The Routledge Handbook on the American Dream

Robert C. Hauhart is a Professor in the Department of Society and Social Justice at Saint Martin’s University, USA, where he teaches courses in sociology, criminology, social justice, law, and literature. His research focuses on the concept of the American Dream in twentieth and twenty-first century sociology, as well as research and writiing on multiple themes, including the American Dream, in American literature. In 2019 he was a recipient of a Fulbright Scholar Award to teach and research the American Dream at the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (ZRC SAZU) in Ljubljana, where he maintains an association as a visiting research fellow. He is the author of several books, including The Lonely Quest: Constructing the Self in the Twenty-First Century United States (Routledge, 2018) and Seeking the American Dream: A Sociological Inquiry (Palgrave Macmillan 2016), which was nominated for the Pacific Sociological Association’s Distinguished Scholarship Award in 2017. He is also co-editor of American Writers in Exile (Salem Press 2015); Social Justice in American Literature (Salem Press 2017); European Writers in Exile (Lexington Books 2018); Connections and Influences Between the Russian and American Short Story (Lexington Books 2021); The Routledge Handbook of the American Dream: Volume 1 (Routledge, 2021), and Significant Food in American Literature (University of Georgia Press, forthcoming). He is the co-author (with Jon Grahe, Pacific Lutheran University, of Designing and Teachiing Undergraduate Capstone Courses (Jossey-Bass/Wiley 2015) Mitja Sardoč is Senior Research Associate at the Educational Research Institute in Ljubljana, Slovenia, where he is a member of the Educational Research program. His research interests include citizenship education, patriotism, multiculturalism, toleration, radicalization and violent extremism, talents and distributive justice, and equality of opportunity. He is editor of numerous books including, most recently, Handbook of Patriotism (Springer 2020), The Impacts of Neoliberal Discourse and Language in Education: Critical Perspectives on a Rhetoric of Equality, Well-Being, and Justice (Routledge, 2021), The Palgrave Handbook of Toleration (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), Making Sense of Radicalization and Violent Extremism: Interviews and Conversations (Routledge, 2022), and Talents and Distributive Justice (Routledge, 2022). He is also co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of the American Dream: Volume 1 (2021) and Managing Editor of the Theory and Research in Education journal.

1. Introduction: Theorizing the American Dream Part I: Economic Success and Upward Economic Mobility and the American Dream 2. In Pursuit of the Elusive American Dream: Black Woman Professionals 3. Markets, Finance, Whiteness, and the American Dream 4. Earning Rent with Your Talent: American Inequality Rests on the Power to Define, Transfer and Institutionalize Talent 5. From American Dream to Nordic Realities? 6. Equality, Opportunity, and the American Dream 7. What "American" dream? Contemporary reflections 8. Achieving the American Dream: How Middle Class Blacks Socialize Their Children to Make It to the Top Part II: Contemporary Issues in American Dream Studies 9. What (American) Dreams are made of: Disney’s Fairy Tale Narratives 10. How Free-Market Family Policy Crushed the American Dream Part III: Migration and the Immigrant American Dream 11. A Twenty-First Century African Immigrant View of the American Dream’s Challenges and Opportunities 12. The Boys from Little Mexico Redux: Dreaming the Immigrant Dream Part IV: Marginalized Americans and the American Dream 13. Incorporation and Disruption: What Fictional Narratives Can Tell Us About the Realities of the American Dream 14. The American Dream and Muslim Americans: (Im)Possibilities and Realities of Pursuing the Dream 15. Gay Neighborhoods: Reimagining the Traditional Conception of the American Dream 16. The American Dream: Rhetoric of Opportunity and Reality of Exclusion Part V: The American Dream Goes Global? 17. "Good Living" and Immigrants in the Literature of Aleksandar Hemon: Towards the Humble Dream Part VI: Sustainability and the American Dream 18. A Dream Deferred: Professional Projects as Racial Projects in US Medicine 19. Status Maintenance, Mobility, and the Persistence of Class Barriers to Achieving the American Dream