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Reviews

Book Review: Democracy Promotion, National Security and Strategy by Robert Pee

The era that Pee covers was, of course, one of high political and cultural tension, thus the arguments that he elucidates in Democracy Promotion are often controversial and heavily mediated by particular political and social persuasions. It is therefore refreshing to find that Pee’s opening chapter recognizes many of these tensions and seeks to forge a path between them.

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Book Review: The Absence of America: The London Stage, 1576-1642 by Gavin Hollis

In Absence, Hollis discusses the picture of America circulated, he theorizes, by London theatres via “theatergrams” and “theatermemes”. Respectively, these terms comprise elements of character, scene, and situation; and shared allusions, ideas, catchphrases, and the like [3]. More precisely, Hollis discusses and tracks across plays: the ‘meme of the craven adventuring Virginian colonist; the ‘meme of cannibalism; the ‘meme of the displaced Indian; and the theatergrams of European males disguising themselves as Indians [27-9].

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Review, ‘An American Toy Story’

Officially launched on 19 March, the museum’s latest exhibition is, ‘An American Toy Story’. From Mickey Mouse to James Bond, the exhibition showcases vintage toys and memorabilia from an eclectic range of films. As explained by Chief Curator Kate Hebert, the exhibition celebrates toys whilst embracing the sense of nostalgia that one feels when recognising a beloved childhood relic.

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Book Review: Melville in his Own Time edited by Steven Olsen-Smith

During my first research trip to the United States in Summer 2012, I persuaded my friend Margaret to drive us to Pittsfield, Massachusetts to visit Arrowhead – Herman Melville’s farm house. I was half-way through a PhD thesis on Melville, and felt that I couldn’t visit Massachusetts without going to the place where Melville wrote Moby-Dick. Partly, this was touristic curiosity, but there was some bit of me that thought I might better understand the books I was writing about if I could go to the place where Melville wrote them – if I could picture Melville in his immediate context.

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Book Review: Political Polarization in American Politics edited by Daniel J Hopkins and John Sides

The polarization of American politics is often seen as a damning indictment of a political system which concerns two political parties for the majority of the time. Polarization is announced as a modern day symptom that has ‘impeded negotiation, compromise, and good governance.’(11) It is a view shared by both those individuals within the political theatre and also observers of American government.

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Book Review: South Side Girls: Growing Up in the Great Migration by Marcia Chatelain

In a society where social movements such as ‘Black Lives Matter’ and ‘Campaign Zero’ are vital and powerful, this book reminds readers of the struggles that black migrants and citizens have found in supposedly progressive cities since the thirteenth amendment was ratified. Chatelain’s book is particularly important in recognising the different, and tiered, elements within feminism faced by women of colour.

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Review: Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas: “Food and Work in the Americas” edited by Susan Levine and Steve Striffler

The essays in Labor seek to provide its readers with sustainable analysis of the unbreakable linkage of food and labor in different periods and locations of the Americas, thus successfully unveiling food as the crucial but often hidden aspect of production work.

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Book Review: Paul Auster’s Writing Machine: A Thing to Write With by Evija Trofimova

“…[T]o be an Auster critic always means to be slightly lost” (4). With this statement, Evija Trofimova sums up the experience (or plight) of Paul Auster’s collective readership, from the casual reader to the most observant critic.

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Review: Seventeenth Annual Conference of the Scottish Association for the Study of America

Snow dusted the horizon on 5 March, 2016, as the Scottish Association for the Study of America –affectionately known as SASA – gathered at the University of Stirling for its seventeenth annual conference. Promoting research into all forms of Americana, the SASA conference this year showcased the broad range of American Studies, History, and Literature, undertaken by doctoral, early career researchers, and established academics throughout Scotland and beyond.

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Book Review: Baptists in America: A History by Thomas S. Kidd and Barry Hankins

What do Jimmy Carter, former United States’ Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, the late Jerry Falwell, and progressive thinker Walter Rauschenbush have in common? The answer is that they were all American Baptists. In Baptists in America: A History, Thomas Kidd and Barry Hankins try to make sense of the diverging views and characters that make up the story of Baptists in the United States.

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