What It Means to Be American

The first Republican presidential debate was a veritable blockbuster, with 24 million viewers tuning in last month. Its sequel next week at the Reagan Presidential Library in California may attract even more viewers curious about the large field of candidates and the possibility of a lively clash. But the more intriguing question is why were so many Americans in this age of digital communications willing …

Before Princess Di’s puffed sleeves and 25-foot train, before Vera Wang designed $1.5-million gowns, before we loved watching brides-to-be melt down on TLC’s Say Yes to the Dress, and before every bride scoured the Internet to “pin” her top 50 wedding day looks, Priscilla Kidder was a department store buyer who thought brides needed more choices.

So in 1945, Kidder, a former yarn store owner …

When Alexis de Tocqueville visited the United States during 1831 and 1832, he was struck by the fact that the young republic had no overpowering metropolis, that “the intelligence and the power of the people are disseminated through all the parts of this vast country.” While New York City was the hotbed of innovative newspapering, much of that innovation was in the service of disseminating …

I am a hapa, yonsei Uchinanchu (a mixed-race, 4th-generation Okinawan-American) who was born in Riverside, California, in 1973 and raised in the shadow of the Cascade Mountains in Washington state. My mom’s roots stem from Spanish-Basque migrants in California and white southerners in Tennessee. My father is Okinawan from Hawaii. Because I don’t look quite white, people frequently ask, “What are you?” From an early …

Arturo O’Farrill is a pianist, composer, and founder and music director of the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra. Before participating in a discussion of the American art of risk-taking, he explained his “aesthetic ADD problem” in the What It Means to Be American green room; he’d rather look like a fool than do the same thing twice.
 
Q: What inspires you?
A: The same things done by the …

Moctesuma Esparza, a filmmaker and entrepreneur, has produced movies including Selena, Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, and Gettysburg. In 2005, he established Maya Cinemas, a chain of movie theater complexes dedicated to the U.S. Latino market. He also founded the Los Angeles Academy of Arts and Enterprise Charter School. Before participating in a discussion about how to film the Mexican-American story, he talked about reading Russian novels …

Luis Valdez is a playwright, screenwriter, and director, best known as the creative force behind the 1987 movie La Bamba and the 1981 film Zoot Suit. He also founded the educational theater group El Teatro Campesino, affiliated with César Chávez’s United Farm Workers Union in 1965. Traveling on a flatbed truck from field to field, the troupe produced skits about the lives and causes of …

Tens of millions of Americans have hit the road this summer. The all-American road trip has long been a signature adventure, but once upon a time the notion of your own motorized excursion of any length would have seemed impossible.
In 1900, Americans were hampered by wretched roads and limited by the speed and endurance of the horses that powered buckboards, coaches, and wagons. If …

Richard Nixon saw himself as a true patriot, and he considered it his patriotic duty to strive to overcome his darker impulses and moods to exude an upbeat, optimistic outlook—an outlook he considered quintessentially American. He often didn’t succeed, but it was this struggle that made Nixon so relatable to what he called America’s silent majority. Most of us who aren’t natural-born, back-slapping politicians have …

I study one of the most profound cultural changes of the 20th century: the rise of casual dress. I study casual dress as it evolved on the beaches of Miami. I study casual dress as worn by the Black Panthers and by Princeton undergraduates. As a professor, I teach seminars on material culture and direct graduate students as they research and curate costume exhibitions, but …