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

• Autore: Spieler Sophie (Freie Universität Berlin, Deutschland)
• Pubblicazione: Bielefeld, : transcript Verlag, 2021
• Edizione: 1st ed.
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (276 p.)
• Disciplina: 970.980
• Soggetto topico: 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
• Soggetto non controllato: America; American Studies; Campus Novels; Capital; Class; Cultural Studies; Cultural Theory; Curtis Sittenfeld; Discourse Analysis; Distinction; Education; Elite Education; Ivy League; Literary Studies; Literature; Meritocracy; Neoliberalism; Princeton
• 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.
• Titolo autorizzato: The Wealthy, the Brilliant, the Few
• ISBN: 3-8394-5729-7
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Record Nr.: 9910493739803321
• Lo trovi qui: Univ. Federico II
• Serie: American Culture Studies