The uses of variety : modern Americanism and the quest for national distinctiveness
"Carrie Tirado Bramen pursues the idea of variety through the works of a wide range of regional and cosmopolitan writers, journalists, theologians, and politicians who rewrote the narrative of American exceptionalism through a celebration of variety. Exploring cultural and institutional spheres ranging from intra-urban walking tours in popular magazines to the 1893 World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago, she shows how the rhetoric of variety became naturalized and nationalized as quintessentially American and inherently democratic. By focusing on the uses of the term in the work of William James, Anna Julia Cooper, W.E.B
Print Book, English, 2000
Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2000
Criticism, interpretation, etc
380 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
9780674003088, 067400308X
44467579
List of Illustrations Abbreviations Introduction: Americanizing Variety 1. THE IDEOLOGICAL FORMATION OF PLURALISM 1. William James and the Modern Federal Republic 2. Identity Culture and Cosmopolitanism 2. THE AESTHETICS OF DIVERSITY 3. The Uneven Development of American Regionalism 4. The Urban Picturesque and Americanization 3. HETEROGENEOUS UNIONS 5. Biracial Fictions and the Mendelist Allegory 6. East Meets West at the World's Parliament of Religions Afterword: In Defense of Partiality Notes Works Cited Acknowledgments Index