Search results for ""author peter n. stearns""
New York University Press American Cool: Constructing a Twentieth-Century Emotional Style
Cool. The concept has distinctly American qualities and it permeates almost every aspect of contemporary American culture. From Kool cigarettes and the Peanuts cartoon's Joe Cool to West Side Story (Keep cool, boy.) and urban slang (Be cool. Chill out.), the idea of cool, in its many manifestations, has seized a central place in our vocabulary. Where did this preoccupation with cool come from? How was Victorian culture, seemingly so ensconced, replaced with the current emotional status quo? From whence came American Cool? These are the questions Peter Stearns seeks to answer in this timely and engaging volume. American Cool focuses extensively on the transition decades, from the erosion of Victorianism in the 1920s to the solidification of a cool culture in the 1960s. Beyond describing the characteristics of the new directions and how they altered or amended earlier standards, the book seeks to explain why the change occurred. It then assesses some of the outcomes and longer-range consequences of this transformation.
£25.19
New York University Press Anxious Parents: A History of Modern Childrearing in America
An examination into the history of modern parenting The nineteenth and twentieth centuries saw a dramatic shift in the role of children in American society and families. No longer necessary for labor, children became economic liabilities and twentieth-century parents exhibited a new level of anxiety concerning the welfare of their children and their own ability to parent effectively. What caused this shift in the ways parenting and childhood were experienced and perceived? Why, at a time of relative ease and prosperity, do parents continue to grapple with uncertainty and with unreasonable expectations of both themselves and their children? Peter N. Stearns explains this phenomenon by examining the new issues the twentieth century brought to bear on families. Surveying popular media, "expert” childrearing manuals, and newspapers and journals published throughout the century, Stearns shows how schooling, physical and emotional vulnerability, and the rise in influence of commercialism became primary concerns for parents. The result, Stearns shows, is that contemporary parents have come to believe that they are participating in a culture of neglect and diminishing standards. Anxious Parents: A Modern History of Childrearing in America shows the reasons for this belief through an historic examination of modern parenting.
£68.40
New York University Press Fat History: Bodies and Beauty in the Modern West
A Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in History Explores the meaning of fat and anti-fat in modern Western society The modern struggle against fat cuts deeply and pervasively into American culture, as evidenced by the compulsion to stay thin, or at least to profess a desire to become thin. Dieting, weight consciousness and widespread hostility to obesity form one of the fundamental themes of modern life in countries around the world. Yet, for example, while the French are renowned for their delight in all things gustatory, they are significantly trimmer and less diet-obsessed than Americans. Fat History explores the meaning of fat and anti-fat in modern Western society, focusing on the uniquely moral component of dieting in America. Tracing how standards of beauty and physical morality have been radically transformed over the past century in the United States and France, Peter N. Stearns illustrates how the contemporary obsession with fat arose in tandem with the dramatic growth in consumer culture, women's increasing equality, and changes in women's sexual and maternal roles. Contrary to popular belief, fashion and nutrition have played only a secondary role in spurring the American aversion to fat, while the French distaste for obesity can be traced to different origins altogether. Filled with narrative anecdotes and rooted in Stearns' trademark use of engaging original sources—from Ebony and Gourmet to The Journal of the American Medical Association and popularized accounts of French doctors—Fat History explores fat's transformation from a symbol of health and well-being to a sign of moral, psychological, and physical disorder.
£72.00
University of Illinois Press Shame: A Brief History
Shame varies as an individual experience and in its manifestations across time and cultures. Groups establish identity and enforce social behaviors through shame and shaming, while attempts at shaming often provoke a social or political backlash. Yet historians often neglect shame’s power to complicate individual, international, cultural, and political relationships. Peter N. Stearns draws on his long career as a historian of emotions to provide the foundational text on shame’s history and how this history contributes to contemporary issues around the emotion. Summarizing current research, Stearns unpacks the major debates that surround this complex emotion. He also surveys the changing role of shame in the United States from the nineteenth century to today, including shame’s revival as a force in the 1960s and its place in today’s social media. Looking ahead, he maps the abundant opportunities for future historical research and historically informed interdisciplinary scholarship.Written for interested readers and scholars alike, Shame combines significant new research with a wider synthesis.
£89.10
New York University Press Anxious Parents: A History of Modern Childrearing in America
An examination into the history of modern parenting The nineteenth and twentieth centuries saw a dramatic shift in the role of children in American society and families. No longer necessary for labor, children became economic liabilities and twentieth-century parents exhibited a new level of anxiety concerning the welfare of their children and their own ability to parent effectively. What caused this shift in the ways parenting and childhood were experienced and perceived? Why, at a time of relative ease and prosperity, do parents continue to grapple with uncertainty and with unreasonable expectations of both themselves and their children? Peter N. Stearns explains this phenomenon by examining the new issues the twentieth century brought to bear on families. Surveying popular media, "expert” childrearing manuals, and newspapers and journals published throughout the century, Stearns shows how schooling, physical and emotional vulnerability, and the rise in influence of commercialism became primary concerns for parents. The result, Stearns shows, is that contemporary parents have come to believe that they are participating in a culture of neglect and diminishing standards. Anxious Parents: A Modern History of Childrearing in America shows the reasons for this belief through an historic examination of modern parenting.
£23.39
New York University Press Satisfaction Not Guaranteed: Dilemmas of Progress in Modern Society
In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, modern urban, industrial, affluent societies have made great strides towards fixing some of the problems that plagued other societies for centuries: food shortages are nearly eliminated, infant and maternal mortality has fallen dramatically, birth control is both readily available and effective, education levels are higher, and internal violence is significantly reduced. Modernity’s blessings are many and bountiful—but has modernity really made us happy? Satisfaction Not Guaranteed is a book about the modern condition, and why the gains of living in modern urban, industrial, affluent societies have not proved more satisfying than they have. It examines why real results that paralleled earlier anticipations of progress have not generated the ease and contentment that the same forecasters assumed would apply to modern life. Employing his trademark inquiry of emotions in American history, Peter N. Stearns asks why, if modern life has been generally characterized by measurable themes of progress, abundance, and improvement, are people not happier or more content with their lot in life? Why is there an increased incidence of psychological depression, anxiety, and the sense that no one has ever reached a pinnacle of happiness or contentment? It’s not so much that modernity went wrong, but rather that it has not gone as swimmingly as was anticipated. Satisfaction Not Guaranteed uses concrete examples from both history and the present, such as happiness surveys, to discuss how as a society we might better juggle the demands of modern life with the pursuit of happiness.
£32.40
New York University Press Expanding the Past: A Reader in Social History
Since its founding twenty years ago the Journal of Social History has made substantial contributions to altering the way American historians look at and interpret their subject. It has served as a central outlet for new and exciting scholarship in social history, particularly European and American history but also Asian and Latin American as well. Under the editorship of Peter N. Stearns, the journal has published innovative work by many major American historians. Expanding the Past commemorates and highlights the achievements of the journal by republishing a selection of the most excellent articles that have appeared in the journal and that especially illustrate key features and trends in social history. These important essays cover issues such as illiteracy, work and gender roles, the police, kleptomania, immigration, and domesticity. Topics such as the history of old age, the social history of women, and working class history are explored. The volume reveals how historians define and deal with the most recent phenomena such as disease symptoms, the integration of subject matter to conventional issues like politics, and an enlargement of the past to embrace new elements. This book is an introduction to looking at the characteristic topics, methods, and particular insights of social history. Collectively, the essays represent some of the most vigorous and important work in this dynamic field of American historical research. They serve as an ideal vehicle for those readers who wish to further their understanding of this distinct approach to the past.
£23.39
New York University Press World History in Documents: A Comparative Reader, 2nd Edition
A textbook of primary sources of key events in history that have altered the past While world history materials date back to prehistoric times, the field itself is relatively young. Indeed, when the first edition of Peter Stearns’s best-selling World History in Documents was published in 1998, world history was poised for explosive growth, with the College Board approving the AP world history curriculum in 2000, and the exam shortly thereafter. At the university level, survey world history courses are increasingly required for history majors, and graduate programs in world history are multiplying in the U.S. and overseas. World events have changed as rapidly as the field of world history itself, making the long-awaited second edition of World History in Documents especially timely. In addition to including a new preface, focusing on current trends in the field, Stearns has updated forty percent of the textbook, paying particular attention to global processes throughout history. The book also covers key events that have altered world history since the publication of the first edition, including terrorism, global consumerism, and environmental issues.
£25.99
New York University Press An Emotional History of the U.S
Emotions lie at our very core as human beings. How we process and grapple with our emotions, how and what we emote, and how we respond to the emotions of others, constitute the essence of our social universe. In a very real sense, we exist only through the prism of our emotions. And yet the profound effect of human emotion on history, politics, religion, and culture, remains underexamined. While the influence of emotion in such realms as American foreign policy has been well-documented, other emotional aspects of American history have escaped notice. What role, for instance, does emotion have in the practice of African American religion? How do shame and self- hatred influence American conceptions of identity? How does our emotional life change as we age? To what degree is American consumerism driven by basic human emotion? With this landmark anthology, historians Peter N. Stearns and Jan Lewis provide a road map of the American emotional landscape. From the emotional world of working-class Massachusetts to the prayers of evangelical and pentecostal women and the gendered nature of black rage, these essays provide a multicultural snapshot of the unique nature, and evolution, of American emotions.
£23.39
The University of Chicago Press Anger: The Struggle for Emotional Control in America's History
In this groundbreaking social history, Carol and Peter Stearns trace the two hundred-year development of anger, beginning with premodern colonial America. Drawing on diaries and popular advice literature of key periods, Anger deals with the everyday experiences of the family and workplace in its examination of our attempts to control our domestic lives and lessen social tensions by harnessing emotion. Offering an entirely new approach to the study of emotion, the authors inaugurate a new field of study termed "emotionology," which distinguishes collective emotional standards from the experience of emotion itself.
£30.59
University of Illinois Press Doing Emotions History
How do emotions change over time? When is hate honorable? What happens when "love" is translated into different languages? Such questions are now being addressed by historians who trace how emotions have been expressed and understood in different cultures throughout history. Doing Emotions History explores the history of feelings such as love, joy, grief, nostalgia as well as a wide range of others, bringing together the latest and most innovative scholarship on the history of the emotions. Spanning the globe from Asia and Europe to North America, the book provides a crucial overview of this emerging discipline. An international group of scholars reviews the field's current status and variations, addresses many of its central debates, provides models and methods, and proposes an array of possibilities for future research. Emphasizing the field's intersections with anthropology, psychology, sociology, neuroscience, data-mining, and popular culture, this groundbreaking volume demonstrates the affecting potential of doing emotions history. Contributors are John Corrigan, Pam Epstein, Nicole Eustace, Norman Kutcher, Brent Malin, Susan Matt, Darrin McMahon, Peter N. Stearns, and Mark Steinberg.
£22.99
New York University Press Knowing, Teaching, and Learning History: National and International Perspectives
A rethinking of teaching methodology in history classrooms As issues of history and memory collide in our society and in the classroom, the time is ripe to rethink the place of history in our schools. Knowing, Teaching, and Learning History represents a unique effort by an international group of scholars to understand the future of teaching and learning about the past. It will challenge the ways in which historians, teachers, and students think about teaching history. The book concerns itself first and foremost with the question, "How do students develop sophisticated historical understandings and how can teachers best encourage this process?" Recent developments in psychology, education, and historiography inform the debates that take place within Knowing, Teaching, and Learning History. This four-part volume identifies the current issues and problems in history education, then works towards a deep and considered understanding of this evolving field. The contributors to this volume link theory to practice, making crucial connections with those who teach history. Published in conjunction with the American Historical Association.
£25.99
New York University Press Knowing, Teaching, and Learning History: National and International Perspectives
A rethinking of teaching methodology in history classrooms As issues of history and memory collide in our society and in the classroom, the time is ripe to rethink the place of history in our schools. Knowing, Teaching, and Learning History represents a unique effort by an international group of scholars to understand the future of teaching and learning about the past. It will challenge the ways in which historians, teachers, and students think about teaching history. The book concerns itself first and foremost with the question, "How do students develop sophisticated historical understandings and how can teachers best encourage this process?" Recent developments in psychology, education, and historiography inform the debates that take place within Knowing, Teaching, and Learning History. This four-part volume identifies the current issues and problems in history education, then works towards a deep and considered understanding of this evolving field. The contributors to this volume link theory to practice, making crucial connections with those who teach history. Published in conjunction with the American Historical Association.
£68.40
University of Illinois Press Doing Emotions History
How do emotions change over time? When is hate honorable? What happens when "love" is translated into different languages? Such questions are now being addressed by historians who trace how emotions have been expressed and understood in different cultures throughout history. Doing Emotions History explores the history of feelings such as love, joy, grief, nostalgia as well as a wide range of others, bringing together the latest and most innovative scholarship on the history of the emotions. Spanning the globe from Asia and Europe to North America, the book provides a crucial overview of this emerging discipline. An international group of scholars reviews the field's current status and variations, addresses many of its central debates, provides models and methods, and proposes an array of possibilities for future research. Emphasizing the field's intersections with anthropology, psychology, sociology, neuroscience, data-mining, and popular culture, this groundbreaking volume demonstrates the affecting potential of doing emotions history. Contributors are John Corrigan, Pam Epstein, Nicole Eustace, Norman Kutcher, Brent Malin, Susan Matt, Darrin McMahon, Peter N. Stearns, and Mark Steinberg.
£89.10
