Making History MatterThis collection of Robert Dawidoff's essays and journalism is peopled by the likes of the Founding Fathers, Fred Astaire, Henry and William James, Sophie Tucker, Trent Lott, and Cole Porter. Drawing together this unlikely cast of characters, Dawidoff probes into the role of outsider groups as well as intellectual and political elites in the formation of American culture. As a scholar of intellectual and cultural history, Dawidoff takes the stance that historians ought to take an active role in our democratic culture, informing and participating in public discourse. He argues for a broad reach when it comes to cultural expression, resisting the polarization of formal intellectual history and folk or commercial popular culture. In his view and in his book, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Katharine Hepburn are equally worthy topics for a historian's consideration, providing that they are treated with equal seriousness of purpose and analytic rigor. In "The Gay Nineties" section that closes the book, he traces key events in the continual struggle for gay and lesbian civil rights and takes on such unresolved issues as safer sex, needle exchange programs to control HIV transmission, and the public controversy around the portrayal of gay and lesbian television characters. Divided into sections that deal with the patriarchs of American political and intellectual culture, expressive culture, and a historian's public voice, this book is a model of engaged and engaging writing. Accessible and witty, Making History Matter will appeal to general and academic readers interested in American history as well as gay and lesbian political and cultural issues. Author note: Robert Dawidoff is John D. and Lillian Maguire Distinguished Chair and Professor of History at Claremont Graduate University. He is most recently the author (with Michael Nava) of Created Equal: Why Gay Rights Matter to America and The Genteel Tradition and the Sacred Rage: High Culture V. Democracy in Adams, James and Santayana. |
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... Fact " " Tails in the Air " : Henry Adams and the American History of the European Middle Ages Willie's and Harry's Excellent Adventure Fish Out of Water : George Santayana In My Father's House Are Many Closets PART II . LISTENING TO ...
... Fact " " Tails in the Air " : Henry Adams and the American History of the European Middle Ages Willie's and Harry's Excellent Adventure Fish Out of Water : George Santayana In My Father's House Are Many Closets PART II . LISTENING TO ...
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Contents
THE NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD | 13 |
Criticism and American Cultural Repair | 103 |
The Kind of Person You Have to Sound Like | 113 |
Some of Those Days | 129 |
Fred Astaire | 152 |
The Heiress of All the Ages | 160 |
DOING SOMETHING ABOUT IT | 181 |
The Politics of AIDS Safer Sex and Needle Exchange | 215 |
The Intolerance Wars | 223 |
Notes | 233 |
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African American AIDS Alberta Hunter Alexander's Ragtime Band Alice Amer Ameri American culture American history Andy Razaf Angeles audience blackface brothers character claims closet common conventional cultural criticism dancing democracy democratic Eleanor Roosevelt Emerson equal essay experience expression feelings Franklin Fred Astaire gay and lesbian genteel George Santayana Henry Adams Henry James Henry's Hepburn historians homosexual hope human ican ideals imagine immigrant individual intellectual interest Irving Berlin issues jazz Jefferson Jeffersonian Jews Katharine Hepburn kind knew learned lesbians lesbians and gay letters liberal literary lives Lorenz Hart medieval modern moral nation needle exchange never numbers one's person philosophical political Puritan racial Santayana sense sexual shared singer singing society someone song songwriter Sophie Tucker story superiority tell things tion tradition understanding University Whitman Wilder William James writing wrote York