http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3 http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/v3/mods-3-2.xsd
Elite Education in Contemporary American Discourse
How do the US make sense of their own 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.
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- I. Exposition: Approaching the Elite Educational Space -- 1. Introductory Remarks -- 2. Starting Points: Eliteness and Education in American Culture -- 3. 'Very Important, Very Powerful, or Very Prominent': Eliteness in America -- 4. 'Excellence and Equity': Merit as the Price of Admission -- 5. 'A Touchy Subject'? Class and Elite Education -- 6. Concluding Remarks -- II. Critique: Elite Education and Its Discontents -- 1. Introductory Remarks -- 2. Mapping the Critical Landscape -- 3. Progressivist Critiques -- 4. Conservative Critiques -- 5. Concluding Remarks -- III. Affirmation: Self-Representation at Princeton University -- 1. Introductory Remarks -- 2. Elite College Admissions: A Discourse of Impossibility and Pathology -- 3. A Meritocracy of Affect -- 4. Epistemological Frames: Diversity, the Good Life, Community -- 5. Concluding Remarks -- IV. Imagination: Fictionalizations of the Elite Educational Experience -- 1. Introductory Remarks -- 2. Exposition: Fiction in the Discourse of Elite Education -- 3. Prep in the Discourse: Publicity, 'Preppiness', and the Neoliberal Imagination -- 4. Diversity, Class, Mobility: Prep's Cultural Work -- 5. Concluding Remarks -- Conclusion -- Works Cited
American studies (Transcript (Firm)) ; 33