Portrait of America: A Cultural History of the Federal Writers' Project / Edition 1

by Jerrold Hirsch

Overview

How well do we know our country? Whom do we include when we use the word "American"? These are not just contemporary issues but recurring questions Americans have asked themselves throughout their history—and questions that were addressed when, in 1935, the Roosevelt administration created the Federal Writers' Project (FWP) under the aegis of the Works Progress Administration. Although the immediate context of the FWP was work relief, national FWP officials developed programs that spoke to much larger and longer-standing debates over the nature of American identity and culture and the very definition of who was an American.

Hirsch reviews the founding of the FWP and the significance of its American Guide series, considering the choices made by administrators who wanted to celebrate diversity as a positive aspect of American cultural identity. In his exploration of the FWP's other writings, Hirsch discusses the project's pioneering use of oral history in interviews with ordinary southerners, ex-slaves, ethnic minorities, and industrial workers. He also examines congressional critics of the FWP vision; the occasional opposition of local Federal Writers, especially in the South; and how the FWP's vision changed in response to the challenge of World War II. In the course of this study, Hirsch raises thought-provoking questions about the relationships between diversity and unity, government and culture, and, ultimately, culture and democracy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807854891
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	10/13/2003
Edition description:	1
Pages:	312
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.69(d)

About the Author

Jerrold Hirsch is professor of history at Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

A provocative and thoughtful book.—Washington Post Book World

Portrait of America is quite an accomplishment, and it will undoubtedly be one of the authoritative studies of the Federal Writers Project for a long time to come.—South Carolina Historical Magazine

A welcome complement to existing works of administrative history and literary criticism.—American Historical Review

A thoroughgoing study of the ideas and ideology motivating the leadership of the FWP. . . . Well-organized and gracefully written —Journal of Southern History

A fascinating study. . . . Hirsch is most concerned with tackling the difficulties in understanding and championing racial and cultural diversity in the U.S.—Journal of American Folklore

Without question this is the most thorough and analytical study ever written on the New Deal's Federal Writer's Project. Jerrold Hirsch's first-rate Portrait of America will change the way we think about the Great Depression years. A truly landmark study.—Douglas Brinkley, University of New Orleans

Hirsch treats the Federal Writers' Project not as a peculiar product of the 1930s, but as an important part of America's cultural and intellectual history in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By emphasizing the cultural and historical influences on which the FWP drew, Hirsch manages—as other scholars writing about the FWP have not—to specify just what it was that the guidebooks were celebrating about America, and he explains persuasively why their work should be seen as transcending the 1930s.—Richard H. Pells, University of Texas

Editorial Reviews

"A fascinating study."
--"Journal of American Folklore"

"A fascinating study. . . . Hirsch is most concerned with tackling the difficulties in understanding and championing racial and cultural diversity in the U.S."
-- "Journal of American Folklore"

"A thoroughgoing study of the ideas and ideology motivating the leadership of the FWP. . . . Well-organized and gracefully written."
-- "Journal of Southern History"

"Jerrold Hirsch's first-rate "Portrait of America" will change the way we think about the Great Depression years. A truly landmark study."
-- Douglas Brinkley, University of New Orleans

"A provocative and thoughtful book."
- "Washington Post Book World"

"A provocative and thoughtful book."
-- "Washington Post Book World"

From the Publisher