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The American Dream has long been understood as a “shorthand summary of a nation’s collective aspirations” (Hauhart 2015:65). What determines optimism about the Dream? This paper uses nationally representative data collected at a critical historical juncture to advance research which has connected the American Dream to America’s racial history. We find faith in the American Dream was racialized into the 21st-Century, both in the sense that our data show different levels of optimism toward the Dream by race and in that predictors of belief vary by racialized experiences and ideologies. We find that most Americans continued to believe in the American Dream, but contrary to prominent 20th-Century understandings, whites became less optimistic than persons of color, and that this remaining white belief was complex, with racial attitudes being central. Predictors of belief in the Dream were different by race in ways that may vitally reflect how collective aspirations are conceived from within unfolding American racial civic histories and 21st-Century racial hierarchies, patterns we discuss as privileged multiculturalism (whites), meritocratic incorporation (Hispanics), and positive social inclusion (Blacks). Ultimately, these findings suggest that the socio-cultural significance of the American Dream is not just tied to material position but intertwined with racialized cultural expectations, outlooks, and status concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question of identity (re)constructions across different locations is central to diasporic literature. Voluntary or forced exile, diasporic characters participate in different cultural identity processes, attempting, for example, to break through solid walls of excolonial stereotypes, superiority and subjugation constructs. In this context, Laila Lalami casts light on the overshadowed and silenced stories of the displaced migrant in seminal works as Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, Secret Son, the Moor's Account and The Other Americans. The Other Americans recounts the story of a Moroccan migrant family whose hope of an American dream comes to break on the shores of a reality of being 'Othered'; relegated to a lower status by the white-dominated society. In this vein, this paper seeks to study how these issues are represented in relation to the articulation and negotiation of 'new identities' and how disillusioned they become in a host society which is not less barren and mirage-like than the Mojave Desert itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given its history and status as a purveyor of quality children's entertainment, Disney's animated films are often associated with notions of "wholesomeness" and "family fun" by audiences. Consequently, consumption of Disney's media products tends to be an uncritical process. While a preferred decoding of Zootopia recognizes in its characters and story an affirmation of racial diversity and girl power, the film's polysemy conveys other latent messages that emerge through a negotiated reading. This paper focuses on the discourses within Zootopia that promote neoliberal values such as consumerism, individualism, and "small government." An analysis of the text reveals that Zootopia constructs an ideal citizen who obeys the law, performs their consumptive duties, believes in the capitalist myth of the American Dream, and happily accepts simulacra as substitute for reality. Furthermore, this paper makes the argument that Zootopia functions as a feature-length advertisement, not only for consumer products per se, but in a broader sense, for the consumerist lifestyle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an attempt to understand the rise of ‘the dropout’ as a central figure in the wider myth of entrepreneurial success. Over the past decade, a large number of ‘tech entrepreneurs’ share a success that is often attributed to the fact that they ‘dropped out’ from their respective universities. To address this, the paper begins by exploring the inherent irony that a number of high-profile ‘dropout entrepreneurs’ have given graduation commencement speeches: the irony being that their narrative of success and hope is articulated to those who, as graduates, can never follow this path. From this, the paper traces the cultural lineage of ‘dropping out’ over the latter half of the twentieth century from a position of denigration to the embodiment of the celebrated values of entrepreneurship and its central association with ‘self-reliance’ as an ideal that continues to underpin the ‘American Myth of Entrepreneurial Success.’ [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The guilt-ridden character archetype is a recurring premise in Clint Eastwood's cinema, recognizable in the inner conflicts of the protagonists of iconic titles, such as Unforgiven (1992), Mystic River (2003), Million Dollar Baby (2004) and Gran Torino (2008). According to Scott, Unforgiven marks the beginning of the filmmaker's authorship stage, where scenarios of diverse genres, such as road movie, war cinema or gangster plots introduce protagonists who coincide in their need for purification. This paper aims to explore the construction of characters carried out in the four titles aforementioned, by means of a script analysis methodology based on the dynamics of conflicts and on the classic concepts of hybris, hamartia and catharsis. This analysis points to a double purpose. On the one hand, it highlights the purification sought by the protagonists of Clint Eastwood and its relationship with the Christian moral context in which the characters arise, as Roche & Hösle notice. On the other hand the analysis points out the social extension of the concept of catharsis addressed by the filmmaker, especially critical when exposing the fragility of the American Dream and its modern traumas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines students' claims about who can become an engineer and what it takes in engineering culture to be successful. Through longitudinal interviews with 20 undergraduate engineering students, we found that participants' descriptions of who can 'do' engineering were paradoxical. Participants simultaneously maintained that 'anyone' could do engineering and that individuals must also possess certain characteristics to become engineers. This study connects these students' responses to broader conversations regarding social advancement and meritocratic values within U.S. engineering culture. Participants' responses reflect a definition of engineering that may on the surface appear open but is in practice exclusionary to individuals who do not conform to certain expectations. While many discussions of culture in engineering focus on the values and practices of 'core' members such as faculty or practicing engineers, it is imperative to consider the understandings that students bring to their university and enact while being enculturated into the engineering profession. This study contributes to the literature by examining the ways cultural values are upheld and reified among undergraduate engineering students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Chingada Complex is the result of the conquest of the Americas. La Chingada is a Mexican expression that reveals a defining cultural complex for people of the Americas, which is expressed through language and image. Beginning in 1492, La Chingada was the name given to describe the conquest of Mexico. It is the story of the birth of a people, the mestizo, a mixed race—a blending of European conquistadores and the indigenous people of the Americas. Not only did La Chingada occur in Mexico—a second "Chingada" occurred in the United States as a result of the Mexican–American War of 1846, which created a new collective trauma that continues to the present day. Who are these people, these mestizos, that live within the borders of the United States? The Xicanx are the Hijos de la Chingada, they are the children of the conquest and internal colonialism. The trauma of this conquest is seen in unique cultural expressions rooted in Mexican heritage but uniquely expressed by today's Xicanx. This paper will begin to examine the children of the conquest living in the United States. We will examine the archetypal phenomena of Pachuquismo and the oppression of the indigenous feminine through past and current events. As we shall see, the Chingada Complex impacts us all. By examining this North American complex, we can bring to consciousness the shadow of both the European conquest and the American Dream so that a process of reconciliation may begin. I am reminded of Jung's wisdom when he wrote, "When there is a light in the darkness, which comprehends the darkness, darkness no longer prevails." (Jung, 1970/1956, para. 345) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though studies have clearly illustrated that education is one of the primary paths to upward mobility, a growing body of research is beginning to show that the returns on education are determined more by initial wealth than innate ability and exerted effort in school. This accounting directly contradicts Americans’ understanding of the promise of the American Dream: a level playing field and a path towards a more prosperous future. Currently, this contradiction goes largely unchecked by researchers because of their reluctance to engage in a discussion about values. As a result, the mere discussion of wealth transfer, a policy about thriving, is seen as taboo, and we are left with conversations about how to provide the poor with enough merely to survive. However, in this paper, the conversation about wealth transfer is revived and articulated as an American idea consistent with American values. It goes on to offer Children’s Savings Accounts, in combination with a substantial progressive wealth transfer into these accounts, as a means of leveling the playing field and restoring education as an equalizer in society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how South Park's scriptwriters, consistent with Burke's comic corrective, employ populist storylines to satirize radical environmentalists and their opponents. It analyzes three South Park episodes, examining its use of adult cartoon media from two related and optimistic perspectives: Burke's comic frame, to show how South Park acts as a comic corrective to the sometimes boorish behavior of environmental ideologues and Kazin's analysis of populism, to show how South Park's message structure resonates strongly among its key demographics. Given South Park's longevity and popularity, this paper helps us understand how negative stereotypes of environmental advocacy can be constructed in ways that may inhibit popular support for sustainability initiatives, while serving as a reminder that if environmental advocacy is to be broadly persuasive, its message, tone, and delivery must reflect widely shared American values. In this sense, this exploration can serve as a tool for encouraging productive dialog between populists and those who advocate rational care for the Earth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I argue that Danzy Senna's Caucasia is a satirical passing narrative that exposes the tragedy of traditional passing novels as archaic for relying on racial binaries and perpetuating white desirability. I draw on the existing scholarship surrounding satire and traditional passing narratives and apply it to Senna's work to analyze the ways this novel differs from traditional, early 20th-century passing narratives to comment on the absurdity of white desirability and the racial binary through the American Dream. Specifically, I look at Caucasia as a location in which the main characters – biracial Birdie and Cole Lee; their white mother, Sandy; and their black father, Deck – must find a way to live. The all-white space the characters are forced to inhabit informs their racial identities and desires and leads to a double consciousness within the narrator, Birdie. Ultimately, Senna's satire illuminates the tragic passing narrative as complicit in upholding and reinforcing assumptions of a binary world. Additionally, Senna shows the double consciousness African Americans and biracial individuals embody because of America's fixation on the white, American Dream that manifests itself as life in Caucasia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In American Idol, fame is as readily won through harsh rejection as it is through approbation. As millions tune in each season to watch the dismissal of a tragic-comic parade of anti-stars, it becomes clear that something beyond mere reality-show ridicule is at work here. In failing, those rejected from American Idol succeed in authenticating certain understandings of the American Dream—obligatory ambition, individuality, and the necessity of failure in the process of achievement. This paper examines the negotiation of failure in American Idol, and addresses the question of why, in the end, losers sell just as well as winners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contributing to efforts to "de-whiten" the communication discipline, this study centers the lived experiences of Filipinos and Filipino/a/x Americans as they navigate whiteness, assimilation, and colonialism in the United States. To contextualize how they discursively negotiate with the structures of power that (dis)advantage them, this study theoretically links postcolonialism, whiteness, and differential adaptation. Qualitative methods were utilized by interviewing 25 participants and conducting critical thematic analysis. Findings indicate that participants (de)legitimize whiteness, (dis)obey assimilation, and (mis)recognize colonialism. Discussion suggests how participants engaged in performative assimilation, paradoxical postcolonialism, and panoptic whiteness. Finally, different trajectories for Filipinos and Filipino/a/x Americans are offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

My analysis of the process of digital "platformization" of economies is framed in Thorstein Veblen's theory of economic evolution and John R. Commons' concept of reasonableness. I conclude that digital platformization of economies is rooted in a deliberately decided liberalization of markets. The consequences of liberalization require a fundamental revision of economic policy and socio-economic institutions if one wants to create permanent jobs with good social security provisions, and/or to establish reasonable income/wealth differentials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes the depiction of decolonial migration, crimmigration and the pursuit of the American Dream by Black people in the book "American Street" by Ibi Zoboi. Topics discussed include the definition of decolonial migration as the journey of Black people migrating to the U.S. to avoid poverty and violence, role of the integration of the U.S. immigration and criminal justice system in the creation of crimmigration, and depiction of spirit worlds as spaces of freedom in the book.

Despite a wealth of scholarship on Australian travel, economic motives for transnational mobility remain little studied. Tourists, soldiers, reformers and students dominate the pantheon of Australians in the world, while the aspirational jobseeker is near forgotten. As a result, Australian international engagement has been closely associated with social and economic elites. Yet recent research hints that economic opportunism was a central motivation for white Australians' travels to interwar China. This article argues that the same was true of the United States. Drawing upon state and private archives, it examines how the famed prosperity of the United States led non-elite Australians to seek work and money across the Pacific. Throughout the early 20th century, steamers ploughed between Sydney and San Francisco carrying economic migrants in pursuit of their own American Dream. Consequently, a wide diversity of white Australians would demonstrate an everyday engagement with the "international" that derived more from economic need than high-minded ideals. By recovering their journeys, this article draws new connections between Australians' physical and economic mobility, unsettles the idea of travel as an elite or dutiful phenomenon, and asks how a more materialist analysis of transnational lives might recalibrate our understanding of Australia in the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In The Waste Products of the American Dream I argue that the ability to influence the popular narrative that frames the Black communities' public existence is critical if the Black urban poor is going to draw the nation's attention to the structural and historical forces that create and continue to perpetuate concentrated Black poverty today. More specifically, enticing white "common sense" fears about Black life, culture, and space became a strategic political maneuver that conservative politicians began to use in the late 1960s by suggesting that all "civil rights brought was rioting." The mainstream media would reproduce these narratives of Black criminality to further demonize low-income inner city communities and its inhabitants as the culprits of urban decay, delivering the state from any blame for the creation of concentrated poverty and the spatial mismatch that went along with social isolation. To illustrate how this discursive politics works to frame North Minneapolis and its residents as always already deviant, I did a comparative reading of the 2011 North Minneapolis tornado media coverage between the historic Black press and local mainstream press. I did this to show how important it is for the creation of Black counterpublic spaces that the historic Black press maintains as a way to take control of the community's narrative while also highlighting how the mainstream press simply relies on readily available stock narratives of Black cultural pathology which blame the victims of disaster for their plight with an uncanny similarity to Hurricane Katrina coverage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The topic of the long poem Jamerika: trip (2013) by Maša Kolanović is a family trip to America, a place previously known to the female narrator only through popular Western culture. This article analyses her interpretation of the binary opposition of East and West and the position of Croatia in that context. The narrator is aware that those two worlds are not completely separated, but intertwined by many relationships such as popular culture, wars and terrorism. The opposition of American abundance and poverty causes dramatic tensions in the text, which are supported by visual collages, comic strips and newspaper clips, but also by different types of intertextuality. The postmodern parodic turn of this long poem equates all ideologies as false and indicates that cultural and political oppositions are human constructs that are imposed on everyday life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article responds creatively to the dictum: 'America does not begin from suffering but from its ending', and to Robert Charlebois poetic figure of 'presqu 'Amérique' (nearly America). Principally, I contend here that 'America' (and the Americas at large) was the projection plane for European ideologies, but also that at the same time these ideologies became short-circuited, in other words, they 'ended' in America. They were not quite like European ideas any longer, and did not fulfil their historical destiny - or in a rather different way (ie American vs French Revolution etc). Thus 'America' also turns into a 'presque l' Europe' (nearly Europe), for example, in Argentina which represented a kind of America of the South for Le Corbusier and other modernists, and the 'almost Europe' for its immigrant inhabitants. Against this background, three short études or sketches are presented. 1) the European projection of ending onto the New World: exemplified by Le Corbusier's visit to Buenos Aires in 1929, and his drawings and city plan, 2) Transit between Europe and Argentina encapsulated in the sea voyage of emigrants, and 3) the 'real' New World as a place of abandon, epitomised by recent artworks by Cyrill Lachauer on Paiute territory and the wastelands of former nuclear test sites in Nevada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Literature on the Indian diaspora domiciled in the U.S.A. largely portrays the group as educated, highly skilled migrants in pursuit of theirAmerican Dream, without critically engaging with the regionally particularised migration trajectories that predispose only certain groups to become skilled migrants from the global South to the North. Migration studies bracket skilled migrants as those who make rational choices and choose formal routes to migrate whereas unskilled migrants often rely on informal channels of kinship or ethnicity to migrate. Unsettling this proposition, in this article, based on an ethnographic study of the high-skilled Telugu professionals in the U.S.A. and their families living in Coastal Andhra, India, I show how aspirational and topographical migration pathways from Coastal Andhra to the U.S.A. are created and sustained through networks of kinship, caste and endogamous transnational marriage alliances. These high-skilled migrants (doctors, engineers and scientists) from the dominant castes have successfully manoeuvred spatial mobility and social upward mobility by utilising ‘caste capital’ within a transnational social field. Moreover, decades of migration from the dominant castes have shaped a caste-inflected transnational habitus among its members who see migration of their youth to the U.S.A. as desirable, and at times, also inevitable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Narratives about ‘self-made’ success form a pillar of Anglo-American lore, but the concept’s meanings and applications no longer reflect either its origins or how people actually succeed. Ideological competition has reshaped the Calvinists’ admiration for community-serving self-improvement into a Social Darwinian glorification of individual ambition and wealth. American and British business and political leaders now invoke this newer narrative to assail progressive policies and to advocate the funnelling of resources and authority toward the wealthy – purportedly worthy – few. Because business historians understand the contexts and mechanisms behind business success, they are well situated to balance competing stories about prosperity’s sources and obligations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over a dozen reality TV shows are based on first-hand accounts of paranormal experiences. shows like A Haunting and Paranormal Witness feature "ordinary Americans" who use paranormal terms to express the effects of the 2008 housing crisis as they seek validation of their suffering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers how some individuals and families who are low income think and dream about their futures and compares their thoughts with classic notions of the American Dream. Drawing on intensive interviews with individuals and families, the authors analyzed interviewees’ observations about their hopes and thoughts for the future. Five main themes emerge: stability, agency, and control; ideal home life; values about the home; aspirations for children; and obstacles to achieving dreams. In brief, the authors find that the low-income participants in our research have dreams that individuals and families who are more affluent might take for granted and that they appear to adopt neoliberal assumptions about achieving those dreams. These are dreams of getting by and have important implications for the expanding category of individuals and families who find themselves in similar economic situations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article describes the findings of an exploratory field study of Mexican migrant workers and the daily realities they experience when it comes to communicating for work in the United States, mainly in informal sectors of the economy. In unstructured interviews or ‘conversations,’ migrants share narratives about the type of communication they do at work, communication challenges, what they perceive as strengths and weaknesses/easy or difficult communication, and what profession they held when in Mexico. In addition, they provide insight into their feelings about the current state of the immigration in the United States, how much they know about the immigration debates, and how this might impact how they communicate at work. The article features migrant narratives, social-political-economic implications, and implications for continued research possibilities in this area, which is largely unexplored by communication research. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since 2000, the American suburb has emerged as a principal destination for new immigrants to the United States, both documented and undocumented. Whereas some suburban communities have responded to perceived undocumented immigrants with hostility in the form of exclusionary local immigration policies, others have introduced policies designed to welcome immigrants independent of federal legal status. In this article, I employ a qualitative comparative case study analysis of four local immigration policies in the Chicago and Washington DC metropolitan areas to explain how suburbs justify their policy positions. I find that these suburban communities relied on conceptions of American identity and the 'American Dream' in support of their policies, but leveraged these tropes in vastly different ways depending on the broader strategic purposes of the policies. These divergent suburban immigration policies both challenge traditional notions of suburban political and cultural homogeneity and reveal how such heterogeneity has produced a distinct unevenness in contemporary local policy responses to undocumented immigration within metropolitan regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teaching empathy can be a means to teach multiple perspectives in the social studies classroom. Examining U.S. history through the lens of the pursuit of the “American Dream” will resonate with many high school students. This article suggests a framework using the theme of the “American Dream” of homeownership for a high school unit of study of civil rights. Looking at the pursuit of this dream through the characters inA Raisin in the Suncan help students develop empathy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Throughout much of the twentieth century, the image of the organization man dominated the cultural imagination and undergirded capitalist organizing. Yet, in the last 20 years, there has been a signal shift away from the organization man and toward the entrepreneur as an ideal. Although scholars have suggested that entrepreneurship in the new economy is rooted in neoliberal ideology, I argue that neoliberalism alone does not account for the ease with which entrepreneurialism has become a dominant discourse. By critically examining entrepreneurial discourse as communicated through US business periodicals from 2000 to 2009, I present a case for the “entrepreneurial man” as formed at the partial inclusion and/or rejection of aspects of the self made man, organization man, and neoliberalism. Ultimately, this analysis critiques the entrepreneurial man archetype as a rejection of the social contract and the embracing of a privatized, entrepreneurial American dream. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In-depth interviews with 62 people with working class ties (blue-collar workers and adult sons and daughters of blue-collar workers) reveal a social construction of working class that imbues it with four core, positively valenced values: strong work ethic, provider orientation, the dignity of all work and workers, and humility. This constellation of values is communicated through a ubiquitous macrolevel discourse-which I coin the Working Class Promise-that elevates working class to the highest position in the social class hierarchy and fosters a strong commitment to maintain a working class value system and identity. However, this social construction is only a partial social construction. That is, these individuals do not question material, socioeconomic-based delineations of class boundaries (e.g., income, education level, occupational prestige). Consequently, their acceptance of structural class boundaries, combined with their high regard of working class values, positions social classes in ways that make the goals of the American Dream (i.e., class mobility) and the Working Class Promise (i.e., class maintenance) paradoxical. I argue that the paradox of social mobility that results from this partial social construction is the root of mobility-based ambivalences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Baseball has been a reservoir for nostalgic narratives of equality, fair play, and the American dream. However, the recent steroids scandals unearth contradictions within these narratives, highlighting anxieties concerning baseball's past and the steroid era related to our notions of fair play and a Puritan work ethic. We argue that the sports coverage of Mark McGwire's role as both savior and pariah of baseball evidences tensions surrounding the rhetorics of progress and American exceptionalism. This article suggests that the discourses surrounding the steroids era are best understood though the lens of nostalgia, which seeks resolution between the contradictory elements of American identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the ways in which American college women of South Asian descent discuss their positioning as middle class. The article analyses participants' talk around class as evidence of embeddedness in American class discourses and a complex and contradictory scheme of identification that implicates other identities like gender, race and culture. Respondents often articulated class using the American Dream, where the social capital their parents immigrated with is left unexamined in favour of a narrative of 'rags to riches'. Young women also used other constructs like 'stability', 'race' and 'resources' to make reference to class, but also to participate in an American discursive silence around it. Finally, the notion of a drive towards professionalism as an immigrant goal is examined, and it is suggested that this serves to further deflect discussions of class. This article synthesises theories of diaspora, 'translocational positioning' and habitus, and examines the production of American class discourse as a performance of an American middle class habitus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Latinos are the largest minority group in the U.S. For Latino immigrants, a shift in migration from larger to smaller cities has recently occurred; the Latino immigrant population in Charlotte, North Carolina, has increased by 634% since 1990. The extent to which immigrants can achieve health and well-being is often related to employment, healthcare access, and social support. This study explored the human, social, and financial capital circumstances of Latino immigrants new to Charlotte and examined the effects of different aspects of capital on health outcomes. Findings indicate that capital is significantly associated with functional status and depression. Implications for social work are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For numerous citizens in the early-mid-1900s, the American Dream was synonymous with the consumerism and cultural progress made possible by the significant technological advances instigated by World War II. Merging with post-war increases in economic prosperity and leisure time, these developments also facilitated the excursions of masses of middle-upper-class citizens into nature. In this context, The Wilderness Society (TWS) faced numerous challenges as the ardent consumerism encouraged by the American Dream resulted in expanding threats to wilderness, yet simultaneously created the means for growing public support of its preservation through legislation. The Wilderness Act of 1964, which relied on transformed social conceptions of wilderness for its successful subsequent passage, was achieved through the ways TWS navigated key cultural tensions. Primary among these was the primitivity-civilization dualism, which manifested in shifting human-nature expectations and relations within the cultural formations of World War II, emergent technologies, increasing consumption, and ever-escalating tourism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study analyzes 595 fortune cookie sayings as cultural texts and explores the predominant values and ideologies embedded in those texts. The study indicates that fortune cookie sayings fulfill four primary functions: prophecy, compliment, advice, and wisdom. This textual analysis further uncovers that fortune cookie sayings (a) delimit "fortune" in terms of money, prosperity, and romance; (b) make compliments about sociability and talents; (c) provide advice on life and relationships with others; and (d) offer wisdom regarding integrity, spirituality, and the past. Despite their apparent triviality and ordinariness, fortune cookie sayings represent a form of hybridized cultural discourse. Such hybridized cultural discourse, according to many critical scholars, is claimed to be a form of progressive and emancipatory resistance. However, the analysis reveals that fortune cookie sayings subscribe to dominant ideologies in both U.S. American and Chinese cultures. As detailed in the present study, they are a fusion of the American Dream and the Chinese upward mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay draws upon the work of Northrop Frye to show that stories enacting the American Dream contain elements associated with romance, and briefly traces how Ronald Reagan and conservatives utilized the romance of the American Dream to the point that many Americans associated it exclusively with conservatism. The essay then details how Barack Obama, in his 2004 Democratic Convention keynote address, recast the American dream from a conservative to a liberal story. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article puts forth 2 competing notions of the American Dream, 1 radical and 1 conservative (both put forth by Thomas Jefferson), as the basis for 2 competing public philosophies of American democracy and education. This article traces out the ecology of inequality that has determined the context of these 2 competing public philosophies, especially in relation to the evolution of U.S. education. The ideology of the American Dream is still a potent philosophical means for constructing reformist discourses for American politics and education. The rhetoric of the American Dream focuses on the unrealized promises found within the Declaration of Independence and it articulates the need of equality and freedom for all members of our society. This article traces the framework of these conflicting American Dreams from their inception and into our contemporary context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]