This volume provides a comprehensive catalog of how various ethnic groups in the United States of America have differently shaped their cultural landscape. Author John Cross links an overview of the spatial distributions of many of the ethnic populations of the United States with highly detailed discussions of specific local cultural landscapes associated with various ethnic groups. This book provides coverage of several ethnic groups that were omitted from previous literature, including Italian-Americans, Chinese-Americans, Japanese-Americans, and Arab-Americans, plus several smaller European ethnic populations. The book is organized to provide an overview of each of the substantive ethnic landscapes in the United States. Between its introduction and conclusion, which looks towards the future, the chapters on the various ethnic landscapes are arranged roughly in chronological order, such that the timing of the earliest significant surviving landscape contribution determines the order the groups will be viewed. Within each chapter the contemporary and historical spatial distribution of the ethnic groups are described, the historical geography of the group’s settlement is reviewed, and the salient aspects of material culture that characterize or distinguish the group’s ethnic landscape are discussed. Ethnics Landscapes of America is designed for use in the classroom as a textbook or as a reader in a North American regional course or a cultural geography course. This volume also can function as a detailed summary reference that should be of interest to geographers, historians, ethnic scholars, other social scientists, and the educated public who wish to understand the visible elements of material culture that various ethnic populations have created on the landscape.

Immigration has expanded dramatically in both traditional and emerging receiving nations. This worldwide boom has profoundly altered urban areas as new arrivals have transformed inner cities and suburbs alike into bastions of new ethnic economic activity. Examining the essential role of space in assisting and modifying ethnic business activity, this book considers how ethnic economies are reshaping the urban landscape in the United States, Britain, Australia, Canada, Germany, and Italy. Each chapter explores the significance of urban space and local context in the development of an ethnic economy and how, in turn, ethnic economies have helped to recreate urban neighborhoods. With its international scope and rich case studies, this book will be invaluable for scholars and students alike in the fields of ethnic studies, urban studies, economic development, geography, and sociology.

Ethnic diversity has marked the United States from its inception, and it is impossible to separate ethnicity from an understanding of the United States as a country and “Americans” as a people. Since the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, the United States has experienced watershed transformations in its social, cultural, and ethnic geographies. Considering the impact of these wide-ranging changes, this unique text examines the experiences of a range of ethnic groups in both historical and contemporary context. It begins by laying out a comprehensive conceptual framework that integrates immigration theory; globalization; transnational community formation; and urban, cultural, and economic geography. The contributors then present a rich set of case studies of the key Latin American, Asian American, and Middle Eastern communities comprising the vast majority of newer immigrants. Each case offers a brief historical overview of the group’s immigration experience and settlement patterns and discusses its contemporary socioeconomic dynamics. All these communities have transformed—and been transformed by—the places in which they have settled. Exploring these changing communities, places, and landscapes, this book offers a nuanced understanding of the evolution of America's contemporary ethnic geographies.

The only compact yet comprehensive survey of environmental and cultural forces that have shaped the visual character and geographical diversity of the settled American landscape. The book examines the large-scale historical influences that have molded the varied human adaptation of the continent’s physical topography to its needs over more than 500 years. It presents a synoptic view of myriad historical processes working together or in conflict, and illustrates them through their survival in or disappearance from the everyday landscapes of today.

This title was first published in 2003. The essay collection explores the conjunctions of nation, gender, and visual representation in a number of countries-including Ireland, Scotland, Britain, Canada, Finland, Russia and Germany-during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The contributors show visual imagery to be a particularly productive focus for analysing the intersections of nation and gender, since the nation and nationalism, as abstract concepts, have to be "embodied" in ways that make them imaginable, especially through the means of art. They explore how allegorical female figures personify the nation across a wide range of visual media, from sculpture to political cartoons and how national architectures may also be gendered. They show how through such representations, art reveals the ethno-cultural bases of nationalisms. Through the study of such images, the essays in this volume cast new light on the significance of gender in the construction of nationalist ideology and the constitution of the nation-state. In tackling the conjunctions of nation, gender and visual representation, the case studies presented in this publication can be seen to provide exciting new perspectives on the study of nations, of gender and the history of art. The range of countries chosen and the variety of images scrutinised create a broad arena for further debate.

The steady immigration of black populations from Africa and the Caribbean over the past few decades has fundamentally changed the racial, ethnic, and political landscape in the United States. But how will these "new blacks" behave politically in America? Using an original survey of New York City workers and multiple national data sources, Christina M. Greer explores the political significance of ethnicity for new immigrant and native-born blacks. In an age where racial and ethnic identities intersect, intertwine, and interact in increasingly complex ways, Black Ethnics offers a powerful and rigorous analysis of black politics and coalitions in the post-Civil Rights era.

During the 1930s, the state park movement and the National Park Service expanded public access to scenic American places, especially during the era of the New Deal. However, under severe Jim Crow restrictions in the South, African Americans were routinely and officially denied entrance to these supposedly shared sites. Landscapes of Exclusion presents the first-ever study of segregation in southern state parks, underscoring the profound disparity that persisted for decades in the Jim Crow South.