Böcker utgivna av University of Illinois Press

Born the tenth child of a poor Southern sharecropper, Jesse Owens would nevertheless go on to win an unprecedented four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. This biography of Owens details the successes and failures of this complex and troubled but ultimately indomitable figure who transcended his own athleticism and became an American icon.

Combining the history of country music's roots with portraits of its primary performers, this work examines the close relationship between "America's truest music" and the working-class culture that has constituted its principal source, nurtured its development, and provided its most dedicated supporters.

In November 1933, the Socialist Party of Bridgeport, Connecticut won a stunning victory in the municipal election, putting slate roofer Jasper McLevy in the mayor's seat. This book probes the factors that led to this electoral victory, uncovering a legacy of activist unionism, and business manipulation of local politics and taxes.

Discovering gothic fiction's role in the development of sexuality

Examines the link between the "Chinese question" and the "Negro problem" in nineteenth-century America. This work demonstrates that the anti-Chinese sentiment that led up to the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 is inseparable from the racial double standards applied by mainstream white society toward white and nonwhite groups.

The only volume covering literature written in English as well as the Chinese language

An interdisciplinary investigation of the co-creation of gender and technology

Understanding worldwide gangs through the lens of globalization

The author argues that rather than viewing play simply as a preoccupation and a vehicle for skill development, it is a social and cultural phenomenon of adult life, enveloped by wider structures and processes of society. The author distinguishes play from other forms of human social expression, particularly ritual, communitas, and work.

Having spearheaded the bourgeoning Nouvelle Vague scene in the late 1950s and developed a distinctive style involving still images, Chris Marker stands among the most influential filmmakers of the postwar era. This study includes interviews with the director and investigates his core themes and motivations.

The story of "Shoeless" Joe Jackson and his teammates purportedly conspiring with gamblers to throw the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds has lingered in collective consciousness. This interdisciplinary cultural history focuses on how it has been represented and remembered by journalists, historians, novelists, filmmakers, and baseball fans.

Explores the audience profile, the types of characters that recur, and changes to the industry landscape in the wake of media consolidation and a profusion of channels. Employing a cultural studies framework, this book examines whether the multiplicity of female-centric networks and narratives renders certain gender stereotypes uninhabitable.

Contains vignettes from both on and off the stage about the personalities of the Chicago blues scene in contemporary times. This book takes the readers on a tour of venues like East of Ryan and the Starlight Lounge; home to artists, such as Jumpin' Willie Cobbs, Willie D, and Harmonica Khan, and tells the stories behind the lives of past pioneers.

Features the history of the involvement of African Americans in the early recording industry and examines the first three decades of sound recording in the United States, charting the surprising roles black artists played in the period leading up to the Jazz Age and the remarkably wide range of black music and culture they preserved.

Makes the argument that the philosophy and practices of Western science, contrary to its enlightenment mission, work to insure that more science will only worsen the gaps between the best and worst off around the world.

A collection of musical portraits which pays tribute to such beloved and legendary figures as Benny Goodman, Bill Evans, Joe Morello, Paul Desmond, Alec Wilder, Mary Lou Williams, and others.

Focuses on large and problematic groups from Western Europe's past (the Irish in the United Kingdom, the Poles in Germany, and the Italians in France) and demonstrates a number of structural similarities in the way migrants and their descendants integrated into these nation states.

With killing representing the ultimate expression of human power over animals, this book reveals the complexity of the phenomenon by exploring the extraordinary diversity in killing practices and the wide variety of meanings attached to them. It examines aspects of the role of animals in human societies, from the 17th century to the present day.

Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt (1836-1919) ranks as the important American woman poet of the nineteenth-century after Emily Dickinson. This title reveals Piatt's ironic, experimental, and pushing the limits of Victorian language, the sentimental female persona, and what women's poetry could say.

Offers an analysis of the development of gay and lesbian studies alongside the development of queer theory, the disputes between them, and criticism of their activities from both in and outside of the gay academic community.

Drawing on the records of the Major League Baseball Players Association and interviews with ballplayers, journalists, and labor executives, this title gives an insider's view of the famous shift in power from management to players that set the standard in labor relations not just in baseball, but in a variety of professional sports.

Charts the intertwining histories of African Americans and sport. This book contains over 100 documents on both pioneering and modern-day athletes, ranging chronologically from a challenge issued by prizefighter Tom Molineaux in 1810 to contributions from commentators like Frederick Douglass, W E B Du Bois, James Baldwin, and Eldridge Cleaver.

Offers a study of the Progressive movement, its reformers, their ideology, and the social circumstances they tried to change. This book contends that the persistence of class conflict in America challenged the very defining feature of Progressivism: its promise of social harmony through democratic renewal.

Explores how American Indian autobiographers' approaches to writing about their own lives have been impacted by American legal systems from the Revolutionary War until the 1920s. This book traces the way that their sustained engagement with colonial legal institutions gradually enabled them to produce a new rhetoric of "Indianness".

Wong served in one of the all-Chinese units of the 14th Air Force in China during World War II and he discusses the impact of race and segregation on his experience. After the war he found a wife in Taishan, brought her to the US, and became involved in the government's infamous Confession program. This title gives his portrait.

Advances the study of pioneering black dancers by providing biographical and historical information on a group of artists who worked during the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s to legitimize dance of the African diaspora. This title sets these seminal artists and their innovations in the contexts of African-American culture and American modern dance.

Discusses the author's experiences on three campuses within the University of California system where Asian American studies was first developed - in response to vehement student demand - under the rubric of ethnic studies. This title documents a field of endeavour in which scholarship and identity define and strengthen each other.

Concerned with issues that have shaped the history of women in particular places and eras, this title examines women in ancient civilizations; including women in China, Japan, and Korea; women and gender in South and South East Asia; Medieval women; women and gender in Colonial Latin America; and the history of women in the US up to 1865.

Explores developments affecting American workers. This title explains how the ideals of free labor, free speech, freedom of association, and freedom of contract have been interpreted and canonized in ways that unfailingly reduce the capacity for workers' collective action while silently removing impediments to employers coercion of workers.