1.

Record Nr.

UNISA996433044203316

Autore

Spieler Sophie (Freie Universität Berlin, Deutschland)

Titolo

The Wealthy, the Brilliant, the Few : Elite Education in Contemporary American Discourse / Sophie Spieler

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Bielefeld, : transcript Verlag, 2021

ISBN

3-8394-5729-7

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (276 p.)

Collana

American Culture Studies ; 33

Disciplina

970.980

Soggetti

Social Stratification; Distinction; Meritocracy; Campus Novels; Capital; Princeton; Elite Education; Class; Discourse Analysis; Neoliberalism; Ivy League; Curtis Sittenfeld; Literature; Education; America; American Studies; Cultural Studies; Cultural Theory; Literary Studies

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter    1  Contents    5  Acknowledgements    7  Introduction    9  1. Introductory Remarks    21  2. Starting Points: Eliteness and Education in American Culture    21  3. 'Very Important, Very Powerful, or Very Prominent': Eliteness in America    29  4. 'Excellence and Equity': Merit as the Price of Admission    50  5. 'A Touchy Subject'? Class and Elite Education    58  6. Concluding Remarks    67  1. Introductory Remarks    69  2. Mapping the Critical Landscape    73  3. Progressivist Critiques    83  4. Conservative Critiques    95  5. Concluding Remarks    110  1. Introductory Remarks    113  2. Elite College Admissions: A Discourse of Impossibility and Pathology    118  3. A Meritocracy of Affect    123  4. Epistemological Frames: Diversity, the Good Life, Community    135  5. Concluding Remarks    170  1. Introductory Remarks    175  2. Exposition: Fiction in the Discourse of Elite Education    178  3. Prep in the Discourse: Publicity, 'Preppiness', and the Neoliberal Imagination    186  4. Diversity, Class, Mobility: Prep's Cultural Work    211  5. Concluding Remarks    242  Conclusion    249  Works Cited    257

Sommario/riassunto

How does the US make sense of its elite educational system, given that it seems to be at odds with core American values, such as equality of opportunity or upward mobility? Sophie Spieler explores scholarly and journalistic investigations, self-representational texts, and fictional



narratives revolving around the Ivy League and its peers in order to understand elite education and its peculiar position in American cultural discourse. Among the book's most surprising and groundbreaking insights is the tenacity and adaptability of meritocratic ideology across all three sub-discourses, despite its fundamental incompatibility with the American educational system.