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...
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.
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;...
¡Viva George! Celebrating Washington’s Birthday at the US-Mexico Border
For 120 years, residents of the cross-border community of Laredo/Nuevo Laredo have celebrated George Washington's birthday together, and Associate Professor of American Studies Elaine Pena's account...
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....
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...