American Studies: The Basics is an accessible and concise introduction that aims to unpack what American studies does and why it matters. From Moby-Dick to baseball, Hollywood westerns to #BlackLivesMatter, and Disneyland to the U.S. Supreme Court, American studies engages with a myriad of topics in its efforts to understand what the French sociologist Jean Baudrillard called 'social and cultural America.' The book begins by considering how America was studied before American studies' emergence as a recognized discipline in the mid-twentieth century. Successive chapters then explore the rise of American studies, its varied subjects, its distinctive methods of research, its geographical framing, and its politics. Throughout the book, explanatory examples are drawn from across American history and culture. Photographs are examined alongside novels, and historical monuments discussed next to films. The text offers an ideal way into an exciting academic subject of continuing growth and relevance. This book is a must read for those studying and with an interest in American studies.

Lindsey R. Swindall examines the historical and political context of acclaimed African American actor Paul Robeson’s three portrayals of Shakespeare’s Othello in the United Kingdom and the United States. These performances took place in London in 1930, on Broadway in 1943, and in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1959. All three of the productions, when considered together, provide an intriguing glimpse into Robeson’s artistry as well as his political activism. The Politics of Paul Robeson’s Othello maintains that Robeson’s development into a politically minded artist explicates the broader issue of the role of the African American artist in times of crisis. Robeson (1898–1976) fervently believed that political engagement was an inherent component of the role of the artist in society, and his performances demonstrate this conviction. In the 1930 production, audiences and critics alike confronted the question: Should a Black actor play Othello in an otherwise all-white cast? In the 1943 production on Broadway, Robeson consciously used the role as a form for questioning theater segregation both onstage and in the seats. In 1959, after he had become well known for his leftist views and sympathies with Communism, his performance in a major Stratford-upon-Avon production called into question whether audiences could accept onstage an African American who held radical—and increasingly unpopular—political views. Swindall thoughtfully uses Robeson’s Othello performances as a collective lens to analyze the actor and activist’s political and intellectual development.

This book presents the state of the art for the studies of strategies and tactics for the procurement of preys in Argentina in different regions and chronologies (from the end of the Pleistocene until historic moments). The chapters are related to the performance of these practices in hunter-gatherer, shepherd and farmer societies. From the environmental point of view, they show cases in diverse areas such as plains, mountains, forests, sea coast, steppes and puna. Likewise, the range of preys considered includes ungulates (camelids and deer), runner birds (Rhea pennata) and minor prey (mammals and fish). The book is aimed at professionals and students of archaeology interested in the analysis of tactics and strategies for prey capture. Every chapter offers an important contribution in theoretical, methodological and technical terms. In addition, these works possess a high comparative value on study cases of very different chronologies and environments of the Southern hemisphere. This book is a result of the 1st Workshop "Strategies and tactics in order to obtain preys in the past: its discussion from the integration of different lines of evidence" which was conducted in San Rafael, Mendoza, Argentina, between the 8th and 10th of August, 2018.

Native American Studies covers key issues such as the intimate relationship of culture to land; the nature of cultural exchange and conflict in the period after European contact; the unique relationship of Native communities with the United States government; the significance of language; the vitality of contemporary cultures; and the variety of Native artistic styles, from literature and poetry to painting and sculpture to performance arts.

The subject of missions-formal efforts at religious conversion of native peoples of the Americas by colonizing powers-is one that renders the modern student a bit uncomfortable. Where the mission enterprise was actuated by true belief it strikes the modern sensibility as fanaticism; where it sprang from territorial or economic motives it seems the rankest sort of hypocrisy. That both elements-greed and real faith-were usually present at the same time is bewildering. In this book seven scholars attempt to create a "new" mission history that deals honestly with the actions and philosophic motivations of the missionaries, both as individuals and organizations and as agents of secular powers, and with the experiences and reactions of the indigenous peoples, including their strategies of accommodation, co-optation, and resistance. The new mission historians examine cases from throughout the hemisphere-from the Andes to northern Mexico to California-in an effort to find patterns in the contact between the European missionaries and the various societies they encountered. Erick Langer is associate professor of history at Carnegie Mellon University. He is the author of Economic Change and Rural Resistance in Southern Bolivia, 1880-1930 and editor, with Zulema Bass Werner de Ruiz, of Historia de Tarija: Corpus Documental. Robert H. Jackson is the author of Indian Population Decline: The Missions of Northwestern New Spain, 1687-1840 and Regional Markets and the Agrarian Transformation in Bolivia Cochabamba, 1539-1960. He is an assistant professor in the Department of History and Geography at Texas Southern University.

The America that seems to be disappearing before our very eyes is, George Lipsitz argues, actually the cumulative creation of yesterday's struggles over identity, culture, and power. At a critical moment, this book offers a richly textured historical perspective on where our notions of national knowledge have come from and where they may lead. Showing how American studies has been shaped by the social movements of the 1930s, 1960s, and 1980s, Lipsitz identifies the ways in which the globalization of commerce and culture are producing radically new understandings of politics, performance, consumption, knowledge, and nostalgia. Book jacket.