In 1978, approximately 900 families living in the LaSalle neighborhood of Niagara Falls, New York discovered that over 22,000 tons of toxic chemicals were buried in their midst. In response residents formed the Love Canal Homeowners' Association, which demanded state aid in relocating families, and neighborhood women became the organization's most visible leaders. While the group's protests and use of the media were clearly influenced by civil rights and other postwar social movements, its rhetoric emphasized state obligation to protect reproduction, children, and homes. Despite the women's liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s, Love Canal women argued for relocation based on their traditional domestic roles. This maternalist activism demonstrates the mixed legacy of postwar social movements and the emergence of heterosexual reproduction as the basis of citizenship in 1980s America. This research contributes to the histories of women's political activism, public health and environmentalism, and 1970s America.

https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_womens_history/v021/21.1.hay.pdf

Recipe for Disaster: Motherhood and Citizenship at Love Canal

From the late 1950s to the early 1980s, technology in the form of aircraft, high-powered rifles, and tranquilizers changed the relationship between humans and polar bears. Whereas the polar bear had been conceptualized as a fierce beast in early-modern expeditionary literature, in the second half of the twentieth century the bear was depicted as vulnerable due to overhunting and in need of scientific study, a process that in itself portrayed the helplessness of the animal when confronted with postwar technologies. Popular American and Canadian periodicals conveyed this shift in the bear’s image. This article examines the polar bear’s image as depicted by the media and argues that the use of certain technologies by sport hunters, wildlife biologists, and conservationists enabled a domination of the bear that altered the animal’s placement within the popular imagination.

Susan J. Douglas

Papers

Mass Media: From 1945 to the Present