Showing papers in "Journal of Social History in 2010"
TL;DR: The success of The Literacy Myth may be determined at least in part by the extent to which it stimulates new research and thinking that begin to supplant the literacy myth.
Abstract: This article reviews the thirty year history of The Literacy Myth: Literacy and Social Structure in the Nineteenth-Century City (1979). I reflect on The Literacy Myth and the critical concept of “the literacy myth” that it proposed on the occasion of the book’s thirtieth anniversary, a special and also a sobering moment. On the one hand, I speak to its broad influence in a number of fields of study; I also consider some of the criticisms encountered. On the other hand, I discuss what I think are its principal weaknesses and limits. The success of The Literacy Myth may be determined at least in part by the extent to which it stimulates new research and thinking that begin to supplant it. After considering the relevance and value of its general arguments for both persisting and newer questions and issues, I reframe my conclusions about social myths and in particular “the literacy myth.”
51 citations
TL;DR: The Rockefeller Drug Laws were a repudiation of liberal treatment programs and specialists' expertise, and provided a forum to remake the much-maligned welfare state into a stern, macho vehicle for establishing order in society.
Abstract: In 1973, New York's Governor Nelson Rockefeller responded to panic about soaring heroin use by renouncing his aggressive treatment programs and enacting the most punitive drug policy in the United States. His "Rockefeller Drug Laws" mandated sentences up to life in prison for selling any narcotics. These punishments, comparable to the penalties for murder, served as models for subsequent "War on Drugs" policies enacted across the nation.This article explores the ideological and political work accomplished by this high profile legislation—for policy makers, for members of the general public who clamored for "get tough" strategies, and for the drug users targeted by the statutes. The laws were a repudiation of liberal treatment programs and specialists' expertise, and provided a forum to remake the much-maligned welfare state into a stern, macho vehicle for establishing order in society. Increasingly punitive policies constricted the rights of drug users by rhetorically constructing "addicts" and "pushers" as outside of the polity and as the antithesis of full citizens. Therefore, the Rockefeller Drug Laws not only had devastating effects on drug offenders, but also were instrumental in the profound renegotiation of the state's role and responsibilities.
45 citations
TL;DR: Revising the history of dieting to show its origins as a masculine practice appropriated by women to stake a claim to class and race privilege invites a rethinking of power and resistance in the disciplining of the female body.
Abstract: "Regime Change" argues against commonly held interpretations that see dieting as a practice established in the 1920s to control women at a time when they gained suffrage and greater economic independence. This article offers an alternative reading, arguing that diet advice literature arrived in the US in the 1860s and originally targeted a male, white, middle-class audience. While the hegemonic beauty ideal for the female body was at its heftiest, men started to build muscle and reduce weight. The ideal of the slender male body was associated with white superiority, social mobility and the national ambition for an American empire. When white middle-class women eventually started dieting in greater numbers in the 1890s, it was because they claimed the same mastery over their bodies as men—and demanded the same privileges as their male peers over immigrants, African Americans and working-class people, who were increasingly imagined as overweight. Revising the history of dieting to show its origins as a masculine practice appropriated by women to stake a claim to class and race privilege invites a rethinking of power and resistance in the disciplining of the female body.
32 citations
TL;DR: This paper studied the relationship between industrial geography and musical development and drew a direct link between the industrial geography of Birmingham's working-class neighbourhoods and the birth of heavy metal in the late 1960s.
Abstract: Factory Music, based on original interdisciplinary research, is the first study into the relationship between industrial geography and musical development. Today, heavy metal music is both mainstream and global; however the roots of heavy metal can be traced to the industrial, working-class neighbourhoods of post-war Birmingham in the late 1960s. Surveys, maps and statistics detailing Birmingham's physical and demographic landscape from 1945 to 1970 show a heavily industrialized city in the process of implementing sweeping modernization initiatives. Birmingham's youth culture also began to transform after the war; young people drifted away from their traditional ties to the Protestant Church and began seeking secular forms of entertainment –such as music. As these youth began creating music of their own, they incorporated sounds from the industrial factories which dominated their lives and expressed their working-class frustration lyrically –in turn creating a new genre later called heavy metal. Studying the lyrics and instrumentation of early heavy metal, coupled with interviews given by members of pioneering Birmingham heavy metal bands Black Sabbath and Judas Priest, this article draws a direct link between the industrial geography of Birmingham's working-class neighbourhoods and the birth of heavy metal in the late 1960s.
26 citations
TL;DR: The mutiny on the Hermione in September 1797 was the bloodiest ever to explode onboard a warship of the British Royal Navy and only as such, unfortunately, has it been remembered. as discussed by the authors traced the many paths by which the crew found its way onto the ship, was pushed to the point of insurrection by the experience of brutal West Indian warwork, and afterwards disappeared again into the vast and complex, transnational networks of the revolutionary Atlantic.
Abstract: The mutiny on the Hermione in September 1797 was the bloodiest ever to explode onboard a warship of the British Royal Navy. And only as such, unfortunately, has it been remembered. By treating it as an exceptional event, historians have isolated the Hermione from the history of the mutinous Atlantic, and the age of revolution more broadly. The present article seeks to return it to that context by tracing in particular the many paths by which the crew – a typical hodgepodge of at least twelve nationalities from two or three continents – found its way onto the ship, was pushed to the point of insurrection by the experience of brutal West Indian warwork, and afterwards disappeared again into the vast and complex, transnational networks of the revolutionary Atlantic.
26 citations
TL;DR: This paper examined the rise of gay consumer culture from 1945 to 1969, examining the production, sale, and consumption of physique magazines, paperback novels, greeting cards, and other items available through gay-oriented mail order catalogs.
Abstract: This study outlines the rise of gay consumer culture from 1945 to 1969—an examination of the production, sale, and consumption of physique magazines, paperback novels, greeting cards, and other items available through gay-oriented mail order catalogs. It agues that purchasing such consumer items validated gay men’s erotic attraction to other men, contributed to their sense of participating in a larger community, and provided particular class-, race-and gender-based models for what it meant to be gay. It examines how physique magazine publishers, in their legal struggles with censorship laws, marshaled a ground-breaking rhetoric of legal rights and collective action that led to the first gay judicial victories establishing the right to market such commodities. It demonstrates that a national gay commercial market preceded the development of a national gay political community and that the development of that market by a small group of gay entrepreneurs was a key, overlooked catalyst to the rise of a gay movement in America.
23 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigate the stories behind family collections in two European industrial towns, in order to discover how ordinary men and women use photography to construct their own histories, not to imitate their bourgeois "superiors", but to show their pride in their own accomplishments and their children's.
Abstract: The historian cannot afford to dismiss family photographs as mere symbols of bourgeois hegemony as critics and sociologists have done. Workers, moreover, frequently obtained their portraits, not to imitate their bourgeois “superiors,” but to show their pride in their own accomplishments and their children’s. Family collections of the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth-century can open up a world of life, death, aspirations, and sorrows when we investigate the archive surrounding such images. Here the author investigates the stories behind family collections in two European industrial towns, in order to discover how ordinary men and women use photography to construct their own histories.
19 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the Baroness Von Riedesel's journal is used to compare the role of youth in the American Revolution with other conflicts, especially the Civil War, and the cumulative effect of the many and varied young persons' accounts of the war is explored.
Abstract: component to current studies of memory and the American Revolution. The special roles youth played in this war (many boys and at least one girl served as messengers; other boys were drummers) and their relative importance vis a vis the youth who simply served as soldiers might be compared with other conflicts, especially the Civil War, in which historians have discussed the role of youth. Some editing might have sharpened Werner’s contribution. The accounts of adults, especially women, which she offers here and there muddy the youthful perspective. This is especially true of the chapter based on the journals of the Baroness Von Riedesel. Nevertheless, the cumulative effect of the many and varied young persons’ accounts of the war is a fresh perspective, and one which should inspire further exploration of its implications.
17 citations
TL;DR: The authors explored and, hopefully, complicated the concepts of gender, class, beer and American culture in the mid-twentieth century through the lens of beer advertisements from the 1930s through the 1950s and found that the brewing industry didn't simply offer women uninhibited entry into the masculine world of drink, but rather redefined that world in terms of the domestic sphere and a woman's role therein.
Abstract: Historians have contended that the stigma associated with women’s alcohol consumption was largely eliminated by the 1940s. This paper, building on the work done by those historians, seeks to explore and, hopefully, complicate the concepts of gender, class, beer and American culture in the mid-twentieth century through the lens of beer advertisements. Beer advertisements from the 1930s through the 1950s suggest that the brewing industry didn’t simply offer women uninhibited entry into the masculine world of drink, but rather redefined that world in terms of the domestic sphere and a woman’s role therein.
Between the repeal of prohibition in 1933 and industry consolidation at the end of the 1950s, beer advertisements reflected and engaged many broad social questions and concerns. Distinctly gendered, many beer ads reflected debates about the proper role of women, the importance of domesticity, and the aspirations of a consumption-based American middle class. In an effort to create as broad a market as possible without alienating key consumers or giving ground to dry advocates, brewers offered a vision of American society in which the maligned saloon was replaced by the home, in which drinking beer was a man’s (and eventually a nation’s) inalienable right and providing it for him was a woman’s obligation.
This paper is based on beer advertisements, newspaper and magazine articles, American brewery archives and other published materials.
17 citations
TL;DR: The authors analyzes the efforts of supermarket companies, between the late 1930s and early 19650s, to create a multilayered sensory aesthetic for their stores to excite suburban shoppers' five senses to exploit what they saw as a feminine longing for erotic excitement intensified by lives circumscribed by postwar domestic norms of "sexual containment."
Abstract: This essay analyzes the efforts of supermarket companies, between the late 1930s and early 19650s, to create a multilayered sensory aesthetic for their stores. Grocery retailers sought to excite suburban shoppers’ five senses to exploit what they saw as a feminine longing for erotic excitement intensified by lives circumscribed by postwar domestic norms of “sexual containment.” The sensorial approach to supermarketing revolved around the suggestion that middle-class women could use grocery shopping to help fill the erotic and sexual voids of their lives. In so doing, supermarket companies reinforced the notion that middle-class women should look to the excitements of the homemaker role itself – in this case, family shopper – and not to challenges to existing gender arrangements for contentment.
16 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors used a body of unpublished travel books from the Dutch Grand Tour to refine the traditional conflict hypothesis that these cross-confessional encounters on Grand Tour were seldom warm-hearted.
Abstract: How did Calvinist travellers behave when they ventured into the lion’s den of Catholicism? Were Protestants on Grand Tour bound to ignore Popish sanctuaries, and – so it seemed – false relics, excessive processions, obscure rituals, and foolish idolatry or superstition? Did they mock or slander French or Italian Catholicism? According to textbook wisdom, these cross-confessional encounters on Grand Tour were seldom warm-hearted. Drawing on well-known travelogues from English Grand Tour travellers these religious contacts are mainly cast in black-and-white. Anglican noblemen and officials were envisaged as merciless critics of Italian Catholicism, seizing every opportunity to denounce the foulest popish defects. Using a body of unpublished travel books from the Netherlands, this paper tries to refine (or reconsider) this traditional conflict hypothesis. Despite profuse anti-popish propaganda in pamphlets, popular songs, and weekly sermons Dutch burghers seemed to behave rather ecumenically on their journey trough France, showing a lively interest, restrained respect or leniency towards Catholic ceremony, sacred objects and Popish sanctuaries. It will be argued that this broad-mindedness was triggered by practical considerations and a strong humanist imperative. Our aim, however, is to take the discussion somewhat further, as Dutch reformed travellers seemed to invent their own sort of pilgrimage in the early seventeenth century. La Rochelle, Charenton, Montauban, Geneva and other ‘hallowed’ places were soon integrated in the Dutch Grand Tour. Commemorating the Wars of Religion and Huguenot martyrdom, or personal religious deepening became part of the journey too.
TL;DR: The debate over the anarchist-terrorists of fin-de-siecle France makes for a revealing case study in the ways in which democratic societies respond to the threat of homegrown terrorism as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: This essay centers on the debate that surrounded the anarchist-terrorists of France in the 1890s. As a wave of bombings washed over Paris, commentators argued over the source of terrorism. With an eye toward a handful of notorious French anarchists—Ravachol, Auguste Vaillant, Emile Henry—they asked: How do you make an anarchist-terrorist? The debate that followed offers a window on the political imaginary of the French Third Republic in the years before the Dreyfus Affair. At times, the response to the anarchist bombings took the shape of a proxy war over the issues that moved French politics in the 1890s. But it was more than just this. For all of its variety, the debate centered on the problem of intellectual responsibility and gave form to the specter of the dangerous, rootless intellectual. There is a larger lesson in this tale, for the debate over the anarchist-terrorists of fin-de-siecle France makes for a revealing case study in the ways in which democratic societies respond to the threat of homegrown terrorism. It demonstrates the difficult challenge that terrorism poses to democratic societies and shows just how easily political-cultural interests can hijack discussions of terrorism.
TL;DR: The subway face poem of Langston Hughes was originally published in the December 1924 issue of the NAACP’s Crisis: a poem of anonymous, fleeting attraction as discussed by the authors, which was used for the introduction of the Negro Renaissance in Harlem.
Abstract: “On a bright September morning in 1921, I came up out of the subway at 135th and Lenox into the beginnings of the Negro Renaissance,” Langston Hughes wrote about his introduction to Harlem.1 Three years after his first steps into sunny Harlem, a subway platform became the setting for Hughes’ “Subway Face,” a poem of anonymous, fleeting attraction originally published in the December 1924 issue of the NAACP’s Crisis:
TL;DR: Analyzing infanticide based on the Coroners' Records for Providence County, Rhode Island, from the 1870s to 1938 to determine doctors' and coroners' attitudes toward mothers who killed provides an opportunity to analyze the circumstances women faced that led them to kill their newborns.
Abstract: This article analyzes infanticide based on the Coroners' Records for Providence County, Rhode Island, from the 1870s to 1938 to determine doctors' and coroners' attitudes toward mothers who killed. The nineteenth century witnessed a medical discourse on the possibility of postpartum insanity as a cause of infanticide. While some women claimed temporary insanity, and some doctors and coroners legitimated this defense, its application to mothers who killed was arbitrary. They determined who deserved this diagnosis based on the woman's character, her forthrightness, and extenuating circumstances. Infanticide divided the profession nationally and at the local level and prevented doctors or coroners from speaking in a united voice on the issue. This article does not attempt to follow cases of infanticide through to jury verdicts. Instead, it provides an opportunity to analyze the circumstances women faced that led them to kill their newborns, and to analyze the responses of doctors and coroners to these mothers who killed. Unlike the findings of other studies, neither physicians nor coroners in Rhode Island were united in a claim of ignorance to save these women from guilty verdicts.
TL;DR: This article uses Probation Department files to reconstruct the lives of five ordinary residents of Harlem, showing how ordinary blacks negotiated the challenges of life in northern neighborhoods, and drew on institutions and organizations, to establish and sustain new lives.
Abstract: This article uses Probation Department files to reconstruct the lives of five ordinary residents of Harlem. It highlights what that black metropolis offered those outside the political and cultural elite, who have dominated historical scholarship, showing how ordinary blacks negotiated the challenges of life in northern neighborhoods, and drew on institutions and organizations, to establish and sustain new lives. We offer the kind of individualized perspective on everyday life that other scholars have provided for high culture, but which does not exist for other realms of existence in Harlem, even in early twentieth century sociological studies of black life. Where scholars seeking to distinguish the neighborhood from a slum have pointed to the prevailing pride and self-confidence of its residents, this article directs attention to more immediate, concrete supports that sustained and enriched life in Harlem. Relationships with spouses, children, siblings and cousins sustained individuals faced with the social reality of living in overcrowded, deteriorating, disease infested housing, subject to the racism of white police, politicians and employers; so too did friendships made in nightclubs, speakeasies, dances and movie theatres, and membership of churches, fraternal organizations, social clubs, and sports clubs and teams.
TL;DR: This essay sketches the rise of a Popular Front-inflected vision of the U.S. city neighborhood's meaning and worth, and explores the conflicted mode of liberal nationalism that took the polyglot city neighborhood as emblem, which emerged more fully as the provisional wartime consensus dissolved.
Abstract: This essay sketches the rise of a Popular Front-inflected vision of the U.S. city neighborhood's meaning and worth, a communitarian ideal that reached its zenith during World War II before receding in the face of cold-war anxieties, postwar suburbanization, and trepidation over creeping blight. During the war years, numerous progressives interpreted the ethnic-accented urban neighborhood as place where national values became most concrete, casting it as a uniquely American rebuff to the fascist drive for purity. Elaborations appeared in the popular press's celebratory cadences, in writings by educators and social scientists such as Rachel DuBois and Louis Wirth, and in novels, plays, and musicals by Sholem Asch, Louis Hazam, Kurt Weill, Langston Hughes, and others. Each offered new ways for making sense of urban space, yet their works reveal contradictions and uncertainties, particularly in an inability to meld competing impulses toward assimilation and particularism. Building on the volume's theme "The Arts in Place," this essay examines these texts as a collective form of imaginative "placemaking." It explores the conflicted mode of liberal nationalism that took the polyglot city neighborhood as emblem. And it outlines the fissures embedded in that vision, which emerged more fully as the provisional wartime consensus dissolved.
TL;DR: By joining the popular history with the case study, Parascandola divides his strengths, rather than magnifying them as they deserve to be.
Abstract: with a great eye for the informative, interesting, and resonant piece of evidence. When he looks to answer basic questions about the effects of health policy in America, he does that successfully as well. Both types of history– the popular and the analytical– hold great value. By joining the popular history with the case study, however, Parascandola divides his strengths, rather than magnifying them as they deserve to be.
TL;DR: Examining the role of disabled people as workers, as bodies and as charity recipients reveals the hierarchies of disability in late nineteenth-century Chicago and demonstrates who the ugly law intended to restrict and, just as importantly, who it did not.
Abstract: The article places Chicago's "ugly" law—an 1881 municipal ordinance that fined "any person who is diseased, maimed, mutilated or in any way deformed so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object" for appearing in public—within the context of late nineteenth-century imaginings of disability. Drawing on the framework of disability studies, this paper demonstrates that nineteenth-century understandings of disability had little to do with the impairments of individuals but instead were tied to the status of the person with the disability. Examining the role of disabled people as workers, as bodies and as charity recipients reveals the hierarchies of disability in late nineteenth-century Chicago and demonstrates who the ugly law intended to restrict and, just as importantly, who it did not. While the law appears to be a blanket indictment of all physically disabled people, multiple sources indicate that the public expected disabled veterans, workers, and freak show performers to occupy the public realm; they therefore cannot be the intended objects of the ordinance. Instead, Chicago's ugly law was one of many pieces of legislation enacted in the wake of the panic of 1873 that attempted to eradicate street begging in general by specifically targeting beggars with disabilities.
TL;DR: The history of public spaces in first class consists of a series of transitions that while moving in the direction of separate spheres, retains common spaces to an extent not seen in other travel sites as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: This article documents changes in the configurations of public rooms on British express liners between 1840 and 1930. The contrast between the interior architecture in the liners and that of other travel venues is used to illustrate the importance of local circumstances in shaping the expression of the Victorian ideology of separates spheres for men and women in the design of public spaces. The history of public spaces in first class consists of a series of transitions that while moving in the direction of separate spheres, retains common spaces to an extent not seen in other travel sites. The rigid gender segregation found on American railways, steamboats and in hotels is not replicated in the liners, even in the 1880s when the social life, at least in daytime, becomes divided between the exclusively male smoking room and the female dominated music room. Two mutually reinforcing factors can account for the exceptionality of liner architecture. One is a social exclusivity created by the high cost of transatlantic travel; the other is a distinctive norm of sociability occasioned by lengthy, isolating crossings in uncomfortable and initially, dangerous conditions. These factors reduced problems of social regulation and allowed tensions between genteel and vulgar activities to be accommodated with limited recourse to segregated public spaces.
TL;DR: The first generation of lesbians and gay parents to openly fight for their parental rights through the judicial system as mentioned in this paper were the first to advocate for domestic/parental rights in the modern Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) freedom struggle.
Abstract: This article offer a history of lesbian and gay parenting custody case from 1967 to 1985. Using court transcripts, newspaper articles, and oral histories with key participants, it documents the struggle over definitions of the family that emerged in the gay and lesbian liberation era as women and men left previous heterosexual relationships and were forced to fight for custody or visitation of their children. These legal battles marked the first generation of lesbian and gay parents to openly fight for their parental rights through the judicial system. Even in states where same-sex orientation did not automatically render them unfit parents in the eyes of the law, lesbian mothers and gay fathers faced an entrenched debate over what was in “the best interests of the child.” Gradually, with the help of sympathetic expert witnesses and lesbian mother and gay father advocacy groups, they challenged the widespread cultural assumption that homosexuality and parenting were antithetical. In doing so, they paved the way for the current focus on domestic/parental rights in the modern Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) freedom struggle.
TL;DR: Sheridan as mentioned in this paper showed that women's skills had no objective value independent of the worker's gender and relationship (or lack of it) to the guild system and pointed out that skill was the lowest paid of women's work.
Abstract: (typically passed from mother to daughter), was the lowest paid of women’s work. It required dexterity, a quality increasingly associated with women, and thus, increasingly devalued in the age of Enlightenment. Diderot, in his Encyclopédie entry on dentelle, was dismissive; he “declared it was possible to learn the techniques of the [lacemaking] trade in a week using his description, as he claimed to have done himself” (81). Sheridan underlines the essential point: “This is another example of how ‘skill’ as we understand it had no objective value independent of the worker’s gender and relationship (or lack of it) to the guild system” (111-12). Diderot’s comment “might be dismissed as naif arrogance, [but] is nonetheless interesting as a reflection of the widespread assumption that women’s trades, operating outside the apprenticeship system, did not involve comparable levels of skill” (81). Considering the work women did in artisanal and textile trades, Sheridan brings her analysis of the prints and accompanying texts to bear: “While the texts continually underline the patience and care required for these tasks, they generally stop short of epithets we might take to be signifiers of ‘skill,’ such as talent or capacité, which would challenge the underlying assumptions about women’s place in the world of work” (146). Talent, skill, and worth, defined by men, categorized women’s work as the least valuable and lowest paid. I had some quibbles with the layout of the book; I found the three columns of text on each page difficult to read. And while the images were beautifully clear for the most part, the superimposition of print details on top of the image rather than placing them to the side was distracting. Still, this is an amazing book, one which leaves an indelible image of women as a hardworking, cheap, and disposable labor source throughout history. That hard material reality is one that historians recognize intellectually, but seldom feel in their gut. Sheridan’s book brings home that reality at the same time she demonstrates the talent, strength, and toughness of these women.
TL;DR: This paper explores the relationship between mentally ill consumers, the tobacco industry, and public health in the United States through letters written by mentally ill smokers between the 1970s and 1990s.
Abstract: Most of the history of the tobacco industry over the last few decades has focused on the conflicts between tobacco industry leaders who promoted smoking and tobacco control advocates who warned of the health consequences. Yet a view of this conflict from the perspective of smokers who are also mentally ill raises questions about how to frame public health policy for these individuals. Mentally ill consumers wrote to the tobacco industry between the 1970s and 1990s and expressed their commitment to smoking and to cigarette companies, despite their awareness of the health risks. This paper explores the relationship between mentally ill consumers, the tobacco industry, and public health in the United States through letters written by mentally ill smokers.
TL;DR: This essay uses the Cleveland Cultural Gardens as a lens through which to explore how art and place have intersected over time and explores how communities have negotiated questions of national, ethnic, and American identity and embedded those identities into the vernacular landscape.
Abstract: Perhaps the world's first peace garden, the Cleveland Cultural Gardens embody the history of twentieth-century America and reveal the complex interrelations between art and place. This essay uses the Cleveland Cultural Gardens as a lens through which to explore how art and place have intersected over time. It explores how communities have negotiated questions of national, ethnic, and American identity and embedded those identities into the vernacular landscape. It considers how the particulars of place were embedded into a public garden and asks whether it is possible for public art to transcend its place—both in terms of geography and history. In some sense, the Gardens have transcended their place, but in others respects, their fortunes were bound inextricably to that place, to the economic, demographic, and cultural contours that shaped and reshaped Northern Ohio. As works of art, the Cleveland Cultural Gardens both have reflected the history of Cleveland and American industrial cities during the 20th century and revealed something of the dynamics that underscored the changing character of public art and gardens in American cities.
TL;DR: This paper found that women who had already launched their careers before the Nazis came to power and whose careers were not directly attacked by the Nazis were the most likely to maintain their careers, while women who were still in school in 1933 were more likely to be derailed.
Abstract: When the Nazis came to power in 1933 they slammed shut many educational and professional doors newly-opened to women in the 1920s. This article examines how women in three cohorts (those who had already launched their careers in 1933, those who were finishing their higher education in 1933, and those who were still in Gymnasium in 1933) adjusted to Nazi decrees. It argues that despite the Nazis’ devastating attack on women’s education and employment, many women remained resourceful and resistant to state efforts to shape their behavior. Women who had launched their careers before the Nazis came to power and whose careers were not directly attacked by the Nazis were the most likely to maintain their careers. In contrast, women who were still in school in 1933 were the most likely to be derailed. Women in all three cohorts tend to remember Nazi policy as having no impact on their life choices. Whether they directly benefitted from Nazi policy or were harmed by it, they remember their decisions as personal. For many women whose careers paths were blocked by Nazi policy, motherhood offered an alternative to employment.
TL;DR: From 1890 to 1956, non-governmental welfare agencies worked with the French colonial government in Indochina to remove Eurasian children, who had been abandoned by their French fathers, from their Vietnamese mothers and the Vietnamese cultural environment.
Abstract: From 1890–1956, non-governmental welfare agencies worked with the French colonial government in Indochina to remove Eurasian children, who had been abandoned by their French fathers, from their Vietnamese mothers and the Vietnamese cultural environment. In an era marked by historical exigencies, perceived threats to white prestige, and inherent challenges to the colonial patriarchy, such children were believed to be a threat to colonial security and white prestige. The racial formations of abandoned Eurasian children in colonial Indochina changed repeatedly in response to these threats. Drawing from the rhetoric of racial sciences and led by anxieties over changes colonial security, French civilians increasingly and colonial government administrators increasingly made the case that these children where white and must be removed from their Vietnamese mothers’ care, using force if necessary.
TL;DR: Siqueiros, Shaffer, and Rodia as mentioned in this paper argue that in trying to project a specific (and narrow) image of Los Angeles globally, civic elites ultimately provoked these artists into fundamentally reinterpreting the local.
Abstract: The relationship of art to place is pronounced in Los Angeles, a world center for the production and projection of visual culture. The historical pursuit of a unifying civic identity grounded in both the arts and assumptions of white Anglo homogeneity led to a fraught public art history as excluded cultural groups fought for a vital stake in Los Angeles's self-representation. As an era when civic resources were challenged and the Federal Arts Project infused new life into public culture, the decade of the 1930s provides an especially ripe opportunity to examine the clash between a conservative, booster vision of Los Angeles and the city as imagined by foreign, ethnic and immigrant artists. This article focuses on artworks by David Siqueiros, Myer Shaffer, and Sabato Rodia and argues that in trying to project a specific (and narrow) image of Los Angeles globally, civic elites ultimately provoked these artists into fundamentally reinterpreting the local. Localized art meant something valuable and they resisted a flawed and false separation of art from place. In laying bare the significance of local places and local histories, these artists produced, in effect, poignant monuments to radical visions of social equality, economic justice, and cultural diversity.
TL;DR: The author argues that by complicating the intersections between class, science and technology, and an emerging, but troubling, modernity, 1920s rayon advertising offers an especially rich site for analysis of the ways in which biopolitics and nascent consumerism both sold products and constructed ideologies before 1933, and influenced the post-war welfare state.
Abstract: Recent research on twentieth-century German history has begun to re-examine the centrality of race as a category of analysis. While not discounting its importance in the shaping and enacting of Nazi policies and practices, race is seen instead as one among many factors leading to the crimes of the Nazi regime. In this paper, the author considers the role consumerist desires and fantasies played in the wider context of the inter-war European fascination with notions of technology, "hygiene," democracy, and modernity. Using advertisements that were created to promote manufactured-fiber (rayon) apparel, this article suggests that continuities across cultures and time periods necessitate a re-evaluation of race as the signal organizing principal. Instead, the author argues that by complicating the intersections between class, science and technology, and an emerging, but troubling, modernity, 1920s rayon advertising offers an especially rich site for analysis of the ways in which biopolitics and nascent consumerism both sold products and constructed ideologies before 1933, and influenced the post-war welfare state.