volume anthologies.

Harper American Literature, Volume II (2nd Edition)

Literature & Fiction

Minter, David

Vendler, Helen

McQuade, Donald

KAPLAN, Justin

Atwan,Robert

Tichi, Cecelia

Banta, Martha

Steptoe, Robert

United States

Longman

Harper American Literature, Native Son (Textbook and Paper Packaged Together)

Vendler, Helen Hennessy

Stepto, Robert

Harpercollins College Div

Electronic Hearth: Creating an American Television Culture

We all talk about the "tube" or "box," as if television were simply another appliance like the refrigerator or toaster oven. But Cecilia Tichi argues that TV is actually an environment--a pervasive screen-world that saturates almost every aspect of modern life. In Electronic Hearth, she looks at how that environment evolved, and how it, in turn, has shaped the American experience. Tichi explores almost fifty years of writing about television--in novels, cartoons, journalism, advertising, and critical books and articles--to define the role of television in the American consciousness. She examines early TV advertising to show how the industry tried to position the new device as not just a gadget but a prestigious new piece of furniture, a highly prized addition to the home. The television set, she writes, has emerged as a new electronic hearth--the center of family activity. John Updike described this "primitive appeal of the hearth" in Roger's Version: "Television is--its irresistable charm--a fire. Entering an empty room, we turn it on, and a talking face flares into being." Sitting in front of the TV, Americans exist in a safety zone, free from the hostility and violence of the outside world. She also discusses long-standing suspicions of TV viewing: its often solitary, almost autoerotic character, its supposed numbing of the minds and imagination of children, and assertions that watching television drugs the minds of Americans. Television has been seen as treacherous territory for public figures, from generals to presidents, where satire and broadcast journalism often deflate their authority. And the print culture of journalism and book publishing has waged a decades-long war of survival against it--only to see new TV generations embrace both the box and the book as a part of their cultural world. In today's culture, she writes, we have become "teleconscious"--seeing, for example, real life being certified through television ("as seen on TV"), and television constantly ratified through its universal presence in art, movies, music, comic strips, fabric prints, and even references to TV on TV. Ranging far beyond the bounds of the broadcast industry, Tichi provides a history of contemporary American culture, a culture defined by the television environment. Intensively researched and insightfully written, The Electronic Hearth offers a new understanding of a critical, but much-maligned, aspect of modern life.

History

Russia

Oxford University Press

We all talk about the "tube" or "box," as if television were simply another appliance like the refrigerator or toaster oven. But Cecilia Tichi argues that TV is actually an environment--a pervasive screen-world that saturates almost every aspect of modern life. In Electronic Hearth, she looks at how that environment evolved, and how it, in turn, has shaped the American experience. Tichi explores almost fifty years of writing about television--in novels, cartoons, journalism, advertising, and critical books and articles--to define the role of television in the American consciousness. She examines early TV advertising to show how the industry tried to position the new device as not just a gadget but a prestigious new piece of furniture, a highly prized addition to the home. The television set, she writes, has emerged as a new electronic hearth--the center of family activity. John Updike described this "primitive appeal of the hearth" in Roger's Version: "Television is--its irresistible charm--a fire. Entering an empty room, we turn it on, and a talking face flares into being." Sitting in front of the TV, Americans exist in a safety zone, free from the hostility and violence of the outside world. She also discusses long-standing suspicions of TV viewing: its often solitary, almost autoerotic character, its supposed numbing of the minds and imagination of children, and assertions that watching television drugs the minds of Americans. Television has been seen as treacherous territory for public figures, from generals to presidents, where satire and broadcast journalism often deflate their authority. And the print culture of journalism and book publishing has waged a decades-long war of survival against it--only to see new TV generations embrace both the box and the book as a part of their cultural world. In today's culture, she writes, we have become "teleconscious"--seeing, for example, real life being certified through television ("as seen on TV"), and television constantly ratified through its universal presence in art, movies, music, comic strips, fabric prints, and even references to TV on TV. Ranging far beyond the bounds of the broadcast industry, Tichi provides a history of contemporary American culture, a culture defined by the television environment. Intensively researched and insightfully written, The Electronic Hearth offers a new understanding of a critical, but much-maligned, aspect of modern life.

Humor & Entertainment

Television

Embodiment of a Nation: Human Form in American Places

From Harriet Beecher Stowe's image of the Mississippi's "bosom" to Henry David Thoreau's Cape Cod as "the bared and bended arm of Massachusetts," the U.S. environment has been recurrently represented in terms of the human body. Exploring such instances of embodiment, Cecelia Tichi exposes the historically varied and often contrary geomorphic expression of a national paradigm. Environmental history as cultural studies, her book plumbs the deep and peculiarly American bond between nationalism, the environment, and the human body.  Tichi disputes the United States' reputation of being "nature's nation." U.S. citizens have screened out nature effectively by projecting the bodies of U.S. citizens upon nature. She pursues this idea by pairing Mount Rushmore with Walden Pond as competing efforts to locate the head of the American body in nature; Yellowstone's Old Faithful with the Moon as complementary embodiments of the American frontier; and Hot Springs, Arkansas, with Love Canal as contrasting sites of the identification of women and water. A major contribution to current discussions of gender and nature, her book also demonstrates the intellectual power of wedding environmental studies to the social history of the human body.

History & Criticism

Harvard University Press

From Harriet Beecher Stowe's image of the Mississippi's "bosom" to Henry David Thoreau's Cape Cod as "the bared and bended arm of Massachusetts," the U.S. environment has been recurrently represented in terms of the human body. Exploring such instances of embodiment, Cecelia Tichi exposes the historically varied and often contrary geomorphic expression of a national paradigm. Environmental history as cultural studies, her book plumbs the deep and peculiarly American bond between nationalism, the environment, and the human body.
Tichi disputes the United States' reputation of being "nature's nation." U.S. citizens have screened out nature effectively by projecting the bodies of U.S. citizens upon nature. She pursues this idea by pairing Mount Rushmore with Walden Pond as competing efforts to locate the head of the American body in nature; Yellowstone's Old Faithful with the Moon as complementary embodiments of the American frontier; and Hot Springs, Arkansas, with Love Canal as contrasting sites of the identification of women and water. A major contribution to current discussions of gender and nature, her book also demonstrates the intellectual power of wedding environmental studies to the social history of the human body.

Shifting Gears is a richly illustrated exploration of the American era of gear-and-girder technology. From the 1890s to the 1920s machines and structures shaped by this technology emerged in many forms, from automobiles and harvesting machines to bridges and skyscrapers. The most casual onlooker to American life saw examples of the new technology on Main Street, on the local railway platform, and in the pages of popular magazines. A major consequence of this technology was its effect on the arts, in particular the literary arts. Three prominent American writers of the time -- Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, and William Carlos Williams -- became designer-engineers of the word. Tichi reveals their use of prefabricated, manufactured components in poems and prose. As designers, they enacted in style and structure the new technological values. The writers, according to Tichi, thought of words themselves as objects for assembly into a design. Using materials from magazines, popular novels , movie reviews, the toy industry, and advertising, as well as the texts of the nation's major enduring writers, Tichi shows how turn-of-the-century technology pervaded every aspect of American culture and how this culture could be defined as a collaborative effort of the engineer, the architect, the fiction writer, and the poet. She demonstrates that a technological revolution is not a revolution only of science but of language as well. Originally published in 1987. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

Shifting Gears: Technology, Literature, Culture in Modernist America

Reference

The University of North Carolina Press

What does the 'country' in country music mean? Most interpret country as a regional or folk music that belongs to people in the hills and in honky-tonks, but Cecelia Tichi argues that it is in fact a national music form, one that belongs to all Americans. In High Lonesome, she shows that country music is strongly linked to our nation's literature and art. Country music, Tichi argues, explores the same themes that have intrigued this country's premier writers and artists over three centuries: the American road, the meaning of home, class struggle, spiritual travail, and the persistent loneliness of the American character. These are obsessions that country music artists like Dolly Parton, Hank Williams, Rodney Crowell, Merle Haggard, and Emmylou Harris share with artists not thought of as 'pop'--Ralph Waldo Emerson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain, Thomas Cole, Edward Hopper, and Georgia O'Keefe. Generously illustrated with photographs of country music artists and images of American art, High Lonesome uses interviews and biographical profiles to provide an insider's look at the schooling, customs, demands, and discipline of country music--an art form that Tichi maintains is emphatically part of mainstream American culture. from the book When the poetry of Walt Whitman links up with the country music of Hank Williams, when Dolly Parton and Ralph Waldo Emerson pair up and Mark Twain and Emmylou Harris are found to have a common ground, and the vacationing traveler is also involved, then new ideas about cultural relations become possible. It is not a trivia question to ask, What does country music have in common with Thomas Jefferson, Walt Whitman, American painters Thomas Cole and Edward Hopper, and twentieth-century writers John Steinbeck and Jack Kerouac? Songs and partial songs found on the High Lonesome CD * indicates partial songs Dolly Parton, 'My Tennessee Mountain Home' Barry and Holly Tashian, 'Home' Emmylou Harris, 'Hickory Wind'* Steve Earle, 'Guitar Town' Robin and Linda Williams, 'Rolling and Rambling' Merle Haggard, 'Ramblin' Fever' Emmylou Harris, 'Lonely Street'* Emmylou Harris, 'A River for Him'* Hank Williams, 'I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry' Laurie Lewis, 'The Cowgirl's Song' Tex Ritter, 'High Noon' Dolly Parton, 'Wildflowers'* Eddy Arnold, 'Bouquet of Roses' Emmylou Harris, 'Roses in the Snow'* Emmylou Harris, 'Timberline'* Emmylou Harris, 'Red, Red Rose'* Emmylou Harris, 'Wayfaring Stranger'* Peter Rowan, 'Trail of Tears' Barry and Holly Tashian, 'Let Me See the Light' Kathy Chiavola, 'I Am a Pilgrim/We Are Pilgrims' Laurie Lewis, 'The Maple's Lament' Cody Kilby, 'Bill Cheatham' Rodney Crowell, 'Many a Long and Lonesome Highway' A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

High Lonesome: The American Culture of Country Music

Arts & Photography

Music

Univ of North Carolina Pr

Civic Passions: Seven Who Launched Progressive America (and What They Teach Us)

A gripping and inspiring book, Civic Passions examines innovative leadership in periods of crisis in American history. Starting from the late nineteenth century, when respected voices warned that America was on the brink of collapse, Cecelia Tichi explores the wisdom of practical visionaries who were confronted with a series of social, political, and financial upheavals that, in certain respects, seem eerily similar to modern times. The United States--then, as now--was riddled with political corruption, financial panics, social disruption, labor strife, and bourgeois inertia. Drawing on a wealth of evocative personal accounts, biographies, and archival material, Tichi brings seven iconoclastic--and often overlooked--individuals from the Gilded Age back to life. We meet physician Alice Hamilton, theologian Walter Rauschenbusch, jurist Louis D. Brandeis, consumer advocate Florence Kelley, antilynching activist Ida B. Wells-Barnett, economist John R. Commons, and child-welfare advocate Julia Lathrop. Bucking the status quo of the Gilded Age as well as middle-class complacency, these reformers tirelessly garnered popular support as they championed progressive solutions to seemingly intractable social problems. Civic Passions is a provocative and powerfully written social history, a collection of minibiographies, and a user's manual on how a generation of social reformers can turn peril into progress with fresh, workable ideas. Together, these narratives of advocacy provide a stunning precedent of progressive action and show how citizen-activists can engage the problems of the age in imaginative ways. While offering useful models to encourage the nation in a newly progressive direction, Civic Passions reminds us that one determined individual can make a difference.

Americas

University of North Carolina Press Enduring Editions

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