Becoming old stock : the paradox of German-American identity

: Russell A. Kazal.
Author/Creator:: Kazal, Russell A. (Russell Andrew)
Resource Type:: Book
Publication:: Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, [2004]
Copyright Notice:: 2004
Physical Description:: xvii, 383 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Charles Library - BookBot

Call Number	Description	Type	Availability
F158.9.G3 K39 2004			Loading Availability

Details

Bibliography:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [291]-370) and index.

Contents:

1900 -- German Philadelphia: A Social Portrait -- Two Neighborhoods -- Confronting Assimilation, 1900-1914 -- The Gendered Crisis of the Vereinswesen -- Destinations: The Ambiguous Lure of Mass Commercial and Consumer Culture -- Destinations: Fractured Whiteness, "American" Identity, and the "Old Stock" Opening -- Resisting Assimilation: Middle-Class and Working-Class Approaches -- Storm, 1914-1919 -- European War and Ethnic Mobilization -- Intervention, the Anti-German Panic, and the Fall of Public Germanness -- Reshaping Identities in the 1920s -- An Ethnicity Subdued -- Changing Neighborhoods -- Middle-Class Germans: American Identity and the "Stock" of "Our Forefathers" -- Workers and Catholics: Toward the "White Ethnic" -- Conclusion: Pluralism, Nationalism, Race, and the Fate of German America -- The Neighborhood Census Samples.

Summary:

More Americans trace their ancestry to Germany than to any other country. Arguably, German Americans form America's largest ethnic group, yet they have a remarkably low profile today, reflecting a dramatic, twentieth-century retreat from German-American identity. In this age of multiculturalism, why have German Americans gone into ethnic eclipse -- and where have they ended up? Becoming Old Stock represents the first in-depth exploration of that question. The book describes how German Philadelphians reinvented themselves in the early twentieth century, especially after World War I brought a nationwide anti-German backlash. Using quantitative methods, oral history, and a cultural analysis of written sources, the author explores how, by the 1920s, many middle-class and Lutheran residents had redefined themselves in "old-stock" terms -- as "American," in opposition to southeastern European "new immigrants." It also examines working-class and Catholic Germans, who came to share a common identity with other European immigrants, but not with newly arrived black Southerners. Becoming Old Stock sheds light on the way German Americans used race, American nationalism, and mass culture to fashion new identities in place of ethnic ones. It is also an important contribution to the growing literature on racial identity among European Americans. In tracing the fate of one of America's largest ethnic groups, Becoming Old Stock challenges historians to rethink the phenomenon of ethnic assimilation and to explore its complex relationship to American pluralism.

Subject: