Defining Americans

by Mary E. Stuckey

"As Mary Stuckey observes, presidents embrace, articulate, and reinvigorate our sense of national identity. They define who Americans are - often by declaring who they aren't. In this book, she shows how presidential speech has served to broaden the American political community over the past two centuries while at the same time excluding others." "Ambitious and sweeping, Stuckey's work documents the tactics that have naturalized and legitimated inclusion and exclusion, tracing the progress of groups such as women and African Americans from political invisibility to partial visibility and eventual inclusion. She also shows how the terms of inclusion have varied with changing political winds, helping us understand how depictions of the powerless by the powerful reflect and influence the status of various groups."--BOOK JACKET.