American Studies

The story of how the multicultural identity of San Antonio, Texas, has been shaped and polished through its annual fiesta since the late nineteenth century.

Looking at both European and American travelers’ accounts of the West, from de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America to William Least Heat-Moon’s Blue Highways, David Wrobel offers a counternarrative to the nation’s romantic entanglement with its western past and suggests the importance of some long-overlooked authors, lively and perceptive witnesses to our history who deserve new attention.

In homage to Michael Lesy’s cult classic, Wisconsin Death Trip, Hollars pairs reports from late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century journalists with fictional versions, creating a hybrid text complete with facts, lies, and a wide range of blurring in between.

At last edited into one volume, the story of one of twentieth-century America’s most flamboyant women, from her youth in upper-class Buffalo to her “discovery” of New Mexico.

The letters of Amiri Baraka and Edward Dorn offer a vivid picture of American lives connecting around poetry during a tumultuous time of change and immense creativity.

Restricted at the behest of her family until the year 2000, Rudnick’s edition of these remarkable documents represents the culmination of more than thirty-five years of study of Luhan’s life, writings, lovers, friends, and Luhan’s social and cultural milieus in Italy, New York, and New Mexico.

Stewart studies the writings of three American authors who all helped define civil religion through their expressions of the tradition of the jeremiad, or prophetic judgment of a people for backsliding from their destiny.

These original essays examine the complex history of the death penalty, focusing on specific geographic areas to illuminate the circumstances of law and politics.

A leading scholar takes on a variety of contemporary issues as they relate to Native Americans.

This experimental study of cultural dysfunction in New Mexico's Española Valley tells the stories of several of its Nuevomexicano residents, both famous and notorious.