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Books > Humanities > History > World history > From 1900
In Scandal Work: James Joyce, the New Journalism, and the Home Rule
Newspaper Wars, Margot Gayle Backus charts the rise of the
newspaper sex scandal across the fin de siecle British archipelago
and explores its impact on the work of James Joyce, a towering
figure of literary modernism. Based largely on archival research,
the first three chapters trace the legal, social, and economic
forces that fueled an upsurge in sex scandal over the course of the
Irish Home Rule debates during James Joyce's childhood. The
remaining chapters examine Joyce's use of scandal in his work
throughout his career, beginning with his earliest known poem, "Et
Tu, Healy," written when he was nine years old to express outrage
over the politically disastrous Parnell scandal. Backus's readings
of Joyce's essays in a Trieste newspaper, the Dubliners short
stories, Portrait of the Artist, and Ulysses show Joyce's
increasingly intricate employment of scandal conventions,
ingeniously twisted so as to disable scandal's reifying effects.
Scandal Work pursues a sequence of politically motivated sex
scandals, which it derives from Joyce's work. It situates Joyce
within an alternative history of the New Journalism's emergence in
response to the Irish Land Wars and the Home Rule debates, from the
Phoenix Park murders and the first Dublin Castle scandal to "The
Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon" and the Oscar Wilde scandal. Her
voluminous scholarship encompasses historical materials on
Victorian and early twentieth-century sex scandals, Irish politics,
and newspaper evolution as well as providing significant new
readings of Joyce's texts.
"Ye cannot serve God and mammon," the Bible says. But conservative
American Protestants have, for at least a century, been trying to
prove that adage wrong. While preachers, activists, and politicians
have all helped spread the gospel, Darren Grem argues that
evangelicalism owes its strength to the blessings of business. Grem
offers a new history of American evangelicalism, showing how its
adherents strategically used corporate America-its leaders,
businesses, money, ideas, and values-to advance their religious,
cultural, and political aspirations. Conservative evangelicals were
thus able to retain and expand their public influence in a
secularizing, diversifying, and liberalizing age. In the process
they became beholden to pro-business stances on matters of
theology, race, gender, taxation, free trade, and the state, making
them well-suited to a broader conservative movement that was also
of, by, and for corporate America. The Blessings of Business tells
the story of unlikely partnerships between champions of the
evangelical movement, such as Billy Graham, and largely forgotten
businessmen, like R.G. LeTourneau; he describes the backdrop
against which the religious right's pro-business politics can be
understood. The evangelical embrace of corporate capitalism made
possible a fusion with other conservatives, he finds, creating a
foundation for the business-friendly turn in the nation's economy
and political culture. But it also transformed conservative
evangelicalism itself, making it as much an economic movement as a
religious one. Fascinating and provocative, The Blessings of
Business uncovers the strong ties Americans have forged between the
Almighty and the almighty dollar.
After 1898 the United States not only solidified its position as an
economic colossus, but by annexing Puerto Rico and the Philippines
it had also added for the first time semi-permanent, heavily
populated colonies unlikely ever to attain statehood. In short
order followed a formal protectorate over Cuba, the "taking" of
Panama to build a canal, and the announcement of a new Corollary to
the Monroe Doctrine, proclaiming an American duty to "police" the
hemisphere. Empire had been an American practice since the nation's
founding, but the new policies were understood as departures from
traditional methods of territorial expansion. How to match these
actions with traditional non-entanglement constituted the central
preoccupation of U.S. foreign relations in the early twentieth
century. International lawyers proposed instead that the United
States become an impartial judge. By becoming a force for law in
the world, America could reconcile its republican ideological
tradition with a desire to rank with the Great Powers. Lawyers'
message scaled new heights of popularity in the first decade and a
half of the twentieth century as a true profession of international
law emerged. The American Society of International Law (ASIL) and
other groups, backed by the wealth of the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace, held annual meetings and published journals.
They called for the creation of an international court, the holding
of regular conferences to codify the rules of law, and the
education of public opinion as to the proper rights and duties of
states. To an extent unmatched before or since, the U.S.
government-the executive branch if not always the U.S.
Senate-embraced this project. Washington called for peace
conferences and pushed for the creation of a "true " international
court. It proposed legal institutions to preserve order in its
hemisphere. Meanwhile lawyers advised presidents and made policy.
The ASIL counted among its first members every living secretary of
state (but one) who held office between 1892 and 1920. Growing
numbers of international lawyers populated the State Department and
represented U.S. corporations with business overseas. International
lawyers were not isolated idealists operating from the sidelines.
Well-connected, well-respected, and well-compensated, they formed
an integral part of the foreign policy establishment that built and
policed an expanding empire.
Red Bird, Red Power tells the story of one of the most influential
- and controversial - American Indian activists of the twentieth
century. Zitkala-Sa (1876-1938), also known as Gertrude Simmons
Bonnin, was a highly gifted writer, editor, and musician who
dedicated her life to achieving justice for Native peoples. Here,
Tadeusz Lewandowski offers the first full-scale biography of the
woman whose passionate commitment to improving the lives of her
people propelled her to the forefront of Progressive-era reform
movements. Lewandowski draws on a vast array of sources, including
previously unpublished letters and diaries, to recount Zitkala-Sa's
unique life journey. Her story begins on the Dakota plains, where
she was born to a Yankton Sioux mother and a white father.
Zitkala-Sa, whose name translates as ""Red Bird"" in English, left
home at age eight to attend a Quaker boarding school, eventually
working as a teacher at Carlisle Indian Industrial School. By her
early twenties, she was the toast of East Coast literary society.
Her short stories for the Atlantic Monthly (1900) are, to this day,
the focus of scholarly analysis and debate. In collaboration with
William F. Hanson, she wrote the libretto and songs for the
innovative Sun Dance Opera (1913). And yet, as Lewandowski
demonstrates, Zitkala-Sa's successes could not fill the void of her
lost cultural heritage, nor dampen her fury toward the
Euro-American establishment that had robbed her people of their
land. In 1926, she founded the National Council of American Indians
with the aim of redressing American Indian grievances. Zitkala-Sa's
complex identity has made her an intriguing - if elusive - subject
for scholars. In Lewandowski's sensitive interpretation, she
emerges as a multifaceted human being whose work entailed constant
negotiation. In the end, Lewandowski argues, Zitkala-Sa's
achievements distinguish her as a forerunner of the Red Power
movement and an important agent of change.
This book provides a penetrating look into U.S. president Franklin
D. Roosevelt's strategy to bait Adolf Hitler into declaring war on
America in order to defeat Germany militarily, thus preventing the
Nazis from developing the atomic bomb. In late 1939, President
Roosevelt learned that Hitler was attempting to develop an atomic
bomb to use against the United States. The president responded by
directing his own scientific community to develop an atomic bomb
and began making plans to go to war with Germany. However, he was
hampered by public opinion, with 80 percent of the American people
against U.S. involvement in another ground war in Europe. Roosevelt
seized an opportunity in 1940, when Japan and Nazi Germany formed a
military alliance. To bait Germany into war, FDR shut down Japan's
war-making economy, prompting Tokyo to attack Pearl Harbor. A few
days later, Hitler declared war on America. Using declassified
documents, this book shows how Pearl Harbor was not about Japan; it
was about the United States going to war with Germany. It reveals
how the U.S. Navy's intelligence gathering system could break
virtually any Japanese naval code, but Admiral Husband E. Kimmel,
the commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, was kept in the dark about
the impending Pearl Harbor attack by his own government. Shows how
Roosevelt had the courage and insight to see the threat that a Nazi
atomic bomb posed to the United States and outlines his strategy to
bait Germany into declaring war on America Explains how Japan's
Bushido Code, which demands "death before dishonor," influenced
Tokyo's decision to launch a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor
Demonstrates how the U.S. Navy's intelligence gathering system was
second to none in terms of code breaking and locating the Imperial
Japanese Navy's warships Uses declassified top-secret documents and
other primary sources to prove that Roosevelt could have prevented
the Pearl Harbor attack
Today, 1913 is inevitably viewed through the lens of 1914: as the
last year before a war that would shatter the global economic order
and tear Europe apart, undermining its global pre-eminence. Our
perspectives narrowed by hindsight, the world of that year is
reduced to its most frivolous features--last summers in grand
aristocratic residences--or its most destructive ones: the
unresolved rivalries of the great European powers, the fear of
revolution, violence in the Balkans.
In this illuminating history, Charles Emmerson liberates the world
of 1913 from this "prelude to war" narrative, and explores it as it
was, in all its richness and complexity. Traveling from Europe's
capitals, then at the height of their global reach, to the emerging
metropolises of Canada and the United States, the imperial cities
of Asia and Africa, and the boomtowns of Australia and South
America, he provides a panoramic view of a world crackling with
possibilities, its future still undecided, its outlook still open.
The world in 1913 was more modern than we remember, more similar to
our own times than we expect, more globalized than ever before. The
Gold Standard underpinned global flows of goods and money, while
mass migration reshaped the world's human geography. Steamships and
sub-sea cables encircled the earth, along with new technologies and
new ideas. Ford's first assembly line cranked to life in 1913 in
Detroit. The Woolworth Building went up in New York. While Mexico
was in the midst of bloody revolution, Winnipeg and Buenos Aires
boomed. An era of petro-geopolitics opened in Iran. China appeared
to be awaking from its imperial slumber. Paris celebrated itself as
the city of light--Berlin as the city of electricity.
Full of fascinating characters, stories, and insights, "1913: In
Search of the World before the Great War" brings a lost world
vividly back to life, with provocative implications for how we
understand our past and how we think about our future.
Titoist Yugoslavia is a particularly interesting setting to examine
the integrity of the modern nation-state, especially the viability
of distinctly multi-ethnic nation-building projects. Scholarly
literature on the brutal civil wars that destroyed Yugoslavia
during the 1990s emphasizes divisive nationalism and dysfunctional
politics to explain why the state disintegrated. But the larger
question remains unanswered-just how did Tito's state function so
successfully for the preceding forty-six years. In an attempt to
understand better what united the stable, multi-ethnic, and
globally important Yugoslavia that existed before 1991 Robert
Niebuhr argues that we should pay special attention to the dynamic
and robust foreign policy that helped shape the Cold War.
In this book, Judy Kutulas complicates the common view that the
1970s were a time of counterrevolution against the radical
activities and attitudes of the previous decade. Instead, Kutulas
argues that the experiences and attitudes that were radical in the
1960s were becoming part of mainstream culture in the 1970s, as
sexual freedom, gender equality, and more complex notions of
identity, work, and family were normalized through popular
culture--television, movies, music, political causes, and the
emergence of new communities. Seemingly mundane things like
watching The Mary Tyler Moore Show, listening to Carole King songs,
donning Birkenstock sandals, or reading Roots were actually
critical in shaping Americans' perceptions of themselves, their
families, and their relation to authority. Even as these cultural
shifts eventually gave way to a backlash of political and economic
conservatism, Kutulas shows that what critics perceive as the
narcissism of the 1970s was actually the next logical step in a
longer process of assimilating 1960s values like individuality and
diversity into everyday life. Exploring such issues as feminism,
sexuality, and race, Kutulas demonstrates how popular culture
helped many Americans make sense of key transformations in U.S.
economics, society, politics, and culture in the late twentieth
century.
An important new cultural study of the Cold War, Guolin Yi's The
Media and Sino-American Rapprochement, 1963-1972 analyzes how the
media in both countries shaped public perceptions of the changing
relations between China and the United States in the decade prior
to Richard Nixon's visit to Beijing. This book offers the first
systematic study of Cankao Xiaoxi (Reference News), an internal
Chinese newspaper that carried relatively objective stories the
Xinhua News Agency translated from world news media for circulation
among Communist cadres. As the main channel for the cadres to learn
about the outside world, this newspaper provides a window into
China's evolving foreign policy, including the reception of signals
from the Nixon administration. Yi compares this internal
communications channel with the public accounts contained in the
more widely circulated newspaper People's Daily, a chief propaganda
outlet of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) directed at its own
people and China watchers all over the world. A third level of
communication emerges in classified CCP instructions and government
documents. By approaching the Chinese communication system on three
levels - internal, public, and classified - Yi's analysis
demonstrates how people at different positions in the political
hierarchy accessed varying types of information, allowing him to
chart the development of Beijing's approach to the U.S. government.
In a corresponding analysis of the defining features of American
reporting on China, Yi considers the impact of government-media
relationships in the United States during the Cold War. Alongside
prominent magazines and newspapers, particularly the New York Times
and the Washington Post in their differing coverage of key events,
Yi discusses television networks, which proved vital for promoting
the success of Ping-Pong Diplomacy and the impact of Nixon's visit
in 1972. With its comparative study of news outlets in the two
countries, The Media and Sino-American Rapprochement, 1963-1972
presents a thorough and comprehensive perspective on the role of
the media in influencing domestic Chinese and American public
opinion during a critical decade.
From the early phases of modern missions, Christian missionaries
supported many humanitarian activities, mostly framed as
subservient to the preaching of Christianity. This anthology
contributes to a historically grounded understanding of the complex
relationship between Christian missions and the roots of
humanitarianism and its contemporary uses in a Middle Eastern
context. Contributions focus on ideologies, rhetoric, and practices
of missionaries and their apostolates towards humanitarianism, from
the mid-19th century Middle East crises, examining different
missionaries, their society's worldview and their networks in
various areas of the Middle East. In the early 20th century
Christian missions increasingly paid more attention to organisation
and bureaucratisation ('rationalisation'), and media became more
important to their work. The volume analyses how non-missionaries
took over, to a certain extent, the aims and organisations of the
missionaries as to humanitarianism. It seeks to discover and
retrace such 'entangled histories' for the first time in an
integral perspective. Contributors include: Beth Baron, Philippe
Bourmaud, Seija Jalagin, Nazan Maksudyan, Michael Marten, Heleen
(L.) Murre-van den Berg, Inger Marie Okkenhaug, Idir Ouahes, Maria
Chiara Rioli, Karene Sanchez Summerer, Bertrand Taithe, and Chantal
Verdeil
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