American Century Research Articles

Book Review: North of America: Canadians and the American Century, 1945–60

Book Review: North of America: Canadians and the American Century, 1945–60

Cold Peace: Avoiding the new Cold War, A life in the American century

Cold Peace: Avoiding the new Cold War, A life in the American century

Illusions of Progress: Business, Poverty, and Liberalism in the American Century by Brent Cebul (review)

Illusions of Progress: Business, Poverty, and Liberalism in the American Century by Brent Cebul (review)

The geopolitics of passive revolution and the ghost of Malthus in the American Century

In this article, I argue that the re-emergence of Malthusian limits in the post-war period was universally accepted as a principal challenge to the integrity of the American Century, yet whose solution was refracted through competing ideological frameworks among development experts. In mobilising Gramsci’s theory of organic intellectuals and passive revolution, I offer an in-depth empirical analysis of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, and the Rockefeller Foundation, both of which largely converged around the consensus on land reform as a means of attenuating the revolutionary potential of peasant grievance. Yet this solution to Malthusian limits became steadily eroded as a function of the contingent outcomes of class struggle and state-formation across the Global South. Through a focused examination of the Rockefeller Foundation’s Mexican Agricultural Program, I show how the eventual decline of land reform in favour of more muscular modes of productivism in the guise of ‘Green Revolution’ technologies did not follow a straight path from networks of Western scientific knowledge to the fields of the Global South but resulted from the contingent transformations across Mexico’s state/society complex, and the ideological contestation among a network of ‘mobile experts’ comprising the fabric of the American Century.

J. Jesse Ramírez, Un-American Dreams: Apocalyptic Science Fiction, Disimagined Community, and Bad Hope in the American Century

J. Jesse Ramírez, <i>Un-American Dreams: Apocalyptic Science Fiction, Disimagined Community, and Bad Hope in the American Century</i>

Development of seat mats for drivers using Aloe vera

The automotive industry is continuously evolving to enhance driver comfort and safety. One crucial aspect of driver comfort is the seating experience, which plays a significant role in reducing fatigue and enhancing overall well-being during extended journeys. This abstract introduces a novel approach to seat mats for drivers, incorporating Agave Americana, commonly known as the American Century Plant, as a sustainable and effective material. The proposed seat mats for drivers are designed to offer a blend of durability, breathability, and comfort. Agave Americana fiber is known for its exceptional strength, making it an ideal candidate for a material that can withstand the rigors of daily use in a vehicle. Furthermore, its natural breathability helps regulate temperature and moisture, ensuring a more comfortable seating experience during long drives. Ultimately, the adoption of Agave Americana-based seat mats has the potential to improve driver well-being, reduce the environmental footprint of automotive manufacturing, and contribute to the broader shift toward sustainable materials in the industry.

Empire's Nursery: Children's Literature and the Origins of the American Century by Brian Rouleau (review)

Empire's Nursery: Children's Literature and the Origins of the American Century by Brian Rouleau (review)

American Century Investments Foundation community grants

American Century Investments Foundation community grants

Brent Cebul, Illusions of Progress: Business, Poverty, and Liberalism in the American Century. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023. 432pp. 10 halftones, 3 maps. 1 table. $39.95 hbk.

Brent Cebul, Illusions of Progress: Business, Poverty, and Liberalism in the American Century. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023. 432pp. 10 halftones, 3 maps. 1 table. $39.95 hbk.

A Book Review of Capturing Aguinaldo: The Daring Raid to Seize the Philippine President at the Dawn of the American Century

A Book Review of Capturing Aguinaldo: The Daring Raid to Seize the Philippine President at the Dawn of the American Century

Richard Godden, Fictions of Finance at the End of an American Century: Punctuating Capital

Richard Godden, Fictions of Finance at the End of an American Century: Punctuating Capital

Bruce L.R. Smith, The Last Gentleman: Thomas Hughes and the End of the American Century

Bruce L.R. Smith, <i>The Last Gentleman: Thomas Hughes and the End of the American Century</i>

The End of History in Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections

Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections can be many things to many readers—a domestic fiction, a campus novel, a neuronovel, a novel about mental illness, and a novel of globalization. A rereading of the novel over two decades after its publication in 2001 reveals yet another way to describe it—a historical novel that engages with the cultural and political discourse of the 1990s. The Corrections can be seen as engaging especially with the then popular thesis as conceived by Francis Fukuyama, which is that history has come to an endpoint because American-style democracy—a combination of capitalism and liberalism—has proved itself to be the best form of social and political organization, thereby ending all ideological struggle. In the novel, ideological struggles are hardly resolved, and history is far from being at its end. There are mainly two ways in which Franzen illustrates this: firstly, by showing the limits of economic and political liberalism; and secondly, by depicting the plights of the post-Soviet Union Lithuania. This also enables Franzen to critique the idea of the American Century that entails a sense of superiority and exceptionalism.

Spirit Power: Politics and Religion in Korea’s American Century

Spirit Power: Politics and Religion in Korea’s American Century

Empire's Nursery: Children's Literature and the Origins of the American Century

Empire's Nursery: Children's Literature and the Origins of the American Century

Every citizen a statesman: the dream of a democratic foreign policy in the American century

Every citizen a statesman: the dream of a democratic foreign policy in the American century

Un-American Dreams: Apocalyptic Science Fiction, Disimagined Community, and Bad Hope in the American Century by J. Jesse Ramírez (review)

Un-American Dreams: Apocalyptic Science Fiction, Disimagined Community, and Bad Hope in the American Century by J. Jesse Ramírez (review)

Review: The Real Ambassadors: Dave and Iola Brubeck and Louis Armstrong Challenge Segregation, by Keith Hatschek

Book Review| June 01 2023 Review: The Real Ambassadors: Dave and Iola Brubeck and Louis Armstrong Challenge Segregation, by Keith Hatschek Keith Hatschek. The Real Ambassadors: Dave and Iola Brubeck and Louis Armstrong Challenge Segregation. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2022. 298 pages. Pierangelo Castagneto Pierangelo Castagneto American University in Bulgaria Pierangelo Castagneto taught American History at the American University in Bulgaria. He has been an F. Ross Johnson-Connaught Distinguished Visitor at the University of Toronto, a Fulbright Scholar, and has worked at the Rockefeller Archive Center and at the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies. Among his publications: L’oceano dei suoni. Migrazioni, musica e razze nella formazione delle società euroatlantiche (2007); Old and New Republics: The Diplomatic Relations Between the Republic of Genoa and the US (2010); Hostilities against Malaria. The Rockefeller Foundation in Bulgaria (2013); Ambassador Dizzy: Jazz Diplomacy in the Cold War Era (2014). He is the editor of Frederick Douglass, L’età delle immagini (2020). Email: pcastagneto60@gmail.com Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Email: pcastagneto60@gmail.com Journal of Popular Music Studies (2023) 35 (2): 113–115. https://doi.org/10.1525/jpms.2023.35.2.113 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Pierangelo Castagneto; Review: The Real Ambassadors: Dave and Iola Brubeck and Louis Armstrong Challenge Segregation, by Keith Hatschek. Journal of Popular Music Studies 1 June 2023; 35 (2): 113–115. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/jpms.2023.35.2.113 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentJournal of Popular Music Studies Search In an oft-quoted Life magazine editorial published in February 1941, founder Henry R. Luce famously predicted the coming of the American Century while pressuring the United States to enter World War II in order to forsake the virus of isolationism and defend freedom and democracy from tyranny. He invited his country to envision a postwar future by embracing the logic of internationalism and being “the Good Samaritan of the entire world.” In order to transform the 20th century into the American Century, the United States could have surely relied upon its economic and military power. But according to Luce, the U.S. was already a world power without knowing it: “American jazz, Hollywood movies, American slang, American machines and patented products, are in fact the only things that every community in the world, from Zanzibar to Hamburg, recognizes in common.”1 A few years later, at the height of the... You do not currently have access to this content.

Heonik Kwon and Jun Hwan Park, Spirit Power: Politics and Religion in Korea’s American Century

Heonik Kwon and Jun Hwan Park, Spirit Power: Politics and Religion in Korea’s American Century

Maps and Mini-Imperialists

Children no longer reside on the periphery of studies of empire. Over the past two decades, a robust body of scholarship has demonstrated that youngsters—both as symbols and as flesh-and-blood individuals—have been crucial to the project of empire building. This is particularly true when examining the history of the United States, an empire whose central tenet was a denial of its own imperialism. Cultural constructions of childhood innocence and vulnerability bolstered justifications for U.S. political and territorial expansion in the name of uplift. And youngsters’ perceived malleability made them prime targets for efforts to mold imperial citizens and subjects. Youth groups, schools, and children’s material culture, recent scholarship has demonstrated, helped mold young imperialists—even as children themselves challenged or revised the lessons imparted by their elders. For example, Mischa Honeck’s Our Frontier is the World: The Boy Scouts in the Age of American Ascendancy examines how the Boy Scouts helped support American global expansionism across the twentieth century.1 In a similar vein, Brian Rouleau’s Empire’s Nursery: Children’s Literature and the Origins of the American Century explores how children’s books cultivated what Rouleau calls an “imperial consciousness.”2 Mahshid Mayar’s new book Citizens and Rulers of the World: The American Child and the Cartographic Pedagogies of Empire adds to this productive conversation. The book focuses on children’s complex relationship with maps and map-making during the 1890s. It examines how U.S. geopolitical power was represented spatially and how the meanings of this power were conveyed to the next generation.