Overview

Why do people at certain historical moments choose to define themselves in terms of their ethnicity? What concrete concerns are embedded in such identification? What does the creation of this identity mean in the larger context of history and social relationships? These are some of the questions April R. Schultz addresses in this interdisciplinary study of the way in which ethnic identity has been shaped and expressed in American culture. Drawing on the work of historians, anthropologists, literary critics, and cultural theorists, Schultz analyzes one national celebration--the 1925 Norwegian-American Immigration Centennial--as a strategic site for the invention of ethnicity. She shows how Norwegian Americans used this ceremony to create a distinctive vision of their past and present--a social and cultural construction that both accommodated and resisted dominant Anglo-American conceptions of assimilation. By taking a close look at the experiences of a white, middle-class, Protestant ethnic community, this book challenges many assumptions about the Americanization of immigrant groups and offers new insight into the uses of historical memory.

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9781558497924

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Reviews

Schultz's book is a brilliant, state-of-the-art interdisciplinary study that expands, by application to a particular case, the various scholarly arguments about the ways cultural traditions, histories, and memories are invented or projected...It will, I think, give rise to imitation, as its method, scope and depth are all exemplary.--Joseph T. Skerrett Jr., MELUS (Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the United States) Shultz makes a stunning contribution to social history, cultural studies, and ethnic studies. Her examination of the 1925 Norwegian-American Immigration Centennial demonstrates the ways in which seemingly small and commonplace cultural events can encode enormously important larger meanings. Drawing deftly on a broad range of sophisticated research...Schultz delineates the dynamism of ethnic identity in definitive fashion. Rather than a static inheritance from the past, ethnicity emerges in her account as something re-created anew every day in the context of present needs and desires. A model of careful and creative scholarship.--George Lipsitz, University of California, San Diego

Author Information

April R. Schultz is professor of history and director of Women's Studies at Illinois Wesleyan University.

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