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1st Edition

The Routledge History of the American Dream

Edited By M. Michaela Hampf, Katharina Vester Copyright 2027

506 Pages 6 B/W Illustrations

by Routledge

Description

This handbook tracks the emergence, transformations, contradictions, and global circulation of the American Dream from the colonial period to the present. Bringing together scholars from history, literary studies, American studies, media studies, and related fields, the volume demonstrates how the Dream has functioned simultaneously as a promise of opportunity and a mechanism of exclusion. The... Read more

Table of Contents

Introduction: The American Dream and Its Discontents
M. Michaela Hampf and Katharina Vester

Part I — Chosenness, Expansion, and the Promise of America

1. Divine Intervention: Early Settler Society and the Belief in Chosenness

Heike Paul

2. Westward Expansion and the Frontier

Robert M. Owens

3. The California Gold Rush and the American Dream

Norbert Finzsch

4. Nicaragua and the American Dream

Michel Gobat

5. America in Space: Dreams and Nightmares

Johan Eriksson and Lindy M. Newlove-Eriksson

Part II — Migration, Mobility, and Belonging

6. The American Allure and the Social Meanings of the American Dream in Nineteenth-Century Europe

Max Paul Friedman

7. The American Dream in Nineteenth-Century Migrant Letters: The Negotiation of Promises, Expectations and Experiences of the “New World” in German Emigrant Correspondence

Ursula Lehmkuhl

8. Mexico and the American Dream

Donna Marie Kabalen Vanek

9. A Dream Deferred? The American Dream and the Japanese American Experience

Jonathan van Harmelen

10. Boat People, Refugees, and the American Dream

M. Michaela Hampf

11. Asian American Dreams: Undocumented Immigrant Youth Organizing

Kevin Escudero

Part III — Labor, Cities, and Everyday Life

12. Workers, the Labor Movement, and the American Dream

Randi Std

13. Alcohol and the American Dream

Gina Hames

14. The American Dream and the Automobile

Kathleen Franz

15. Dreaming America in the New Negro Era

John Edgar Tidwell

16. Homeownership, Racial Segregation, and the (Broken) American Dream

Adelheid von Saldern

Part IV — Bodies, Gender, and Citizenship

17. Nineteenth-Century Women’s “American Dreams”

Marianne Noble

18. Women’s Rights Activism and the American Promise

Julia Roth

19. American Dreamers: Hegemonic Masculinity in Crisis and Beyond?

Felix Krämer

20. The Struggle for Gay and Transgender Rights and the American Dream

Craig M. Loftin

Part V — Crisis, Dissent, and Reinvention

21. The Great Depression and the American Dream

Jeff Allred

22. African American Activism and the American Dream

Michael Haspel and Britta Waldschmidt-Nelson

23. The Beat Generation and the American Dream

Raj Chandarlapaty

24. The American Dream and Environmental History

Jerald C. Mast

25. The American Dream and Neoliberalism

Christina Juhász-Wood and Liza Minno

Part VI — Imagining the Dream

26. “Anything your heart desires will come to you…”: Disney and the American Dream Tracey Mollet

27. Popular Music and the American Dream

Martin Lüthe

Selected Bibliography

Editor(s)

Biography

M. Michaela Hampf is Professor of Transcultural History of North America at Ruhr University Bochum, Germany. Her research spans the cultural, social, and political history of the United States; transnational and global history; gender and the military; the history of the body, migration and the media.

Katharina Vester is Associate Professor of History and American Studies at American University, USA. She is the author of A Taste of Power: Food and American Identities (2015) and researches food, body culture, gender, and citizenship in the United States. Her teaching and scholarship emphasize interdisciplinary, transnational, and public-facing approaches to American history and culture.

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