Overview

This important book addresses the ways race has both helped and hindered Americans in determining national identity. Contributors consider race and American nationalism from a variety of historical and disciplinary vantage points.

Content and Approach

Beginning with the aftermath of the Civil War and unfolding chronologically through to the present, the essays examine a multitude of different groups—Japanese Americans, Chinese Americans, Puerto Ricans, African Americans, whites, Jews, Irish Americans, German Americans—by examining race and nationalism represented in public memorials, photography, film, classic and minor literature, gender issues, legal studies, and more.

Key Figures and Themes

The book offers rereadings of some of the pivotal figures in American culture and politics, including Herman Melville, Frances Harper, William James, Frederic Remington, Charles Francis Adams, W. E. B. DuBois, George Creel, Zora Neale Hurston, Louis Chu, and others. In the course of these essays, readers will learn how Americans in different periods and circumstances have grappled with the changing issues of defining race and of defining American as a race, as a nationality, or as both.