Book Review: Chemical Heroes: Pharmacological Supersoldiers in the US Military by Andrew Bickford
Supersoldiers are often found in comic books and cinemas, but anthropologist Andrew Bickford covers the real attempts to bring the hero off the page and into reality. Chemical Heroes follows the development of the US military’s efforts to biomedically enhance their soldiers in response to the prediction that the future of warfare is a pharmaceutical battlefield.
Continue ReadingBook Review: The Value of Herman Melville by Geoffrey Sanborn
Given Herman Melville’s towering status in American literary and cultural history, it seems rather odd to ponder his ‘value’: his reputation and elevated position in the cultural canon are sufficient to over-awe the reader and convince them that his works must be what is casually referred to as ‘great literature’.
Continue ReadingBook Review: Religious Freedom: The Contested History of An American Ideal by Tisa Wenger
By recounting pivotal events of the Unites States imperialistic expansion through the lens of the religious-ideological struggle which informed them, in Religious Freedom: The Contested History of an American Ideal, Tisa Wenger explains how the ideal of religious freedom has been a part of the discourse of the United States’ dominant ethnic group, white Anglo-Saxon Protestants, as well as a tool deployed by the ‘many people who wanted to locate themselves as equal partners in the American experiment – and to transform themselves into actors, rather than subjects of the imperial modern’ (34).
Continue ReadingBook Review: Neoliberalism and Contemporary American Literature, edited by Liam Kennedy and Stephen Shapiro.
Neoliberalism and Contemporary American Literature is a challenging collection of essays that should reverberate throughout the field. Readers will find a range of insights here into how recent American fiction, in editors Liam Kennedy and Stephen Shapiro’s words, ‘models and interrogates the neoliberal present’ (1).
Continue ReadingBook Review: Slavery at Sea by Sowande’ M. Mustakeem
Sowande’ M. Mustakeem’s Slavery At Sea: Terror, Sex, and Sickness in the Middle Passage redefines the existing narrative of the transatlantic slave trade by offering vastly new perspectives to the literature. This ambitious study brings together a wide array of archival sources – including diaries, medical logs, ship logs, account sales, and newspapers – to consider ‘this horrific period in time’ which ‘continues unchallenged’ and so remains ‘a bloodied yet sanitized chapter in global history’ (6).
Continue ReadingAmerican Catholicism and Empire: A Review Essay
The rise of Catholicism in the United States has been examined for the most part in relation to the expansion of the US empire. Early studies focus especially on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Only recently have the first arduous steps been taken in understanding the complex transformation of Protestantism and Catholicism in the US from the late seventeenth to the nineteenth century.
Continue ReadingBook Review: Abortion and the Law in America by Mary Ziegler
The death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in September 2020 caused a resurgence of the long-standing debate over abortion in the United States, especially because it happened merely two months before the presidential election which could confirm Donald Trump for a second mandate.
Continue ReadingBook Review: Gamer Nation: Video Games and American Culture by John Wills
As Sascha Pöhlmann stresses in his introduction to USSO’s series on Video Games and American Studies, American studies has been slow to embrace video games as a topic of critical engagement. Enter University of Kent’s John Wills and his book Gamer Nation: Video Games & American Culture, which seeks to demonstrate ‘how games have simulated and begun to reframe the American experience’ (14).
Continue ReadingBook Review: The Coming of Southern Prohibition by Michael Lewis
The advent of nationwide Prohibition in 1920 marks a pivotal moment in U.S. history. This momentous political step was preceded by a decades-long public controversy as to how to curb the social ills associated with the excessive consumption of alcohol. Michael Lewis’ The Coming of Southern Prohibition is a case study that examines this prolonged ideological struggle between ‘dry’ and ‘wet’ forces in a localised context.
Continue ReadingBook Review: Remaking a Life: How Women Living with HIV/AIDS Confront Inequality by Celeste Watkins-Hayes
Celeste Watkins-Hayes’ Remaking a Life centres on the creation, expansion, and maintenance of the HIV/AIDS safety net in the United States. The book predominately focuses on women of colour in Chicago, highlighting their stories as case studies for the successes of the HIV/AIDS safety net.
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