Faculty & Alumni Books

GW's American Studies faculty have authored a number of critically acclaimed books in recent years. Here is a sampling of their work.

Model Schools in the Model City

Model Schools in the Model City

Amber N. Wiley (PhD '11) chronicles how Black Washingtonians used public education as a means of racial uplift in the face of entrenched white supremacy.

Addiction, Inc.

Addiction, Inc.

Emily Dufton (PhD '14) explains how medication-assisted treatment gave way to poor care at high costs to an insufficient number of people.

Breaking the World

Breaking the World

Justin Mann (PhD '18) theorizes ethical strategies that Black writers, musicians, and artists employ to unmake processes state and parastate agents augment.

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Ugly Freedoms

In Ugly Freedoms, Elisabeth R. Anker reckons with the complex legacy of freedom offered by liberal American democracy, outlining how the emphasis of individual liberty has always been entangled with...

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Divisions: A New History of Racism and Resistance in America's World War II Military

Prizewinning historian Thomas A. Guglielmo draws together more than a decade of extensive research to tell sweeping yet personal stories of race and the military; of high command and ordinary GIs;...

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Out of Stock: The Warehouse in the History of Capitalism

Associate Professor of American Studies Dara Orenstein delivers an ambitious and engrossing account of that most generic and underappreciated site in American commerce and industry: the...

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Sensual Excess: Queer Femininity and Brown Jouissance

Amber Jamilla Musser, associate professor of American Studies, reimagines black and brown sensuality to develop new modes of knowledge production. Sensual Excess works against the framing...

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The Kingdom of God Has No Borders: A Global History of American Evangelicals

Melani McAlister, professor of American studies and international affairs, offers a daring new perspective on conservative Christianity by focusing on the world outside American borders. In a...

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The Open Mind: Cold War Politics and the Sciences of Human Nature

Jamie Cohen-Cole, associate professor of American Studies, chronicles the development of a rational, creative and autonomous self and demonstrates how the self became a defining feature of Cold...

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It's Been Beautiful: Soul! and Black Power Television

Gayle Wald, professor of English and American Studies, examines the first African American black variety television program, "Soul!," which was influential in expressing the diversity of black...