American History Research Articles

Lilian Harrison: the making of a pioneering swimmer, 1904–1923

ABSTRACT Lilian Harrison was a pioneering South American swimmer who established new records for open water distance swimming, and time spent swimming, in December 1923, as she became the first person to swim across the Rio de la Plata, from Uruguay to Argentina. Until now, her achievements have been remembered and studied as a South American history, from Harrison’s birth in Quilmes to her training in Tigre, to the tumultuous reception she received when returning to Buenos Aires after her successful swim. In this article, we situate Harrison’s achievement within the historical context of her early life and education, which was spent in an idealistic and pioneering school in Letchworth Garden City, in England. We argue that Harrison’s English schooling was a vital ingredient in her 1923 success that was generally overlooked in the press reports. Using existing newspaper sources as well as privately-held family papers which we have been fortunate to consult, we look at Harrison’s education at school, in the pool and her family upbringing. The article concludes with some reflections on the nature of global sporting histories in the early twentieth century.

Review Essay: Donald Trump, Charismatic Leadership and the “Deep State”

Abstract There have been many accounts of Donald Trump's assault on America's constitutional norms and institutions. Journalists have detailed how a real estate mogul and reality television star with no experience in public office captured the Republican Party and disrupted the regular protocols of the executive branch. Legal scholars have lamented Trump's politicization of the Justice Department breaking through the fragile guard rails put in place in the wake of the Watergate scandal. Psychiatrists have sought to diagnose Trump's politics of resentment, which they attribute to the rage and narcissism of a sociopath. Amid this frenzy John Campbell's Institutions Under Siege: Donald Trump's Attack on the Deep State provides a comprehensive study on Trump's assault on American political and government institutions. He shows persuasively that Trump's presidency had a deep and dangerous imprint on elections, the Republican Party, the bureaucracy, and fiscal policy. Critically examining Campbell’s theory and evidence, this essay considers where Trump stands in the long train of democratic crises that have occurred throughout American history, how his presidency and its provocative aftermath were a symptom of long-standing changes in the relationship between the presidency and the party system, and why the presidency itself might be a polarizing institution.

Lorien Foote. Rites of Retaliation: Civilization, Soldiers, and Campaigns in the American Civil War.

Lorien Foote. <i>Rites of Retaliation: Civilization, Soldiers, and Campaigns in the American Civil War</i>.

United States Healthcare System

United States Healthcare System

Three R’s of Economic Development: Real Estate, Rice, and Railroads Economic Growth through Expansion of Territory and Agriculture Utilizing Railroads

The history of the United States is a complex development of race, religion, and independent spirit, but all of these have been driven by economic factors that can easily be identified and quantified, no more so than in the Southern parts of the country during the time right before the Industrial Revolution and to just after it. The confluence of real estate, railroads, and the most important crop of the time, rice, lead to an explosion of both commerce and industrial growth. These enterprises allowed the country to not only grow, but to also become accountable to itself and its people, for example, after the Civil War there was introduced what was colloquially known as “Forty Acres and a Mule”, which allowed returning soldiers and freed slaves recompense for their hard labor and unpaid wages during their indentured servitudes. This allowed for even more growth in the agricultural businesses, which required more land, more transportation, and more innovation. This is still evident in the economies of the South today.

George Takei’s Allegiance: WWII Japanese American incarceration as a cautionary tale

ABSTRACT The musical Allegiance was inspired by the childhood of actor-activist George Takei, a Japanese American whose family was incarcerated by the United States government in ‘war relocation camps’ during World War II. Performed in both New York and London, the play is a rare popular depiction of Japanese detention – a chapter of American history that is simultaneously present and hidden in U.S. public imagination. The musical underscores the realities of racial discrimination that rendered Japanese Americans vulnerable to rights abuses and asks whether a citizen must prove one’s loyalty. Thinking through the ‘absent presence’ of Japanese American incarceration by viewing performances such as Allegiance is a vital step for acknowledging the precariousness of American citizenship and for preventing human rights abuses in the future. Today, this play serves as a cautionary tale for the United States as anti-Asian hatred spikes and citizenship stripping among naturalized American citizens increases.

The Molina Family Latino Gallery: A PEAS Case Study

The Molina Family Latino Gallery: A PEAS Case Study

Research on the Rebellious Spirit of Scarlett in Gone with the Wind

The novel Gone with the Wind is a great work by Margaret Mitchell. For a long time, it has been one of the bestsellers on novel shelves. This novel records the social situation during the American Civil War and the heroines life experiences. It successfully portrays the classical image of females in literary history. Scarlett is a woman who has a rebellious spirit. This paper analyzes Scarlett s power against traditional gender prejudices, moral concepts, setbacks, and lifestyles.

“Power and Connection:” A “post-colonial” response

In 2011, Paul Kramer published a review essay titled “Power and Connection: Imperial Histories of the US in the World.” Thick with conceptual language and historiographical references, the piece is clearly pointed toward a professional audience. Yet beneath its heavy academic garb lay an urgent practical matter. Americanists, Kramer contended, needed to get outside of their innocent nationalistic space and take up the burden of the “imperial” category. And they needed to do so consistently – not conveniently, as a political cry against the declining virtue of the republic.

Remembering and Forgetting the Past on the Mississippi River: Toward an Environmental History of Catholicism

Abstract: After the flood of 1927, the US government decided to master the Mississippi River. Nowhere was this state-sponsored determination more evident than in the lower Mississippi River delta. An historical examination of a cluster of Catholic churches in Pointe Coupée Parish, Louisiana, permits some understanding of how physical and material alterations to landscapes are not easily traced, especially when we consider the temporal and spatial scales of change to the Mississippi over the last one hundred years. In that time, Catholics of Pointe Coupée Parish managed to retain, erase, and revise aspects of their bonds to a river once central to the lives of their ancestors. This is not at all surprising, as the fallibility of memory is made apparent every time we try to tell stories about our pasts. Pointe Coupée Parish is one site where we can explore how alterations to a landscape have an impact not only on the trajectory of a Catholic community's future, but also on access to its past. Absences of memory in the living, combined with the erasure of material remains in modified landscapes, challenge us to consider how we might account for the relationship between Catholicism and the built environment throughout American history.

The (New) American Political Tradition

The year 2023 marked the seventy-fifth anniversary of the publication of Richard Hofstadter's The American Political Tradition: And the Men Who Made It—a bestselling book that captured the imagination of many of Hofstadter's fellow Americans in the early postwar period and, at the same time, defined the terms of argument for much of academic history for the next generation.1 It was also the book my high school teacher, Mr. Backfish, assigned in eleventh-grade Advanced Placement (AP) American History that helped transform me into a historian. So different was it from the dry, conventional textbook in both its riveting, sometimes acerbic prose and its unsentimental view of venerated figures in the American past. I still have my original copy (Figure 1).

Первые леди в истории США: историко-библиографический обзор

The introduction of this article delves into the author’s contemplations on the role of the first ladies of US presidents in maintaining their image and electoral appeal. The author highlights that the general public’s lack of knowledge regarding the intelligence, education, mentality, and character of first ladies is an evident historical injustice. Currently, modern historians are actively rectifying this oversight. The purpose of the study is to analyze modern literature on the role and significance of first ladies in the history and political life of the United States and to provide a chronology of published biographical research on this issue in English-language and domestic historiography. The methodology employed is rooted in specialized historical research methods, including comparative-historical analysis, which allows for an exploration of research trends in this historical domain. Additionally, historical systemic and retrospective methods are employed, along with elements of the historical biographical method. The author’s historiographical analysis is founded on principles of historicism and historical objectivity. The materials used in the study are memoirs, biographical essays, documents, scientific monographs and articles, and Internet resources, including the official websites of the White House and the National First Ladies’ Library. The “Analysis” section contains the main part of the article’s text, that is, an analysis of literature and other sources, including autobiographies and memoirs of first ladies, interesting information about the authors of modern biographical studies, as well as the chronological order of published works of Englishlanguage and domestic authors. The results of the research are encapsulated in the author’s conclusions on the topic. It is determined that the historiography surrounding the role and significance of first ladies in American history is currently underdeveloped and, often, subjectively biased. Typically, more attention and subsequent publications are dedicated to the spouses of the most popular presidents, overshadowing other first ladies, even if they were remarkable individuals themselves.

Heathen: Religion and Race in American History by Kathryn Gin Lum (review)

Heathen: Religion and Race in American History by Kathryn Gin Lum (review)

Trauma and Unaccompanied Child Migration in US History: Reflections from the Archives

Abstract: Through detailed analysis of archival records, Anita Casavantes Bradford traces the history of the clinical, academic, and popular understandings of trauma as it influenced US immigration policy for unaccompanied migrant children during the twentieth century. She questions why adults charged with the care of unaccompanied minors have "(mis)understood … (mis)managed … and (mis)represented" children as traumatized, both unintentionally and deliberately, in order to advance adult objectives. Casavantes Bradford provides a historical overview of US immigration and refugee polices since the 1930s as applied to unaccompanied migrant children. This history also traces the evolution of clinical and popular definitions of trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)—officially recognized by psychologists in 1980—and suggests that policies for managing and mitigating trauma among unaccompanied minors often led to negative consequences. These polices, above all, were often based on geopolitical and domestic political considerations rather than the welfare of children, according to Casavantes Bradford. Thus, during the 1980s, unaccompanied minors from Haiti and Central America reaching the United States faced detention and deportation, while Sudanese "lost boys" were granted preferential treatment that aligned with US national security interests in Africa. Since the 1930s, markers of difference such as race, class, and religion have also played fundamental roles in which unaccompanied minors have been given the "right to be traumatized" and resettlement. Casavantes Bradford cautions researchers against interpreting migrant children's experiences through biased or ahistorical notions of trauma that oversimplify individual young people's experiences and their potential resilience. Historians and others should critically examine their own assumptions when studying trauma and the experiences of unaccompanied migrant children.

What Does the History of Inpatient Psychiatric Unit Design Tell Us About Balancing Safety and Healing for Patients With Suicidal Behaviors?

Since the Joint Commission shifted its focus to suicide mitigation strategy implementation in behavioral health units in 2007, examining modern design trends in historical context is more clinically and ethically important than ever. This article considers architectural evolutions in how health care organizations have used structure and space designs to balance safety and healing when housing patients who are suicidal.

Asian American and Pacific Islander Architectural Histories: Mapping the Field and Its Futures

Asian American and Pacific Islander Architectural Histories: Mapping the Field and Its Futures

Points North: African Canadian History for the Twenty-First Century

When Robin Winks’ Blacks in Canada hit stores fifty years ago, critics heaped scorn on the idea of there being such a thing as African Canadian history – never mind a history worth telling. In the decades since, African Canadian history has blossomed from a topic that seemed the work of a curious few, to a field that has secured some of the highest awards and praise in Canadian history. This article explores the slippery uses of African American and African Canadian histories; Black Canadian historiography; critics of the canon; remaining gaps in the field; and new scholarship by some of the scholars – both the young and the seasoned – who are breaking new ground in African Canadian history. It also discusses podcasts, documentaries, websites, and television productions about African Canadian history.

David Bisaha. American Scenic Design and Freelance Professionalism

Moving away from individual design practice to look at the institutional power structures that governed the flow of labour and capital in the theatre industry throughout the twentieth century, this well-researched examination of the movement toward professionalization in American scenic design adds an important new dimension to American theatre history.

Thinking with Paul Kramer's “Power and Connection”

I am delighted to have an opportunity to reflect on Paul Kramer's rich and highly influential “Power and Connection: Imperial Histories of the United States in the World.” Since its publication in 2011, “Power and Connection” has been a cornerstone of my graduate U.S. in the World classes and has been invoked in every graduate qualifying exam. The essay has had a direct and indirect influence on the wave of innovative scholarship that has been produced in the past decade. I first want to note some of the essay's important interventions. Then, rather than attempting to extend or update Kramer's extensive historiographical review, I want to think with “Power and Connection” by taking up two of Kramer's suggestions and discussions. First, I take up his suggestion to think about imperial power through a Gramscian frame of domination and consent, arguing that the concept of hegemonic struggle is critical for thinking about power within empires and shifts in global imperial formations. Second, I engage Kramer's discussion of the relationship between imperial and transnational histories, arguing that scholars need to consider transnationalism as a highly specific and contingent political formation, as well as an analytic category and sometimes actors' category.

Power, Connection, and the Endless Present

Published more than a decade ago, Paul Kramer's “Power and Connection: Imperial Histories of the United States in the World” is arguably the most important intervention in the field of U.S. and the World history. This roundtable affirms its standing among modern American historians. Yet the essay's exact influence is hard to characterize. Classic state-of-the-field essays—like Charles Maier's broadside against U.S. diplomatic history or Jacquelyn Dowd Hall's invocation of a long civil rights movement—spurred field-wide reckonings. Kramer's impact was subtler. Recently, Daniel Bessner and Fredrik Logevall cited the essay to say that the field should revisit U.S. policy making, using “Power and Connection” as a foil to discuss the limits of the international and transnational turns. However, boosters of those turns—Erez Manela and Naoko Shibusawa, among others—ignore “Power and Connection,” even as they advance claims about globalization and imperialism that touch on the article's arguments. This impasse is as fascinating—as worthy of exposition—as Kramer’s original claims, partly because it invites us to historicize the decade just past. Rather than handling the essay with antiquarian gloves, I’d like to dig into this dirt to consider three questions: What did “Power and Connection” displace? What did it do? And how does the essay resonate in our present?