Moral Problems in American Life : : New Perspectives on Cultural History / / ed. by Karen Halttunen, Lewis Perry.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Cornell University Press Archive Pre-2000
• MitwirkendeR: Ayers, Edward L.,; Bernard, Joel,; Forbath, William E.,; Glickstein, Jonathan A.,; Halttunen, Karen,; Lears, T. J. Jackson,; Loveland, Anne C.,; Perry, Lewis,; Plakins Thornton, Tamara,; Rose, Anne C.,; Rubin, Joan Shelley,; Sarna, Jonathan D.,; Stanley, Amy Dru,; Stansell, Christine,; Wightman Fox, Richard,
• HerausgeberIn: Halttunen, Karen,; Perry, Lewis,
• Place / Publishing House: Ithaca, NY : : Cornell University Press, , [2018]; ©1998
• Year of Publication: 2018
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (368 p.) :; 13 halftones

American history is filled with moments of grave moral doubt and institutional crisis, with conflicts over fundamental values, with ethical dilemmas and paradoxes. This volume surveys the moral landscape of the American past from slavery to the Vietnam War. Bringing together fourteen of the most original historians practicing today, the book illuminates a critical dimension of American history, even as it shows how historical study contributes to present-day debates about values and the moral life.These essays examine a wide range of questions that have engaged past generations of Americans and persist into the present—questions about the composition of a moral community and the case for civil disobedience, about the appropriate responses to injustices and inequalities, and about the ethical implications of artistic expression, school curricula, sexual behaviors, and popular media. Focusing on the impact of moral problems on everyday experience, the authors consider these questions in light of reform movements and religious practices; changing social institutions such as marriage, public schools, labor unions, and penitentiaries; and enduring moral forces from the Bible to the U.S. Constitution. Together their essays give historical context to a wide variety of American practices and beliefs and, in doing so, provide a new framework for understanding cultural life.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Introduction -- Problems of Moral Community -- 1. Original Themes of Voluntary Moralism: The Anglo-American Reformation of Manners -- 2. Gothic Mystery and the Birth of the Asylum: The Cultural Construction of Deviance in Early-Nineteenth-Century America -- 3. The World's "Dirty Work" and the Wages That "Sweeten" It: Labor's "Extrinsic Rewards" in Antebellum Society -- 4. Deviance, Dominance, and the Construction of Handedness in Turn-of-the-Century Anglo-America -- Race and the Problem of Slavery -- 5. Black Abolitionists and the Origins of Civil Disobedience -- 6. "The Right to Possess All the Faculties That God Has Given": Possessive Individualism, Slave Women, and Abolitionist Thought -- 7. Worrying about the Civil War -- 8. Caste, Class, and Equal Citizenship -- Religion and Moral Community -- 9. Jewish Prayers for the U.S. Government: A Study in the Liturgy of Politics and the Politics of Liturgy -- 10. Interfaith Families in Victorian America -- 11. Prophetic Ministry and the Military Chaplaincy during the Vietnam Era -- Rewarding Moral Boundaries in Modern America -- 12. Listen, My Children: Modes and Functions of Poetry Reading in American Schools, 1880-1950 -- 13. Talking about Sex: Early-Twentieth-Century Radicals and Moral Confessions -- 14. "What If History Was a Gambler?" -- Afterword. David Brion Davis: A Biographical Appreciation -- Contributors -- Index