American Culture Today Research Articles

From Yellow Peril to Japanese Wasteland: John Hersey’s “Hiroshima”

Research Article| December 01 2000 From Yellow Peril to Japanese Wasteland: John Hersey’s “Hiroshima” Patrick B. Sharp Patrick B. Sharp Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Twentieth-Century Literature (2000) 46 (4): 434–452. https://doi.org/10.1215/0041462X-2000-1002 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Patrick B. Sharp; From Yellow Peril to Japanese Wasteland: John Hersey’s “Hiroshima”. Twentieth-Century Literature 1 December 2000; 46 (4): 434–452. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/0041462X-2000-1002 Download citation file: 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 Books & JournalsAll JournalsTwentieth-Century Literature Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright © Hofstra University2001 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal Issue Section: Articles You do not currently have access to this content.

One nation in therapy

WITH A SUBJECT SO OMNIPRESENT AS THAT OF THE PSYCHOLOGICAL IN contemporary American culture, it helps to approach from a distance. Thus the following brief historical fable, in the form of a set of cross-cultural parallels from the history of religion. My fable concerns the transmission of Buddhism from the Indian subcontinent to three quite different cultures: in Tibet, where it only gained hold once trantric traditions of Buddhism assimilated themselves to existing forms and structures of Bon animism; in China, where and when, in the form of Ch'an Buddhism, it made its peace with Taoist thought; and in the contemporary United States, where, under the guidance of such Western teachers as Sharon Salzberg, Jack Kornfield, and Pema Chodron, thousands of newly minted practitioners resonate to an emergent synthesis of ancient dharmic teachings on impermance and noself' and various contemporary forms of personal growth work.' That Buddhism is only finally gaining a foothold in American culture today by blending its traditional soteriological agenda with various forms

The American Paradox: Jeffersonian Equality and Racial Science

DAVID BRION DAVIS HAS RECENTLY DESCRIBED "RACIAL SLAVERY AND ITS consequences as the basic reality, the grim and irrepressible theme governing both the settlement of the Western hemisphere and the emergence of a government and society in the United States that white people have regarded as 'free."' To Davis, slavery and race form "the central malady in American history and culture," which he describes as "America's haunting original sin."1 Many students of American culture today would argue that this "original sin" seems to lie at the heart of a crisis of confidence in the late twentieth century. The historical issues of race and slavery are still central to the paradoxes of the present era because they continue to test the conflicting but equally essential goals of stable political order and progressive reform and confuse the relationship between the ideals of property rights and human rights.2 Today's paradox has a striking parallel in Thomas Jefferson's often confusing, and apparently contradictory, ideas as expressed in the Declaration of Independence and in his scientific analysis of racial characteristics as found in his Notes on the State of Virginia. Numerous scholars have noted the Jefferson paradox and expressed it in a variety of ways. As Douglas Wilson put it, "How could the man who wrote that 'All men are created equal' own slaves? This, in essence, is the question most persistently asked of those who write about Thomas Jefferson."3 For Frank Shuffelton, editor of one of the most complete Jeffersonian bibliographies, the paradox lies in that "no matter how much we admire him as an opponent of slavery, we must recognize his racism."4

A THEORETICAL CONSTRUCT OF THE CONCEPTS OF TOUCH AS THEY RELATE TO NURSING

Theories of touch as related to nonverbal communication in the area of patient care are examined, and studies of touch as a general communication device and as a specific factor in the medical discipline are reviewed. According to the abstract universal of touch communication, as observed in use in american culture today, five broad areas are developed into a concept of touch. Out of this concept, inferences are formed into a “construct” a theoretical abstraction of observed facts that th act of touch is an integral part of nursing intervention and is to be used judiciously between nurse and patient, health team and patient, and health team and nurse as a fundamental mechanic of communication, a vital means of communicating, a basis for establishing communication, and as an important means of communicating emotions and ideas.

Qualitative Aspects of Negro Education

The implication of the concept of quality is gradation, or degrees of fitness, and, therefore, desirability with reference to the values involved. For example, best is more desirable than good because it is more adequately fitted to the situation. That is what best means. Right is more desirable than wrong for the same reason. It is this functional connotation of the concept of quality which the writer has in mind in this discussion. The other concept which calls for clarification in this connection is education, but it is hardly possible to formulate a single definition which will cover satisfactorily all that is being done and called education in American schools today. Any good dictionary will give several definitions in order to make sure that the field of meaning has been adequately covered. Perhaps one of the best ways to get an adequate idea of what education means in American culture today is to get a cross-sectional view of what is being done in the various types of schools. Such a picture will reveal objectives and activities ranging all the way from the ambitious aim of the philosopher who attempts to impart knowledge of principles, sufficient to enable one to interpret correctly the meaning of the cosmic process, and of human life in relation to that process to the more moderate aim of the dietitian whose objective is to prepare one to cook a good meal, or the beauty culturist, who seeks to enable one to make curly hair straight and straight hair curly. With such a wide range of aims and activities listed under the concept of education one can define in only vague and general terms. John Dewey has defined education as the continuous reconstruction of experience. This is vague and general enough, for it makes of education a never-ending process, involving, perhaps, the individual's total environment. For the purpose of this discussion the writer is thinking of it as the process in which specific knowledge is acquired and skills developed which enable the possessor to do certain things in a better way than would otherwise be possible. One is hardly satisfied with such a definition, however, even though it appears to fit what is being done in the schools, for it leaves out of the picture, or unnoticed in it, an element or factor which has, it appears to the writer, significant bearing on one phase of the qualitative consideration of education. Emotion is neither knowledge nor skill, but if the educative process does not do something to the emotions or the feeling resources of the individual, one may, with reason, question the value of the education, when looked at through the eyes of the social thinker. Mere knowledge and skill may be used to destroy rather than help people. What Germany is doing for Europe at the present time is a good illustration of that fact. It is important therefore, that those possessing this knowledge and skill shall have social interests and sentiments sufficiently strong to insure