Becoming Swedish-American
The Construction of an Ethnic Identity
in the Augustana Synod, 1860-1917

By Dag Blanck
December 1997
Almqvist & Wiksell
ISBN: 91-554-4027-4
240 pages
$62.00 Cloth


More than a million Swedes migrated to the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and by the turn of the century a Swedish-American cultural community had developed.

The issue of identity was central to all immigrant and ethnic groups in America. One important question for the Swedish immigrants and their children was the meaning of being Swedish-American.

This study explores the construction of a Swedish-American identity within the Augustana Synod, the leading Swedish-American organization. The nature and contents of this identity are traced at Augustana college, which was the leading Swedish-American institution of higher learning; at the Augustana Book Concern, the largest Swedish-American publishing house; and through the fashioning of a Swedish-American history.

History
Studia Historica Upsaliensia

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