Performing Americanness

by Rottenberg, Catherine

• ISBN13: 9781584656821
• ISBN10: 1584656824
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-04-30
• Publisher: Dartmouth College

Summary

In Performing Americanness, Catherine Rottenberg raises important questions about what it means to be American through a wholly original analysis of modern African-American and Jewish-American literature. The book illustrates how the novels of Nella Larsen, James Weldon Johnson, Anzia Yezierska, and Abraham Cahan help us to understand the specific ways that gender, class, race, and ethnicity have regulated the identity formation of African and Jewish Americans, as well as the ways these categories have helped produce and sustain social stratification in the United States more generally. Through the author's comparative lens, new light is shed on fundamental internal and external conflicts--especially of identity--that took place as both groups sought to move from margin to center by carving out a niche for themselves in mainstream American society.

Author Biography

Currently a fellow at the University of Michigan's Frankel Institute, CATHERINE ROTTENBERG will be an assistant professor in the Foreign Languages and Linguistics and Communications Departments atBen-Gurion University in Beer Sheva, Israel, beginning in 2008.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction: Performing Americanness	p. 1
Performativity in Context	p. 16
Passing: Race, Identification, and Desire	p. 33
American Dream Discourse and Class Performativity	p. 53
Race and the Making of Ethnicity	p. 70
Race and the New Woman	p. 92
A Parrot of Words and Monkey of Manners	p. 108
Epilogue	p. 130
Notes	p. 133
Bibliography	p. 161
Index	p. 173
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.