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Events
Jan. 9 | Call for papers: Identities and Technocultures
A 2-day conference about American culture and technologies that examines how new technologies dominate and define Americaness in the US and abroad. Co-sponsored by the University of Iowa Center for Ethnic Studies and the Arts (CESA) and the Mid-America American Studies Association (MAASA).
Resources: Abstracts of American Studies Dissertations
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Morton, Keith. "Community as Metaphor: Anarchy and Structure in American Culture, 1830-1920," University of Minnesota, March 1986. (11, 16)
Before 1830, Americans generally used the word “community” in reference to religious or utopian enterprises; by 1920 it was a term commonly used in evaluating the secular, human experience of urban and industrial expansion. In close analyses of the works of Emerson, Emma Goldman, and Josiah Royce, and the planning of the World’s Columbian Exposition, this dissertation argues that community emerged in nineteenth-century America as a metaphor for the growing tension between the centralization and specialization of power and authority expressed in formal social institutions (structure), and the anti-institutional emphasis of individual autonomy and decentralization (anarchy).
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