Cultural History

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  Reconstructing Appalachia: The Civil War's Aftermath

  Families, communities, and the nation itself were irretrievably altered by the Civil War and the subsequent societal transformations of the nineteenth century. The repercussions of the war incited a broad range of unique problems in Appalachia, including political dynamics, racial prejudices, and the regional economy. This book reveals life in Appalachia after the ravages of the Civil War, an unexplored area that has left a void in historical literature. Addressing a gap in the chronicles of America, this anthology explores little-known aspects of history with a particular focus on the Reconstruction and post-Reconstruction periods. It features a broad geographic focus: ...Read More

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  This is Home Now: Kentucky's Holocaust Survivors Speak

  The term “Holocaust survivors” is often associated with Jewish communities in New York City or along Florida's Gold Coast. Traditionally, tales of America's Holocaust survivors, in both individual and cultural histories, have focused on places where people fleeing from Nazi atrocities congregated in large numbers for comfort and community following World War II. Yet not all Jewish refugees chose to settle in heavily populated areas of the United States. This book focuses on overlooked stories that unfolded in the aftermath of the Holocaust. It presents the accounts of Jewish survivors who resettled not in major metropolitan areas but in southern, ...Read More

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  Murder and Madness: The Myth of the Kentucky Tragedy

  The “Kentucky Tragedy” was early America's best known true crime story. In 1825, Jereboam O. Beauchamp assassinated Kentucky attorney general Solomon P. Sharp. The murder, trial, conviction, and execution of the killer—as well as the suicide of his wife, Anna Cooke Beauchamp—fascinated Americans. The episode became the basis of dozens of novels and plays composed by some of the country's most esteemed literary talents, among them Edgar Allan Poe and William Gilmore Simms. This book peels away two centuries of myth to provide a more accurate account of the murder. It also reveals how Jereboam and Anna Beauchamp shaped the ...Read More

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  Uneven Ground: Appalachia since 1945

  Appalachia has played a complex and often contradictory role in the unfolding of American history. Created by urban journalists in the years following the Civil War, the idea of Appalachia provided a counterpoint to emerging definitions of progress. Early-twentieth-century critics of modernity saw the region as a remnant of frontier life, a reflection of simpler times that should be preserved and protected. However, supporters of development and of the growth of material production, consumption, and technology decried what they perceived as the isolation and backwardness of the place and sought to “uplift” the mountain people through education and industrialization. This ...Read More

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  Learning Native Wisdom: What Traditional Cultures Teach Us about Subsistence, Sustainability, and Spirituality

  Many native North American cultures have origins that predate Confucius, who lived 500 years before the birth of Christ. For generations the people of these traditions have thrived under conditions that many view as harsh, if not hostile. Through their close association with nature, members of native communities have created complex systems for cooperating with one another and living within their environments. This book explains how to nurture a society by closely observing the traditions of various native cultures. It explores the need to live sustainably, in harmony with the land, in order to preserve our cultures, communities, and humankind ...Read More

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  A Concise History of Kentucky

  To most people, the word “Kentucky” is likely to inspire thoughts of Derby Day, burley tobacco fields, feuding Appalachian families, coal mines, and Colonel Sanders' famous fried chicken. There is much more, however, to the Bluegrass State's rich but often unexplored history than mint juleps and the Hatfields and McCoys. This book introduces a captivating story that spans 12,000 years of Kentucky lives, from Native Americans to astronauts. All facets of Kentucky history are explored—geography, government, social structure, culture, education, and the economy—recounting unique historic events such as the deadly frontier wars, the assassination of a governor, and the birth ...Read More

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  Freedom to Offend: How New York Remade Movie Culture

  In the postwar era, the lure of controversy sold movie tickets as much as the promise of entertainment did. This book investigates the movie culture that emerged as official censorship declined and details how the struggle to free the screen has influenced our contemporary understanding of art and taste. These conflicts over film content were fought largely in the theaters and courts of New York City in the decades following World War II. Many of the regulators and religious leaders who sought to ensure that no questionable content invaded the public consciousness were headquartered in New York, as were the ...Read More

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  Jewish Communities on the Ohio River: A History

  When westward expansion began in the early nineteenth century, the Jewish population of the United States was only 2,500. As Jewish immigration surged over the century between 1820 and 1920, Jews began to find homes in the Ohio River Valley. This book chronicles the settlement and evolution of Jewish communities in small towns on both banks of the river; towns such as East Liverpool and Portsmouth, Ohio, Wheeling, West Virginia, and Madison, Indiana. Though not large, these communities influenced American culture and history by helping to develop the Ohio River Valley while transforming Judaism into an American way of life. ...Read More

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  Becoming Bourgeois: Merchant Culture in the South, 1820-1865

  This book focuses on what historians have come to call the “middling sort”, the economic group falling between yeoman farmers and the planter class that dominated the antebellum South. At a time when Southerners rarely traveled far from their homes, these merchants annually ventured forth on buying junkets to northern cities. The southern merchant community promoted the kind of aggressive business practices that proponents of the “New South” would later claim as their own. This book reveals the peculiar strains of modern liberal-capitalist and conservative thought that permeated the culture of southern merchants. By exploring the values men and women ...Read More

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  Killing the Indian Maiden: Images of Native American Women in Film

  This book examines the fascinating and often disturbing portrayal of Native American women in film. Through discussion of thirty-four Hollywood films from the silent period to the present, the book examines the sacrificial role of what it terms the “Celluloid Maiden”—a young Native woman who allies herself with a white male hero and dies as a result of that choice. The book intertwines theories of colonization, gender, race, and film studies to ground the study in socio-historical context all in an attempt to define what it means to be an American. As the book charts the consistent depiction of the ...Read More