Faculty Books

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

Cover of Ashley Brown's book "Serving Herself"

Serving Herself: The Life and Times of Althea Gibson

In this comprehensive biography, Ashley Brown narrates the public career and private struggles of Althea Gibson (1927-2003).

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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 warehouse....

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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 of black...

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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 War...

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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...

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Orgies of Feeling: Melodrama and the Politics of Freedom

Elisabeth Anker, associate professor of American Studies and political science, argues that American politics is often influenced by melodrama narratives from cinema and literature. This book focuses...

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The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn: Gentrification and the Search for Authenticity in Postwar New York

Suleiman Osman locates the origins of gentrification in Brooklyn in the cultural upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s, challenging the conventional wisdom that New York City's renaissance started in the...