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Companion volume to Norwegian Migration to America, 1825-1860. Includes bibliographical references and index.
The Western Home: A Literary History of Norwegian America is a history of American literature. It is different from other histories of American literature in that the language of the writers and their readers was not English. There have been studies of American authors who have used languages such as French, German, Spanish, or Swedish, but this is the first comprehensive history of any literature written and read in the United States in another language than English. Indeed, most histories of American literature are based on the theory that English is the only American literary language. Such a theory, however, dismisses the fact that English has in periods been a minority language in many areas. In this book American literature is the literature of people who are American by choice or by birth regardless of the language they may have used. This book demonstrates that Norwegian has indeed been an American literary language and that many of the American writers in this language deserve our attention.
Ethnic Leadership and Midwestern Politics investigates the notion of ethnic identity as it relates to Scandinavian Americans and political affiliations in Wisconsin, from 1890-1914. Jørn Brøndal traces the evolution of their political alliances as they move from an early patronage system to one of a more enlightened social awareness, prompted by the Wisconsin Progressives led by Robert M. La Follette. Brøndal's exceptionally thorough research and cogent arguments combine to explain the workings of a political system that accorded nationality a major role in politics at the expense of real political, social, and economic issues in the early 1890s, and how (and why) the Progressives determined to change that system. Brøndal explains the change by looking at several important Scandinavian-American institutions, including the church, mutual aid fraternities, the temperance movement, the Scandinavian-language press, political clubs, and labor and farmer organizations, showing how these institutions impacted the construction of a nascent sense of Scandinavian American national identity and made a lasting mark on the Scandinavian-American role in politics.
A journal for the history of Lutheranism in America.