American QuarterlyVol. 58 Iss. 4 (2006)
Indian Patriots on Last Stand Hill
Michael A. Elliott
Elliott examines the complexities behind the memorialization of the Battle of Little Bighorn, focusing particularly on the 2003 dedication of a monument to the battle's American Indian fatalities. In analyzing the ambivalent stance of Native Americans toward their post-Indian Wars nationalization, Elliott coins a new term for their breed of patriotism--"anti-American Americanism."
W.E.B. DuBois, Anthropometric Science, and the Limits of Racial Uplift
Maria Farland
The author juxtaposes a lost sociological study and a plantation novel, both by DuBois. Although oblique, the connections between DuBois efforts to repudiate racialized science and his desire to celebrate the African American home are astutely linked to DuBois' own shift from scientist to author and activist.
Black Orientalism: Nineteenth-Century Narratives of Race and U.S. Citizenship
Helen H. Jun
Jun argues that nineteenth century African Americans struggled in response to the burgeoning Chinese immigrant population and the subsequent Chinese Exclusion Act by empathizing with, while simultaneously creating distance between themselves and the castigated Chinese. The author deftly uses articles from the periods African American press to differentiate "black orientalism," from "white orientalism."
Out of Chinatown and into the Suburbs: Chinese Americans and the Politics of Cultural Citizenship in Early Cold War America
Cindy I-Fen Cheng
The author effectively analyzes the attempt of Cold War Americans to distance themselves from racism in an effort to defend the country from Soviet accusations of bigotry. Using periodicals from 1945 to 1965, the gradual opening of the American suburbs to Chinese Americans, is discussed.
"So That We as a Race Might Have Something Authentic to Travel By": African American Automobility and Cold-War Liberalism
Cotton Seiler
In this lucid examination of African American "automobility," Seiler uses two travel guidebooks aimed at blacks to illustrate the conflict between racist limitations on access and the burgeoning American ideal of the open road.
"The Whole Wilderness Shall Blossom As the Rose": Samson Occom, Joseph Johnson, and the Question of Native Settlement on Coopers Frontier
Drew Lopenzina
The author contrasts the founding of two frontier towns in upstate New York--one by a group of acculturated Native Americans and the other by the uber-settler William Cooper. Recognizing the ultimate failure of the Native settlement, Lopenzina still credits the founders of Brotherton with a valiant attempt to ward off white appropriation of the land.
REVIEWED BY
Katie Robbins
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