The American Foundations

Hadassah ◽  
2011 ◽  
pp. 93-116
Author(s):  
Mira Katzburg-Yungman
Keyword(s):  
American Culture ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Country Of Origin ◽  
American Identity ◽  
Common Denominator ◽  
National Consciousness ◽  
American Values ◽  
Universal Values ◽  
American Society ◽  
Ideological Identification

This chapter discusses Hadassah's American foundations. American zionist ideology had much in common with core American values and the American ethos. Hadassah's ideology is no exception to this rule, echoing American national ideals and characteristics fundamental to American culture. In the absence of a national common denominator, such as country of origin or heritage, the American national consciousness was largely formed on the basis of ideological identification with and commitment to a set of universal values. An individual's American identity is based on a system of ideas that has penetrated the daily life of American society and constitutes a living faith for most Americans.

scholarly journals Horrors of Society

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brooke Lilek
Keyword(s):  
American Culture ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Children's Television ◽  
Horror Film ◽  
Television Programming ◽  
Hollywood Film ◽  
Technological Advances ◽  
American Society

The foundation of the Hollywood horror film industry has always been constructed with metaphors of what haunts American society. By utilizing what society fears in daily life and representing it with ghosts or monsters, Hollywood was able to make movies scarier than they appeared to be on the surface. In the 1970s and 1980s, children’s television programming began to take the place of reading or playing as the number of shows and channel rose. Parents began to fear that television programming would take over their children’s lives. Moving through the decades and into the 2010s this fear only grew as cellphones, tablets, and laptops became the obsession of American youth. The Hollywood film industry capitalized on these fears in movies such as Poltergeist (1982) and Poltergeist (2015). These two films worked to represent current issues in society while also predicting what America would become if these issues were not properly dealt with. 1980s America did not resolve the issue of television and technology invading homes; thus, the problem grew as Americans relied more heavily on technological advances. Looking through the lens of Poltergeist (1982) and Poltergeist (2015) reveals the fears of past decades, how those fears have developed in 2010s American culture, and where these representations of cultural fears will lead us next.

scholarly journals Understanding American Values Through Emerson’s Self-Reliance

IdeBahasa ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 95-104
Author(s):  
Rudy
Keyword(s):  
American Culture ◽  
Hard Work ◽  
American Life ◽  
American Values ◽  
Self Reliance ◽  
The World ◽  
American Romanticism ◽  
American Society ◽  
The Impact

The study focuses on the influence of one of the prominent figures in American romanticism, Ralph Emerson. By applying the Hall’s Theory of Representation this study intends to identify the role of Self-Reliance in American culture and the impact of Emerson’s philosophy toward American life And now people all over the world have recognized his work Self-Reliance (1841) as the inspiration in many aspects of life. His hard work, ethical teaching and spirit have become the most important ideas in shaping independent American society. Through his literary works, Emerson has conveyed important messages to the world on shaping personalities.

Sacred Sites: Nature and Nation in the U.S. National Parks

2005 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lynn Ross-Bryant
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
National Parks ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Sacred Places ◽  
Sacred Sites ◽  
American Values ◽  
The People ◽  
American Society ◽  
The Comparative Study ◽  
The U.S

AbstractThe U.S. National Parks, which first developed as the nation fragmented during the civil war, have played a central role in the unifying discourse of America. The parks are able to serve this role because of the close alliance between nature and nation in U.S. discourse. Nature “set apart” in the parks becomes the embodiment of an archetypal America, which is the ever-pristine source of the greatness of the nation and the people. As such, it serves as a sacred site and a unifying symbol in U.S. American culture.By approaching the parks as pilgrimage sites, we can examine the American values that have been embodied in them. Using a model that assumes the heterogeneity of any religio-cultural event, we can see the often conflicting values both in the spiritual, scientific, national and economic discourses that make up the parks and in the embodiment of those discourses in the physical developments in the parks. Central to both is the paradoxical ideal behind the parks: to preserve wilderness.The goal of the essay is two-fold: 1) as part of the comparative study of religions, to suggest the usefulness of a heterogeneous, spatialized model for analyzing sacred places and to apply the model to the study of American culture in order to understand more about how the embodiment of nature and nation in the National Parks has worked as a unifying symbol while at the same time disclosing contested and conflicting values in American society, and 2) to show how the meanings surrounding this symbol are being transformed today.

The National Association of Professional Base Ball Players: The Origins of Professional Baseball and the American Identity

2012 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Rosenberg
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Professional Sports ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Identity ◽  
National Association ◽  
American Values ◽  
Primary Documents ◽  
American Tradition ◽  
Formative Experience ◽  
The 19Th Century

Baseball has been proudly coined “the national pastime” for nearly its entire existence. The sport evolved from several English bat and ball games and quickly became part of the American identity in the 19th century. Only a few decades after the first baseball club formed in New York City, amateur clubs began to organize into loose confederations as competition and glory entered a game originally associated with fraternal leisure. Soon after, clubs with enough fans and capital began to pay players for their services and by 1871 and league of solely professionals emerged. Known as The National Professional Base Ball Players Association, this league would only last five seasons but would lay the groundwork for the American tradition of professional sports that exists today. In this paper, I analyze the development of the sport of baseball into a professional industry alongside the concurrent industrialization and urbanization of the United States. I used primary documents from the era describing the growing popularity of the sport as well as modern historians’ accounts of early baseball. In addition, I rely on sources focusing on the changing American identity during this period known as The Gilded Age, which many attribute to be the beginnings of the modern understanding of American values. Ultimately, I conclude that baseball’s progression into a professional league from grassroots origins compared to a broader trend of the ideal American being viewed as urban, skilled, and affluent despite the majority not able to fit this characterization. How certain attributes become inherent to a group identity and the types of individuals able to communicate these messages are also explored. My analysis of the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players provides insight on the formative experience of the modern collective American identity and baseball’s place in it as our national pastime.

The Analysis of Family Ecology under the Toxic Smoke in DeLillo’s White Noise

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (6) ◽  
pp. 5264-5272
Author(s):  
Zhao Yuxin ◽  
Xu Wenpei
Keyword(s):  
Mass Media ◽  
Family Structure ◽  
White Noise ◽  
Consumer Culture ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Family Members ◽  
Sociocultural Context ◽  
Family Ecology ◽  
American Society

This paper takes the Gladneys in DeLillo’s White Noise as the research object and examines their daily life. Ecocriticism theory is adopted to determine what factors might influence their family ecology and lead to the lack of communication and trust among family members. The results of this study have indicated that the dilemma of the Gladneys stems from the toxic smoke floating in the air and pervading in the sociocultural context. Changes in family structure, mass media and consumer culture all overshadow their family ecology. The Gladneys’ dilemma also reflects the collective dilemma of the post-modern American society.

The Mystery of American Identity

2019 ◽  
pp. 148-175
Author(s):  
Cheryl A. Wall
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
African Americans ◽  
American Culture ◽  
James Baldwin ◽  
American Identity ◽  
The Political ◽  
American Fiction ◽  
Invisible Man ◽  
Theory And Criticism ◽  
The Individual

Although best known for his novel Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison’s essays, and the array of cultural and political agendas which prompt their conception, are integral to American literary theory and criticism. His essays defined the terms for ongoing debates around nineteenth and twentieth century American fiction, modernist aesthetics, and American culture. This chapter charts the various cultural, literary, and political interventions made by Ellison’s essays. Like James Baldwin (chapter 4), Ellison confronts the question of American identity, but he recasts it in terms of culture rather than of the individual. Through Ellison’s use of the vernacular process, which blends high and low styles, he maps cultural concerns onto the political stage. By emphasizing the cultural contributions made by African Americans, Ellison’s work complicates, reworks, and redefines our understanding of American culture.

The Secular Pilgrimage of Orthodoxy in America

2019 ◽  
pp. 80-93
Author(s):  
Vigen Guroian
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Natural Disaster ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Public Intellectuals ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
Secular Society ◽  
American Society ◽  
Social Upheaval

With the notable exception of the Russian mission in Alaska, for the most part the Orthodox Church did not come to America as mission but followed its people’s departure from the homeland, often under extremities of war, social upheaval, or natural disaster. There was no preparation for coming here. They left behind historical Orthodox cultures and were immersed immediately into a society that the Orthodox faith had no role in shaping, a secular society that bafflingly was also religious, though not in any familiar way. Through conversation with theologians and public intellectuals like Schmemann, Parsons, Herberg, Berger, and Berry, this essay first traces the lineage of secularism back to Christianity. The unmooring of virtue from the transcendent, more specifically from the salvific sacrifice of Christ, has yielded secularism as a “step-child” of Christianity. In response, many Orthodox Americans turn to ethnic identity as a means of imbuing daily life with the faith. This, however, is more a sign of a dying church than a means of sustaining its life. The challenge is to renew a sense of the sacred, a liturgical worldview, within the pluralism of American society.

The Legacy of American Philhellenism

2020 ◽  
pp. 194-198
Author(s):  
Maureen Connors Santelli
Keyword(s):  
Women's Rights ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Greek Population ◽  
Pivotal Role ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Humanitarian Relief ◽  
Profound Impact ◽  
War Of Independence ◽  
To Come ◽  
American Society

This concluding chapter evaluates the legacy of American philhellenism. Early Americans of the 1820s believed they were imparting wisdom and humanitarian relief to the Greek population. At the same time, their experiences in the Greek War of Independence had a profound impact on American culture that reverberated within politics and reform for decades to come. Indeed, although the Greek Fire initially aimed at helping the Greeks as an extension of philanthropic relief abroad, ironically, in the end, it transformed American society. Both the rhetoric of the Greek cause and participation in the movement influenced the participants, inspiring them to bring attention to abolition and women's rights through a global lens. Though the consensus among philhellenic organizations of the early 1820s was short-lived and not all supporters went on to become radical advocates of abolition and women's rights, the memory of the Greek cause continued to play a pivotal role in American reform through the nineteenth and into the early twentieth centuries.

6. The world wide web of American culture

2018 ◽  
pp. 105-126
Author(s):  
Eric Avila
Keyword(s):  
World Wide Web ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
World Wide ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Digital Revolution ◽  
The World ◽  
The Sixties ◽  
Aids Crisis ◽  
American Society ◽  
The Impact

If the sixties radicalized the content of American culture, the nineties revolutionized its form. The digital revolution began in California and enveloped the entire world, creating unprecedented opportunities for instantaneous communication and self-expression. “The world wide web of American culture” first describes the impact on American culture of 1970s counterculture; the music genres of disco, pop, and hip hop; the AIDS crisis; and the excesses of 1980s culture. It then explains how the rise of the Internet fostered a new plurality in American society. American culture continues to unite diverse and disparate segments of the population, even as it remains a battleground, fraught with the very tensions and conflicts that define the nation’s history and identity.

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