The volume documents the use of early colonial New England history for the purpose of national identity constructions in a crucial period of U.S.-American cultural history. The selection of anniversary addresses is accompanied by introductions to the respective celebrations, orators, and contexts and by reprints of historical paintings and popular prints of New England history. The annotated edition of thirty-one Forefathers’ Day orations from 1770 through 1865 collects representative examples from different historical periods and from different regions of the United States. In the antebellum times, Forefathers’ Day was frequently seen to equal the Fourth of July in cultural and political significance. First established in Plymouth in the late 1760s and flowering in Massachusetts and other New England states well into the nineteenth century, Forefathers’ Day followed the expansion of the United States to the South, Midwest, and West until the Civil War. The Forefathers’ Day celebrations of December 22, and the oratory of these festivities in particular, contributed significantly to the construction of a national U.S.-American myth of origin and the invention of a national U.S.-America historical and political tradition. Between the American Revolution and the Civil War, Forefathers’ Day orations were the cornerstone of anniversary performances dedicated to the commemoration of the arrival of the Mayflower and the Pilgrim Fathers in Plymouth in 1620 and the ensuing foundation of the first Puritan colony in New England. The volume presents the first comprehensive documentation of New England Forefathers’ Day orations. (2016) New England Forefathers’ Day Orations, 1770-1865 The Male Body in Representation: Returning to Matter adds to Cultural Studies scholarship interested in the body and gender in general and contributes to the fields of Masculinity and Body Studies in particular. In its full scope, the book acknowledges the plurality of gendered experiences and the diversity of male bodies. Organized into four major sections, the contributions assembled in this book feature engaging readings of ‘non/conforming bodies’, ‘fashionable bodies’, ‘passing bodies’, and ‘pioneering bodies’ that to different degrees foreground their critical and creative potentials.

Locating the subject matter in relevant theoretical fields, it looks at representations of male bodies in various contexts through paranoid and reparative lenses.

This international and multidisciplinary volume focuses on the male body and constructions of gender in a variety of cultural productions and formats. (2022) The Male Body in Representation: Returning to Matter

Rand silvia shaw