Boy Scouts Research Articles

Transnational Histories of Youth in the Twentieth Century ed. by Richard Ivan Jobs and David F. Pomfret

Reviewed by: Transnational Histories of Youth in the Twentieth Century ed. by Richard Ivan Jobs and David F. Pomfret Mischa Honeck Transnational Histories of Youth in the Twentieth Century. Edited by Richard Ivan Jobs and David F. Pomfret. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. xiii + 333 pp. Cloth $90.00. Mixing two innovative fields of research does not automatically ensure good scholarship. Yet in the case of Transnational Histories of Youth in the Twentieth Century, a collection of essays edited by Richard Ivan Jobs and David M. Pomfret, the result commands admiration. Jobs and Pomfret have teamed up with ten authors from eight countries to investigate how youth—both as a gendered concept and as a social formation—emerged as an engine of twentieth-century processes of globalization. Not wedded to Eurocentric narratives or Western perspectives, the essays unfold a dynamic and complex panorama of a variety of transnational circuits and their impact on young people’s lives and relationships while also stressing youth’s agency in different forums of cross-border socialization. Following a logically structured and theoretically insightful introduction, the first section, entitled “Activities,” focuses on youthful explorations of transnationality within the frameworks of organized youth and adult-supervised leisure. Sayaka Chatani’s chapter shows how, in the early twentieth century, young Japanese peasants imagined and forged long-distance ties with rural youths in other countries. Elena Jackson Albarrán offers a rare glimpse of the Boy Scouts beyond the Anglo-American world, contending that Mexican youths who joined the movement were struggling to refute the stereotype of Mexican society as backward. A similar pattern of appropriation and resistance becomes visible in Jialin Christina Wu’s piece on Girl Guiding in colonial and postcolonial Malaya. Finally, Heather Ellis rescues from oblivion a group of [End Page 356] young British scientists and their engagement with Marxist internationalism in the 1930s and early 1940s. The second section, “Mobilities,” traces the cross-border movements of young people seeking opportunities for leisure, work, political activism, and resettlement in foreign lands. Focusing on the French connections of Vietnamese youths who traveled to Europe in the interwar years, Pomfret demonstrates how these journeys gave sharper contours to the idea of Vietnam as a “nation-in-waiting.” Jobs’s chapter looks at the extent to which itinerant youths in Western Europe after 1945 operated as emissaries of reconciliation and embodiments of a postwar democratic Europe. Valeria Manzano takes the reader to South America during the revolutionary sixties, when politicized young men and women from Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile drew from the experience of travel a new sense of Latin American indigeneity. Andrew Ivaska’s chapter probes how the “global sixties” simultaneously widened and constricted the realms of self-actualizing for young people living in or crossing through Dar es Salaam. The third section addresses the elusive but seminal subject of “Identities.” Adriana M. Brodsky unearths the multiple loyalties of Sephardi youth in Argentina and Israel, showing that their spheres of belonging transcended monolithic categories of faith, nationhood, and diasporic tradition. The flow and adaptation of youth cultures across the Iron Curtain is the topic of Juliane Fürst’s chapter, which details the attempts of Soviet youths to emulate their Western peers in defiance of state regulations. Fabio Lanza reinforces the notion of youth as a fluid and globally contested idea in examining how the Tiananmen Square incident of 1989 evolved from a local protest event to a global media phenomenon. The last chapter, by Paul A. Silverstein, uses the example of Franco-Maghrebi youth music, a hybrid musical movement that blends French and North African elements, to illuminate the power of youthful patterns of musical production and consumption to generate transnational political solidarities. For all its accomplishments, the volume suffers from a few minor inconsistencies. The editors’ statement that youth has garnered less scholarly attention as a globalizing force than childhood is a bit overblown, particularly in light of the rich historical literature on transnational student protest, which the editors acknowledge. Also, as valuable as the book’s focus on voluntary forms of youth transnationalism is, the involuntary border crossings of young people in the period under investigation warranted greater attention. None of the chapters...

Recording Life Stories: A Service Learning Project for the Composition Classroom

Recording Life Stories: A Service Learning Project for the Composition Classroom Travis W. Johnson (bio) and Jeremy Reed (bio) We’re here today to share with you a service learning project that we’ve integrated into our advanced composition courses. This project—what we call the Life Story Project—asks students to record interviews with local community members and design exhibits based on their life stories. Students also deposit the interviews and transcripts in an archive at Central Methodist University’s Smiley Memorial Library. We had three goals in mind when we designed this project. First, we wanted to record and preserve the life stories of community members in Central Missouri. Second, we hoped to strengthen the connection between university and community through civic engagement. Last, we wanted to provide students with unique opportunities to develop their communication skills. Today’s presentation will show you how we met those goals, guiding you through the major steps we took in designing and integrating the Life Story Project. We’ll also reflect on some of the challenges we faced along the way. In sharing our project and course materials with you, we hope you’ll be able to design a similar project for your own writing courses. We’d like to start with some artifacts that our students produced in our advanced writing classes. We have an abstract painting done by a student after he listened to a story of his father’s, a video collage of wedding photos set to period-appropriate music and snippets of voice recordings recreating a moving story of how a local woman fell in love, and a canvas on which students painted icons representing important moments in the life story of a community leader. Likewise, we have a mock sash covered in merit badges created to help tell the story of a former boy scout, a briefcase that opens to show a photo collage representing the law school experiences of a student’s mother, and playing cards inscribed with a local woman’s reminiscences of familial bonding over games of canasta. Admittedly, these aren’t the kind of artifacts people typically associate with writing courses. Instead of having students simply write essays about a range of topics, we wanted assignments that would put questions about the nature of composition and representation at the fore. In this class, we wanted students to explore what it means to represent ourselves and others. We asked them to parse whether or not representation need be strictly and traditionally textual. And we encouraged them to think about the connections between representation and truth, or representations and truths. [End Page 313] What is the meaning in a person’s story about themselves? How can we find that meaning? Is it possible for us to convey it to others? What is lost in translation? What is gained? With the Life Story Project, students must grapple with these sorts of questions because they’re asked to not only record an interview with a community member but also to create an exhibit that showcases the essential meanings of that story. It is through these meaningful exchanges with the community—the student’s recording of a life story and composing an exhibit for that story—that this oral history project becomes a service learning project. That is to say, in this process, there is a genuine exchange, a collaboration, that is mutually enriching and produces a positive learning experience. The opening passages from our assignment sheet for the Life Story Project immediately introduces students to the spirit of service learning: Your major project this semester is to collect the life story of a local community member. What is a life story? A life story is a type of oral history, a recorded interview in which a person reflects on his or her entire life. Or, as Robert Atkinson puts it, “A life story is the story a person chooses to tell about the life he or she has lived, told as completely and honestly as possible, what is remembered of it, and what the teller wants others to know of it, usually as a result of a guided interview by another” (8). Your task this semester...

Geosciences outreach in Houston — The energy capital of the world

It seems that nearly every upstream oil and gas company (major, independent, service, and consultant) has an office in Houston, Texas, USA — which is often referred to as the energy capital of the world. Thus, there is a great need for professional geologists and geophysicists. This need will only become greater over the next decade because of the big crew change. U. S. immigration policy restrictions limit the number of work visas available for foreigners. Therefore, many geoscience professional societies, organizations, companies, and local universities provide some kind of geosciences outreach targeting Houston-area schoolchildren. Individuals also volunteer in local K-12 classrooms, math and science clubs, science museums, and general public science events and assist Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts earning geology merit/proficiency badges. The common goal is to inspire some of the local children to become the geoscientists of tomorrow and to fill the expected future vacancies in the U. S. oil and gas industry.

Roland C. Clement, 1912–2015

Roland Clement was born on November 22, 1912, in Fall River, Massachusetts, the first son of Germain A. Clement of Iseghem, Belgium, a musician, and Angelina Desjardin of Sorel, Quebec, Canada. In 1947 he married Muriel Crowly of Brooklyn, New York, a Yale nurse, who predeceased him in 1998. Roland is survived by three children: Charles (a botanist in Manaus, Brazil); Connie, a public health professional in Toronto and in Nova Scotia, Canada; Alison (Lawrence, a computer programmer in Shelton, Connecticutt, now living in Bar Harbor, Maine), three granddaughters, and two great-grandchildren. Roland died comfortably on March 21, 2015, at his home in Hamden, Connecticut. Family and friends held a celebration of Roland’s life in late March. Roland became interested in birds at age 8 because of a close-up look at a male Black-and-white Warbler. He met no one else interested in birds until age 14, when he joined the Boy Scouts, in which he served as camp naturalist and merit badge examiner for 12 years. Roland won a New England Garden Club scholarship to the Audubon Camp of Maine (1938), where he met Allan D. Cruickshank and Roger Tory Peterson, and returned as second birdman under Cruickshank in 1950. Roland attended parochial schools, skipped high school, did 2 years of business school, and then worked as a bookkeeper/secretary for 12 years. ‘‘Released’’ by the Great Depression in 1933, he started a new career, first banding birds with Maurice Broun at the O.L. Austin Ornithological Research Station, North Eastham, Cape Cod, Massachusetts, then doing 2 years of vocational wildlife management study at the Stockbridge School, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Roland edited the New England Bulletin of Bird Life for the Boston Museum of Natural History (1942), where he was mentored by Ludlow Griscom. Roland served as U.S. Air Corps weather observer from 1943 to 1945, training in Illinois, Louisiana, and Colorado, before spending a year at Goose Bay, Labrador, and another at Indian House Lake, New Quebec, during which he conducted intensive studies of bird distribution and initiated life history studies. Roland returned to central Labrador for the Carnegie Museum in 1957 and 1958, where he was codiscoverer of the nesting grounds of the Eastern Short-billed Dowitcher. The faunal work from that period was published in W. E. Clyde Todd’s Birds of the Labador Peninsula (1963) and the life histories (Common Redpoll and Eastern White-crowned Sparrow) in A. C. Bent’s series on Life Histories of North American Birds (1968). Roland twice gave papers at AOU Meetings during those years. Roland returned to school on the ‘‘G.I. Bill’’ and obtained degrees from Brown University (B.S. in Botany, 1949) and Cornell University (M.S. in Wildlife Conservation, 1950). Subsequently, he became the first executive secretary of the Audubon Society of Rhode Island (1950– 1958). He then served the National Audubon Society as membership secretary, headquarters biologist, and vice president (1958–1977). He was a principal advocate for the banning of DDT, was personally active in early recovery programs for the California Condor and the Eastern Peregrine Falcon, and was a catalyst in numerous initiatives, including the founding of the Environmental Defense Fund. Roland served as chairman of the U.S. Section of the International Council for Bird Preservation, and later served as Secretary for the Americas, International Committee for Bird Protection (now Birdlife International). Having attended the first international conference of the International Union for Conservation of Nature in Nairobi in 1963, he became so enthralled with African environments that he organized and led small wildlife and birding tours to see the world for a dozen years. In retirement, Roland served as president of the Connecticut Audubon Society and of the Connecticut Ornithological Association and was a visiting fellow at Yale University for several years. In retirement, he became a skilled watercolorist, most often painting birdlife and landscapes, wrote essays shared through a blog, ‘‘Reflections of a Naturalist’’ (http://rolandcclement.blogspot.ca/), and continued traveling. He hosted lecture series in the retirement complexes where he lived, guiding others to reflect upon conservation and environmental challenges, and as recently as 2013 was involved in inventorying birds of a local wetland. Roland’s papers are housed in the Linda Lear Center for Special Collections and Archives at Connecticut College.

Twenty-Plus Years of Exclusion in the Boy Scouts of America

This four-day learning activity on the controversy of exclusion of gays and subsequently atheists in Boy Scouting is particularly relevant because it highlights the complexities that surround issues of equality, equity, the provision of leisure services, First Amendment rights, and the implications of court decisions on social justice. This lesson fits nicely at the end of an introductory course, in a management course or legal issues course, or most obviously in a course on diversity.

A Case Study of the Perversion Files: An Application of Lanning and Dietz "Commonly Misunderstood Phenomena".

The fight against child sexual abuse has been hindered by the refusal of many public organizations to release information or to report allegations of misconduct. Brought to the public's attention only when the accused is a well-known person, organizations designed to support children in many aspects of their lives have allowed for decades of abuse to go unchecked. In October of 2012, the Oregon Supreme court ordered the Boy Scouts of American (BSA) to release 14,500 pages of confidential files detailing sexual abuse allegations from 1959 to 1985. The so-called "perversion files" are the single largest collection of information on alleged perpetrators of sexual molestation against youth. The BSA data represented a unique opportunity to examine demographic information from a large sample of purported sexual offenders from across the country over a vast period of time. Additionally, the sexual offenders were not exclusively located in the criminal justice system since BSA officials referred only a small percentage of offenders to law enforcement. The study analyzed a random sample to ascertain description of the actions used by the individuals identified in the perversion files. These were then analyzed to explain why these individuals might have gone unnoticed or their actions unreported by the BSA volunteers.

The Boy Scouts of America: Slowly Changing

ABSTRACTThe Boy Scouts of America National Executive Board (BSA) recently changed its longstanding policy of excluding gay youth up to the age of 18. Gay participants of its coed Venturing program would be allowed to be members until the age of 21. However, lesbians and homosexuals are still not permitted to be troop leaders. This article discusses the evolution of the change in BSA’s policy, discusses the timeline of other proposals in regard to BSA’s acceptance of gay youth, and suggests that changes in public opinion and the reaction of BSAs stakeholders lead to changes in the BSA policy. The BSA made a change to become more compatible with the environment in which it operates.

Boy Culture and Ireland 1916

This study offers an analysis of the significance of boyhood as a site of investment for masculinity in the context of Irish separatist nationalism from1900 to the Easter Rising of 1916. Both imperialism and anti-imperialism were linked by an ethos of militarism, as evidenced by commonalities in the apparently antithetical Fianna Eireann (the Irish nationalist boy scouts) and their equivalent the Baden-Powell Boy Scouts. What both organisations shared, it is argued, was a new emphasis on boy culture as the means to reformulate both masculinity and nationalism. Gender is itself a performative act that is articulated through bodily display. Boy culture afforded a space for these acts to be played out through performance in popular culture. The traces of these stylised displays are embedded in photographs of boys’ groups. Far from being unmediated records of historical fact, the evidential traces to be found in these images point to the fluidity of masculinity and its production through visible bodily display. Photography provides an accessible means for transmission, articulation and negotiation of cultural norms; rebuilding the context in which these photographs were produced affords a means to gain a better understanding of how gendered identities are made.

Aspectos do projeto político pedagógico do Movimento Escoteiro no Brasil e reflexos na educação ambiental

O Movimento Escoteiro foi fundado por Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell (B-P) em 1907 e é um Movimento educacional mundial, voluntariado, apartidário e sem fins lucrativos. A proposta visa o desenvolvimento do jovem, por meio de um sistema de valores que prioriza a honra. Esse sistema se baseia na Promessa e Lei Escoteiras, e o trabalho em equipe e a vida ao ar livre promove atividades com foco principal nas Ciências Naturais, de interpretação do meio ambiente, e de respeito às dinâmicas terrestres. Para o desenvolvimento deste trabalho, foi realizado um levantamento de dados junto aos Escoteiros do Brasil (UEB) e entrevistas com Escoteiros de todas as idades e profissões. O objetivo foi demonstrar como um movimento de ensino extraescolar apresenta reflexos na educação escolar, e aspectos da Educação Ambiental presentes nas atividades realizadas pelas crianças e jovens.

You Can Quit Me But I’m Not Going to Quit You:” A Focus Group Study of Leaders’ Perceptions of Their Positive Influences on Youth in Boy Scouts of America

As part of a longitudinal, mixed-method study with Boy Scouts of America, we conducted five focus groups with a diverse group of 46 program leaders in order to better understand their perceptions of how they influence youth. Drawing from grounded theory analysis methods, we found that leaders believed they promoted positive youth outcomes, including character and self-confidence, through caring youth-leader relationships and facilitating opportunities for youth to participate in and lead skill-building activities and apply skills in different contexts. Leaders differed in the particular outcomes that they emphasized. Implications of these findings for future research and practice are discussed.

The Need to Further Imbibe the Culture of Insurance in Africa

Insurance has been with man for ages: there are different accounts regarding the exact origin of insurance but there is universal agreement that the earliest insurance schemes were in maritime trade, properties and, later, life assurance. In Africa, the history of insurance is even more distorted but one fact which remains unchallenged is that South Africa took the lead. Generally speaking, insurance is alien to the African culture: it is imported from European and other developed countries that colonized Africa, and perhaps that development explains the apathetic attitude of an average person of African extraction. Were the thriving insurance businesses not legally mandatory, the most common being motor insurance, there is doubt that people would ever bother to insure. Be that as it may, this paper argues that life is concomitant with dangers, and such events are far beyond human control. While some of the dangers are natural, others are man-made: either way, for the protection of self, family and properties, it is incumbent on the average man to insure in order to cushion the effects of mishaps, which are incidental to life. This paper adopts the Boy Scout Motto: “Be prepared,” which stated otherwise means that it is more strategic to plan for vicissitudes of life by taking out insurance policies, than to run helter-skelter when calamities strike. Fortunes acquired through the years could perish in one day as a result of many factors; insurance is the veritable means by which such unanticipated consequences of life could be mitigated. The object of this paper is to sensitize Africans regarding the advantages of insurance and it is of the view that it behooves African governments to enact relevant laws and regulations which prompt the citizens to take out policies of insurance because of the benefits derivable thereof, not only for the people, but also for the economic growth of African countries, given the multiplier effect generated as a result of insurance.

Cultivating Narratives of Race, Faith, and Community: The Dawn of Tomorrow, 1923–1971

In 1923, an African Canadian newspaper entitled The Dawn of Tomorrow began publication in London, Ontario, billing itself as “Devoted to the Interests of the Darker Races.” The Dawn wrote about collective racial uplift, Canada’s black church, and about African Canadian “firsts,” whether in the fields of entertainment or nursing, in the Boy Scouts, or in the integration of segregated workplaces — triumphs that Canada’s white newspapers generally ignored. Challenging the notion that African Canadians did not have a black press comparable to the African American press in the United States, this article examines the editorial content, photographic journalism, and advertisements in The Dawn from its foundation to 1971, when it ceased publication. I argue that through its editorials, The Dawn played an instrumental role in cultivating a sense of community among blacks in Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritimes. This article also provides critiques of de facto Jim Crow laws in Canada, while highlighting the specific ways the black press combated pervasive racism with editorials about racial uplift, community advancement, civic engagement, and black entrepreneurship.

Scout's Honor: The Boy Scouts, Judicial Ethics, and the Appearance of Partiality

This article will consider the constitutionality of the California Judicial Boy Scout Ban. Because most states including California model their code of ethics after the Model Code of Judicial Conduct, these argument will also apply with equal force to other states that have bans on judicial membership in groups that engage in invidious discrimination. First, this article will look at the text and history of the California Judicial Canon of Ethics to show that the state has deliberately targeted the Scouts and other expressive associations. Next, this article will look at the wide range of constitutional rights that are substantially burdened by the canon, including freedom of association, free exercise, and parental autonomy. As a result, the proper standard of review is Strict Scrutiny, even though judges are public officials, and the State must justify the restriction by pointing to a compelling interest and employ the least restrictive means.To justify its restriction, the state argues that membership in a group such as the Boy Scouts which engages in invidious discrimination creates an appearance of partiality and bias. Gay and lesbians standing before a judge who is a member of the Scouts will have reason to believe that the judge cannot fairly administer justify. Moreover, the general public will lose confidence in the integrity and objectivity of the judiciary. However, as this article will show, avoiding a generalized appearance of impropriety cannot be a compelling governmental interest. Drawing on recent Supreme Court cases in the realm of campaign finance, this article will argue that avoiding a generalized appearance bias (as opposed to the appearance of specific bias against an actual party before the Court) cannot be a compelling governmental interest. Moreover, the California policy is also poorly tailored to achieve the state’s interest because it is both grossly over and underinclusive, and relies on a cynical view of the judiciary which undermines the state’s purported interest in public confidence in the system. Moreover, a wide variety of less restrictive alternatives exist.

Cultivating Narratives of Race, Faith, and Community: The Dawn of Tomorrow, 1923–1971

In 1923, an African Canadian newspaper entitled The Dawn of Tomorrow began publication in London, Ontario, billing itself as “Devoted to the Interests of the Darker Races.” The Dawn wrote about collective racial uplift, Canada’s black church, and about African Canadian “firsts,” whether in the fields of entertainment or nursing, in the Boy Scouts, or in the integration of segregated workplaces — triumphs that Canada’s white newspapers generally ignored. Challenging the notion that African Canadians did not have a black press comparable to the African American press in the United States, this article examines the editorial content, photographic journalism, and advertisements in The Dawn from its foundation to 1971, when it ceased publication. I argue that through its editorials, The Dawn played an instrumental role in cultivating a sense of community among blacks in Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritimes. This article also provides critiques of de facto Jim Crow laws in Canada, while highlighting the specific ways the black press combated pervasive racism with editorials about racial uplift, community advancement, civic engagement, and black entrepreneurship.

For $1,000 You Can Be a Dog Soldier: The Tribe of Should-Be-Ashamed

The use of American Indian imagery, material culture, and cultural traditions by non-Native peoples has received much recent attention by scholars, activists, and the media. However, most of the attention has been focused on sports teams and mascots. One area that has received little attention is the appropriation of Indian imagery and traditions by non-sports related organizations. This article details a recent meeting between members of the American Indian Health Research and Education Alliance (AIHREA) and leaders from the Tribe of the Mic-O-Say. The Tribe of the Mic-O-Say is a Boy Scouts of America™ honor society for Scouts in eastern Kansas and western Missouri who want to "play Indian." The Mic-O-Say have a long history of misappropriating and misrepresenting Indian culture and traditions as well as engaging in cultural imperialism. This alienates Native people from their traditions, undermines self-determination, and creates further animosity and distrust between Natives and non-Natives.

Capitalizing patriotism: the Liberty loans of World War I

Although taxes were raised substantially in the United States during World War I, recourse was had to five bond issues, the famous Liberty loans, to finance the bulk of war expenditures. The Secretary of the Treasury, William Gibbs McAdoo, hoped to create a broad market for the Liberty bonds and to limit their yields by following an aggressive policy of ‘capitalizing patriotism’. He called on everyone from Wall Street bankers to the Boy Scouts to volunteer for campaigns to sell the bonds. The campaigns have become legendary. Some of the nation's best-known artists were recruited to draw posters depicting the contribution to the war effort to be made by buying bonds, and giant bond rallies featuring Hollywood stars were organized. These efforts, however, enjoyed limited success. The yields on the Liberty bonds were kept low mainly by making the bonds tax exempt and by making sure that a large proportion of them were purchased directly or indirectly by the Federal Reserve, turning the Federal Reserve into an engine of inflation. Patriotism proved to be a weak, although not powerless, offset to normal market forces.

The Distance between Lost and Found by Kathryn Holmes (review)

Reviewed by: The Distance between Lost and Found by Kathryn Holmes Karen Coats Holmes, Kathryn The Distance between Lost and Found. HarperTeen/HarperCollins, 2015 [320p] Trade ed. ISBN 978-0-06-231726-1 $17.99 E-book ed. ISBN 978-0-06-231728-5 $10.99 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 7-10 Ever since she was caught in a compromising position with her pastor’s son, Luke, on a youth retreat and was falsely accused of being the aggressor, Hallelujah has been a social pariah. Now on another retreat, Hallelujah joins a new girl, Rachel, who decides to leave the group during a hike; Jonah, one of Hallelujah’s former friends, goes with them; when the three take a wrong turn, they end up lost in the mountains of Virginia. They endure pounding spring thunderstorms, but between Jonah’s Boy Scout training and Hallelujah’s reasonably well-stocked backpack, they are okay for the first couple of days; by day five, having run out of food and each having suffered an injury, they begin to despair of rescue. They also get to know one another, and their story-sharing results in a warm friendship as well as forgiveness and a budding romance between Hallelujah and Jonah. The survival story effectively overlays adolescent crises over rugged nature; readers will find echoes of Hatchet as these teens find strength, courage, and redemption in their struggle to survive in a hostile yet breathtakingly beautiful environment. In seven days, the broken worlds they left behind have been remade, furthering adding to the symbolic power of a story that includes frank discussion of faith and its challenges; readers undergoing their own trials will be bolstered by Hallelujah’s hard-won hope for a bright future following adversity. Copyright © 2015 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Evaluation of BMI in obese adolescents at weight-loss camp with the Boy Scouts of America

Abstract Background: Summertime is particularly problematic for obese youth, as this unstructured time typically shows accelerated weight gain. We hypothesized that obese adolescents participating in a pilot summer camp

Editor’s Note

Editor’s Note Bruce R. Burningham In the wake of last Fall’s guest-edited “número monográfico,” the Spring 2015 issue of Cervantes returns us to what Robert’s Rules of Order might call our “usual order” of publication; which is to say, nearly all of the articles that appear in the following pages were submitted, peer-reviewed, and accepted for publication through our usual double-blind submissions process. Nevertheless, this current issue, in partial commemoration of the 400th anniversary of the publication of part two of Don Quixote, is not without a special topic of its own. Before getting to this special topic, however, the Spring 2015 issue begins with a much-deserved tribute to our dear friend and colleague, and my immediate predecessor, Tom Lathrop, written by Michael McGrath. As most readers already know, Tom passed away unexpectedly in February 2014 while spending time with his family in California. McGrath’s tribute essay certainly speaks for itself. But I would be re-miss if I did not take this opportunity to express our collective debt of gratitude to Tom for all that he did for Hispanism and, particularly, for the world of Cervantes scholarship. His passing has left a large hole in our field and he will be sorely missed. On a personal note, I was deeply honored to follow in Tom’s footsteps as Editor of this journal, and I am acutely aware—even as I write these words into a template that he designed for the typesetting software we still use—of his tangible impact on this endeavor. He was truly a gentleman and a scholar. Returning to the special topic mentioned above, during the past few months, several essays emerged—either through our usual submissions process or as papers delivered at one or another recent Cervantes symposium—that seemed tailor-made for a special cluster on the influence of Don Quixote on twentieth-century US culture. The first of these articles, written by William Childers, examines the role of Cervantes’s [End Page 7] novel in “mediating” between European and US societies. The second article of the cluster, written by Massimiliano Giorgini, traces the evocation and representation of Don Quixote in American folk music and punk rock. Cory Duclos, for his part, explores the representation of Don Quixote (in comic book or graphic novel form) in the pages of Boy’s Life, the official magazine of the Boy Scouts of America, during much of the twentieth-century. Wrapping up this cluster is an article by Roy Williams on John Steinbeck’s unfinished Quixote novel, “Don Keehan, The Marshal of Manchon.” Having recently acquired Steinbeck’s mansucript, Williams not only gives us a glimps into the pages of Steinbeck’s abandoned novel, but also argues that key aspects of Dale Wasserman’s Man of La Mancha can be traced directly back to this little-known text. Immediately following this cluster, and as a nice segue out of it, we offer an essay by Slav Gratchev on the relationship between Don Quixote and Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Idiot. Following Gratchev’s piece, we offer three essays on aspects of Cervantes’s other works: Wendell Smith on “La gitanilla,” Tania de Miguel Magros on El trato de Argel, and Francesca De Santis on the sonnet “Vimos en julio otra Semana Santa.” This Spring 2015 issue of Cervantes concludes with three book re-views: Enrique García Santo-Tomás on Roland Greene’s Five Words: Critical Semantics in the Age of Shakespeare and Cervantes, Luis Gómez Canseco on Ana María Rodríguez-Rodríguez’s Letras liberadas: Cautivero, escritura y subjetividad en el Mediterráneo de la época imperial española, and Matthew A. Wyszynski on Juan Pablo Gil-Oslé’s Amistades imperfectas: Del Humanismo a la Ilustración con Cervantes. By way of conclusion, I would like to thank my new editorial assistant John Beusterien for helping me stay on top of the submissions process. And, as always, I thank our many peer reviewers and Associate Editors for all their hard work. [End Page 8] Copyright © 2015 Cervantes Society of America

The Establishment and Development of Boy Scout Activities in 1910s China

The Establishment and Development of Boy Scout Activities in 1910s China