You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Fiesta San Antonio began in 1891 and through the twentieth century expanded from a single parade to over two hundred events spanning a ten-day period. Laura Hernández-Ehrisman examines Fiesta's development as part of San Antonio's culture of power relations between men and women, Anglos and Mexicanos. In some ways Fiesta resembles hundreds of urban celebrations across the country, but San Antonio offers a unique fusion of Southern, Western, and Mexican cultures that articulates a distinct community identity. From its beginning as a celebration of a new social order in San Antonio controlled by a German and Anglo elite to the citywide spectacle of today, Hernández-Ehrisman traces the connections between Fiesta and the construction of the city's tourist industry and social change in San Antonio.
The story of how the multicultural identity of San Antonio, Texas, has been shaped and polished through its annual fiesta since the late nineteenth century.
As the Great Depression gripped the United States in the early 1930s, the Hoover administration sought to preserve jobs for Anglo-Americans by targeting Mexicans, including long-time residents and even US citizens, for deportation. Mexicans comprised more than 46 percent of all people deported between 1930 and 1939, despite being only 1 percent of the US population. In all, about half a million people of Mexican descent were deported to Mexico, a "homeland" many of them had never seen, or returned voluntarily in fear of deportation. They Came to Toil investigates how the news reporting of this episode in immigration history created frames for representing Mexicans and immigrants that persist...
Here is the cultural biography of Elisha Kane, a sickly physician, who transformed himself into an internationally celebrated Arctic explorer and author before his untimely death in 1857. This book is an important reinterpretation of the life of a prototypically American figure. Following Kane’s exploits from the Mexican War through his arctic adventures and ill-fated romance with the Spiritualist medium Margaret Fox, author Sawin ties this Kane into the main currents of mid-19th cent. popular culture, opening a new vista on the meanings of masculinity, celebrity, and heroism. This is an exhaustive research work into the life and accomplishments of a remarkable adventurer, and a sociological analysis of popular perceptions of Kane’s work and feats. Illus.
"Published in Cooperation with the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies, Southern Methodist University."
In the American imagination, no figure is more central to national identity and the nation’s origin story than the cowboy. Yet the Americans and Europeans who settled the U.S. West learned virtually everything they knew about ranching from the indigenous and Mexican horsemen who already inhabited the region. The charro—a skilled, elite, and landowning horseman—was an especially powerful symbol of Mexican masculinity and nationalism. After the 1930s, Mexican Americans in cities across the U.S. West embraced the figure as a way to challenge their segregation, exploitation, and marginalization from core narratives of American identity. In this definitive history, Laura R. Barraclough shows how Mexican Americans have used the charro in the service of civil rights, cultural citizenship, and place-making. Focusing on a range of U.S. cities, Charros traces the evolution of the “original cowboy” through mixed triumphs and hostile backlashes, revealing him to be a crucial agent in the production of U.S., Mexican, and border cultures, as well as a guiding force for Mexican American identity and social movements.
Up in Arms provides an illustrative and timely window onto the ways in which guns shape people’s lives and social relations in Texas. With a long history of myth, lore, and imaginaries attached to gun carrying, the Lone Star State exemplifies how various groups of people at different historical moments make sense of gun culture in light of legislation, political agendas, and community building. Beyond gun rights, restrictions, or the actual functions of firearms, the book demonstrates how the gun question itself becomes loaded with symbolic firepower, making or breaking assumptions about identities, behavior, and belief systems. Contributors include: Benita Heiskanen, Albion M. Butters, Pekka M. Kolehmainen, Laura Hernández-Ehrisman, Lotta Kähkönen, Mila Seppälä, and Juha A. Vuori.
Oil has made fortunes, caused wars, and shaped nations. Accordingly, no one questions the idea that the quest for oil is a quest for power. The question we should ask, Finding Oil suggests, is what kind of power prospectors have wanted. This book revises oil?s early history by exploring the incredibly varied stories of the men who pitted themselves against nature to unleash the power of oil. Brian Frehner shows how, despite the towering presence of a figure like John D. Rockefeller as a quintessential ?oil man,? prospectors were a diverse lot who saw themselves, their interests, and their relationships with nature in profoundly different ways. He traces their various pursuits of power from 1...
"'Discovering Texas History' is a historiographical reference book that will be invaluable to teachers, students, and researchers of Texas history. Chapter authors are familiar names in Texas history circles--a 'who's who' of high profile historians. Conceived as a follow-up to the award winning (but increasingly dated) 'A Guide the History of Texas' (1988), 'Discovering Texas History' focuses on the major trends in the study of Texas history since 1990. In part one, topical essays address significant historical themes, from race and gender to the arts and urban history. In part two, chronological essays cover the full span of Texas historiography from the Spanish era to the modern day. In each case, the goal is to analyze and summarize the subjects that have captured the attention of professional historians so that 'Discovering Texas History' will take its place as the standard work on the history of Texas history"--
"As LGBTQ people gain more legal rights, it's important to think of more complex ways of being included in society. From the Mardi Gras celebrations in the Deep South to the Mummers Parade in Philadelphia to the Portland Rose Festival, communities across the United States gather together to celebrate, participate in parades, encourage tourism, cultivate local traditions, and craft a sense of place. I am interested in large public festivals like Fiesta San Antonio that are intended to include everyone in the city, because these festivals are supposed to be a time when the city comes together as one to appreciate the diverse contributions of people within the city. During festivals, whose culture gets included and valued, which events are allowed, and how different communities are represented, become socially significant and fraught questions. Festival participation can be a rich site for LGBTQ participants to be valued for their cultural differences and find a sense of belonging in the city"--