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The Makings and Unmakings of Americans: Indians and Immigrants in American Literature and Culture, 1879-1924

Online ISBN:
9780300269055
Print ISBN:
9780300224351
Publisher:
Yale University Press
Book

The Makings and Unmakings of Americans: Indians and Immigrants in American Literature and Culture, 1879-1924

Cristina Stanciu
Cristina Stanciu
Virginia Commonwealth University
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Published online:
21 September 2023
Published in print:
24 January 2023
Online ISBN:
9780300269055
Print ISBN:
9780300224351
Publisher:
Yale University Press

Abstract

In this cultural history of Americanization during the Progressive Era, it is argued that new immigrants and Native Americans shaped the intellectual and cultural debates over inclusion and exclusion, challenging ideas of national belonging, citizenship, and literary and cultural production. Deeply grounded in a wide-ranging archive of Indigenous and new immigrant writing and visual culture, the book brings together voices of Native and immigrant America. It shows that, although Native Americans and new immigrants faced different legal and cultural obstacles to citizenship, the challenges they faced and their resistance to assimilation and Americanization often ran along parallel paths. Both struggled against idealized models of American citizenship that dominated public spaces. Both participated in government-sponsored Americanization efforts and worked to gain agency and sovereignty while negotiating naturalization. Rethinking popular understandings of Americanization, the book argues that the new immigrants and Native Americans at the heart of this book expanded the narrow definitions of American identity.

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