@sarahchurchwell I'm only a few pages into Behold, America and have already decided to teach it in my American Fictions course. Don't know how I missed it when it first came out. It's perfect for just this kind of gen ed course. Thank you.

Thinking about how these books may help make sense of the earliest mainstream mentions of the phrase "American dream" or "American dreams" that you cite and move on from.

Your 1st chapter is making me want to scour Du Bois, Bourne, Zangwill for any mention of "American dream" @sarahchurchwell

@sarahchurchwell Your first chapter (p. 35) now has me thinking about "American Adam" discourse and its ties to the changing uses of "American dream" 1900-1916. What if Lippmann had cited Pap Finn as a fallen American Adam? https://twitter.com/CitizenSE/status/1348300545182855171?s=19

Well, now your 2nd chapter is making Du Bois, Zangwill, Bourne relevant in other ways (debates over Wilson's "America First" line in favor of US neutrality during WWI; use of "melting pot"; nativism; 100% Americanism) @sarahchurchwell (Missed opportunity to reference Z on p. 46.)

Now I'm wondering if my dad's dad's family members were given (or took) the last name I now have when they entered the US just years before the doors closed to our relatives in 1924.

What I do know is that when my dad's mom was living more in the 1920s and 1930s than the 1980s due to Alzheimer's, she would criticize my brother's and my enunciation and diction. She must have been the accent police in her family.

On Jefferson's racial Anglo-Saxonism...Reed knew which Jefferson he was invoking!

https://twitter.com/CitizenSE/status/1350083402263883778?s=19

Another broad observation: the first few chapters would be well supplemented by Anders Stephanson on manifest destiny, Eric Rauchway on American exceptionalism, and Matthew Frye Jacobson on whiteness. For those considering teaching @sarahchurchwell 's excellent Behold, America.

@sarahchurchwell Wondering if Mary Antin's The Promised Land uses the phrase "American Dream" or comes close? Claiming Americanism (over, say, Zionism, and against US nativism) has to predate the 1920s, right? Maybe Sollors's Beyond Ethnicity or later work has something on this?

No luck quickly finding the phrase "American Dream" in Antin (she mentions "American way" and "Americanization" fairly often), except perhaps for hints of it from "Initiation" (her father's dream) and "A Kingdom in the Slums" (American promise).

Finished Behold, America last night; I'm even more committed to teaching it next spring in American Fictions. It's pitched perfectly to entering undergrads, it shows the value of digging into primary sources, + it connects "American Dream" + "America First" from their origins up.

But its major strength--focusing on mainstream sources 1900-1940 makes for a vivid and undeniable montage, raiding issues that today are too often pooh poohed--is also its weakness. Which is why it needs to be supplemented by other texts. Let me explain.

By virtue of the method, there's almost no engagement with voices of actual immigrants, socialists, bohemians, feminists, radicals, BIPOC writers and activists, and so on. So Saidiya Hartman's Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments would be a great pairing.

https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393357622

There are also short, readable, more analytical treatments of overlapping discourses (Anders Stephanson on manifest destiny, Eric Rauchway on American exceptionalism, Eric Foner on American Freedom, @nikhil_palsingh on America's long war) that wd work well with Behold, America.

In short, @sarahchurchwell is doing necessary work in Behold, America. The fact that it's not sufficient is no fault of hers (nor would it be of anyone who writes a focused, timelyintervention on what is too often taken for granted in the present). It's on us to supplement it.

I'd appreciate it if others shared suggestions for an entry-level gen ed course on American Fictions that would be excellent reads for new college students in a rural public regional university alongside Behold America!