History Of America Research Articles

How Latin America's History of Childhood Came of Age

Bianca Premo introduces readers in her complex, challenging essay to the field of childhood studies that emerged officially in Latin America in the 1990s. But, reiterating the theme of Joseph Hawes's "Hidden in Plain Sight," Premo lays out the substantially longer history of the field as scholars of family history, of slavery, of illegitimacy, and of gender have been actually tracking childhood and children for many decades. Premo delineates the interactions among these disciplines while also indicating some of the distinguishing characteristics of Latin American childhood. She introduces notions of "circulating" childhoods passed in a variety of institutions and contexts rather than within one family, and of children adjusting to the economic pressures of globalization by multiplying the meanings of family and in the process, gaining more mothers.-M.S.

Sacred assemblies and civic engagement: how religion matters for America's newest immigrants

Immigration to the United States has been a major source of population growth and cultural change throughout much of America's history. Currently, about 40 percent of the nation's annual population growth comes from the influx of foreign-born individuals and their children. As these new voices enter America's public conversations, they bring with them a new level of religious diversity to a society that has always been marked by religious variety. Sacred Assemblies and Civic Engagement takes an in-depth look at one particular urban area - the Chicago metropolitan region - and examines how religion affects the civic engagement of the nation's newest residents. Based on more than three years of ethnographic fieldwork and extensive interviewing at sixteen immigrant congregations, the authors argue that not only must careful attention be paid to ethnic, racial, class, and other social variations within and among groups but that religious differences within and between immigrant faiths are equally important for a more sophisticated understanding of religious diversity and its impact on civic life. Chapters focus on important religious factors, including sectarianism, moral authority, and moral projects; on several areas of social life, including economics, education, marriage, and language, where religion impacts civic engagement; and on how notions of citizenship and community are influenced by sacred assemblies. One of the most comprehensive studies of immigrant religion to date, this book is an important contribution to understanding how diverse religious groups and others can engage one another constructively in civic life.

The United States and Multilateral Security Cooperation in Northeast Asia

Recently, multilateralism has become a major buzz word in Asian international relations. Nations in region are hopeful that multilateral negotiations will serve as a basis for managing region's problems. The argument here is that hopes that United States will commit such arrangements are misplaced. Given both America's history and current U.S. national interests, United States is likely make only a partial commitment multilateralism. Key words: U.S. foreign policy in East Asia, Multilateral Security - East Asia, Northeast Asia Introduction In recent years, East Asian political leaders and scholars have increasingly turned their attention possibilities for multilateral security cooperation in region. Most frequently, they have pointed Six-Party Talks joined by United States, China, South Korea, North Korea, Japan, and Russia as evidence that major powers with interests in Pacific can work together resolve differences while promoting stability and peace. Despite genuine success that these talks have achieved, however, there is not as much cause for optimism about long-term prospects for multilateral security cooperation in region. There are many problems that efforts establish such cooperation in East Asia are likely confront. But in this article I will focus most specifically on United States and likely course of American foreign policy. I argue that U.S. participation in future multilateral arrangements is by no means guaranteed. Moreover, when America's history and interests in region are considered, such participation appears rather unlikely. America's use of Six-Party Talks for dismantling Democratic People's Republic of Korea's (DPRK) nuclear program does not represent an enduring commitment multilateral security so much as it deploys rubric of multilateralism in pursuit of a specific American objective. Before examining why multilateral security cooperation seems so unlikely for United States, it is necessary understand exactly what term entails. At its most basic level, according John Ruggie, multilateralism coordinates behavior among three or more states on basis of generalized principles of conduct. He adds that multilateral security regimes would also include the norm of non-aggression, uniform rules for use of sanctions deter or permit aggression, and collectively sanctioned procedures for implementing them.1 In such regimes, even if there are disparities in economic, political, or military power among participating states, all members still generally expect have roughly equal measures of influence in them and share equally in their benefits. Robert Keohane, for instance, has explained that multilateral arrangements are expected by their members to yield a rough equivalent of benefits in aggregate over time.2 Participation in arrangements that fully meet these criteria has not historically been norm of U.S. foreign policy, especially in East Asia. Moreover, although all of important players in East Asia share certain common security objectives, United States has many priorities that do not match those of other states. Multilateralism and American Foreign Policy: A Historical Perspective Origins of Unilateralism Because of powerful role that United States played in forging new multilateral institutions during final years of World War II and early years of cold war, many people wrongly assume that there is a broad affinity for multilateralism in America's general approach world. In reality, however, American diplomacy during cold war was a relatively brief, limited departure from more longstanding trends. Isolation and unilateralism have historically been just as significant components of U.S. foreign policy as multilateralism has. Moreover, it is important recognize that America's eagerness form multilateral security and economic arrangements during years after World War II took place in an international context in which United States enjoyed what historian Melvyn Leffler has called a preponderance of power. …

Traveling Is More Than Just Getting From A to B

Traveling is not just a means for moving about; traveling is a pleasure. There are few people who do not like to travel. Traveling can mean visiting your family just a few miles away, and traveling can mean going around the world. But deep down, it is all the same: traveling. One of the oldest known examples is that of Herodotus, who traveled around the known world of the time, observing and reporting everything he saw. This provided the travelers and readers at the time with a treasury of geographical and etymological information. Another of the attractions of antiquity lay in the 7 wonders; most of which have since been destroyed but many people came from all over the world to see them. And later came the Romans, the Middle Ages with the Crusades, and the discovery of America. But it is Thomas Cook who is seen as the father of organized tourism after he chartered a train at reduced rates from Leicester to Loughborough, England for 540 people to attend a temperance meeting. And that is because we have always wanted to travel... But a journey does not only imply getting from one place to another. It is much more than that! For many of us there is nothing more gratifying than planning a journey, thinking about it all the time, dedicating ourselves heart and soul to all the preparation it needs. And finally, traveling! Because we all know too well that satisfaction lies in achieving your expectations as far as possible. And one easy way to achieve personal satisfaction is to travel, as your expectations will be readily achieved: enjoying the journey. By traveling you get to know the world, traveling, you discover monuments, squares, museums, theaters, parks, gardens; traveling opens your mind, it opens many doors to you, and forces you to be critical. In fact, through travel you get to know yourself and what you would really like to be, where we would like to live, where you would like to dream, where you would like to make your dreams come true. And it is that merely by traveling, you are already making one of your dreams come true: you are traveling. Traveling Is More Than Just Getting From A to B

Book Review: The Viking Discovery of America, 985–1008: The Greenland Norse and Their Voyages to Newfoundland

Book Review: The Viking Discovery of America, 985–1008: The Greenland Norse and Their Voyages to Newfoundland

Silent Film and the Early Fiction of Stephen Leacock

En plus d’offrir une parodie du cinéma muet mélodramatique, la nouvelle de Stephen Leacock, « Madeline of the Movies : A Photoplay Done in Words » (1916) montre aussi comment les spectateurs des années 1910 ont appris à comprendre les films de l’époque. Leacock recrée de façon humouristique l’apprentissage d’une narratrice naïve qui découvre le langage du cinéma, comme les gros-plans, les raccords, les intertitres, les retours en arrière et le montage.

Civic And Moral Learning In America

Since the birth of the Republic, Americans have asked what sort of civic and moral education would best serve the needs of the nation. This edited collection gives a sense of the great variety "of ways in which that question has been answered throughout America's history. Inspired by B. Edward McClellan's Moral Education in America, the authors, most of them coming from the field of education, investigate the locations where civic and moral learning have taken place.

Confessions of a Consensus Historian

I did not set out to become a consensus historian, In fact, I don't recall hearing the term until the 1960s, when revisionist scholars made it a dirty word. It was only when I discovered just what it meant that I realized that I was in that camp. To be a consensus historian meant looking at American exceptionalism as an explanation of America's history, different from and superior to the experiences of other nations. I was always uncomfortable with the notion of superiority but not with the conviction that the United States enjoyed a history in the New World that contrasted with the miseries of the Old World. My fascination with the study of history had little to do with the assumptions of consensus history. The romance of history, particularly European history, attracted me. The wars of rival nation-states no less than the rise and fall of the Roman Empire fascinated me, with the horrors of the past removed from my consciousness. I read my father's copies of Gibbon and Trevelyan but was most impressed with the historical novels of G. A. Henty, whose many books followed the adventures of young heroes ranging from the city-states of Renaissance Italy to the Judean rebellion against the Romans. Whatever the setting, the protagonists were essentially teen-aged Englishmen.

España-América Latina (1900-1940): la consolidación de una solidaridad

Between 1892 —IVth Centennial of the Discovery of America- and 1912 - Ist Centennial of the Cadiz Constitution— a number of meetings take place among intellectuals from both sides of the Atlantic. Gathered together by Modernist approachs, they promote solidarity and regeneration initiatives between Spain and Latin America around the concept of Hispanidad. People like Ruben Dario, Alfonso Reyes, Rafael Altamira and Miguel de Unamuno create solid platforms for these approaching efforts —Junta para Ampliacion de Estudios, Ateneo de la Juventud, Institucion Cultural Espanola— where Science occupies a privileged position.

Alwyn Ruddock: ‘John Cabot and the Discovery of America’

Dr. Alwyn Ruddock was one of the best scholars to work on the North American discovery voyages of John and Sebastian Cabot (1496–1508). For thirty-five years scholars in this field awaited the groundbreaking volume Ruddock was said to be preparing on this subject. Yet, when Dr. Ruddock died in December 2005, aged eighty-nine, she ordered the destruction of all her research. This article examines the research claims she made in her 1992 book proposal to the University of Exeter Press and in her later correspondence with U.E.P. Her findings are so extraordinary that they will, if proved correct, transform our entire conception of the scale, nature and importance of John Cabot's achievements.

A Feminine "Writing that Conquers": Elizabethan Encounters with the New World

A Feminine "Writing that Conquers": Elizabethan Encounters with the New World Kristen G. Brookes Farmington, Connecticut Introduction A man who represents his nation delights in exploring a virginal body of land, then takes possession of "her" through an act of seizure figured as penetration. This story of colonization is, of course, a familiar one. Yet what happens when, as in Elizabethan England, the invading nation is represented by a woman, and a virgin at that? Clearly, the fact that the prince who might have been urged to seize America's maidenhead was also a queen presents a potentially shocking metaphorical situation, one that most authors and champions of the imperial project would have viewed not only as an embarrassment, but as an abomination.1 Remarkably, however, rather than shunning this sort of metaphor, several Elizabethan writers and artists exploited it, creating grand visions of an empire founded on a relationship between two bodies figured as female virgins: Queen Elizabeth I, identical with her island realm; and the New World, a vast expanse of "virgin" terrain. Two embarkation poems—Stephen Parmenius's "De Navigatione" (1582) and George Chapman's "De Guiana, carmen Epicum" (1596)—along with the "Armada" portrait of Elizabeth, attributed to George Gower (1588), especially capitalized on the possibilities offered by a same-sex imperial encounter, portraying these New World/Old World "twins" as directly engaged with each other, in relationships ranging from "sisterly" to sexual and predatory. In the past two decades, a great deal of revelatory work has been done on gender and sexuality in discourses of discovery and colonization.2 Because of the scholarship of Annette Kolodny, Michel de Certeau, Peter Hulme, Louis Montrose, and others, the colonial encounter has come to be understood as a heterosexual one, emblematized by that between the standing, armored Vespucci and the naked, reclining female America in Theodor Galle's engraving (ca. 1580) as well as by Sir Walter Ralegh's hortatory proclamation that "Guiana is a Countrey [End Page 227] that hath yet her Maydenhead."3 In a highly influential essay that focuses mainly on Ralegh's Discoverie of Guiana, Montrose explores how gendered and sexualized "protocolonialist 'othering' . . . engages, interacts with, and mediates between two distinctive Elizabethan discourses: one, articulating the relationship between Englishmen and Spaniards; the other, articulating the relationship between the woman monarch and her masculine subjects."4 Taking among his points of departure Galle's engraving and Ralegh's proclamation (which serves as his essay's epigraph), Montrose elaborates on Certeau's notion of "writing that conquers," noting that Certeau takes the engraving of Vespucci's discovery of America as "'an inaugural scene'" of "'writing that conquers,'"—that is, a "'colonization of the body by the discourse of power[,] . . . [which] will use the New World as if it were a blank, "savage" page on which Western desire will be written.'"5 Montrose further defines this term as "the writing subject's textualization of the body of the Other, neither as mere description nor as genuine encounter but rather as an act of symbolic violence, mastery, and self-empowerment . . . in particular, as a mode of symbolic action whose agent is gendered masculine and whose object is gendered feminine."6 Montrose's nuanced essay has made invaluable contributions to English Renaissance studies on gender and colonization. Most influential has been his bringing together of the sexualized relationship between male colonizer and female territory with the sexually charged relationship between this same male figure and Queen Elizabeth I, along with his highlighting of the "land-as-body" discourse that identified the body of Elizabeth with her "island" realm, which, as he notes, made possible analogies between Elizabeth and the New World terrain some Englishmen wished to explore.7 Yet Montrose's focus on Ralegh's negotiation of English masculine identity in relation to the Spanish and in relation to his female sovereign excludes the possibility of a scenario in which the masculine plays no role or in which Queen Elizabeth I is a feminine agent of...

Fifty Years of Changes in America's History Museums

Abstract History museums in the U.S. have become significantly more professional over the past five decades. Many can boast of new and expanded buildings, improvements in collection management and care, and better‐trained staff and volunteers. However, most museums struggle with long‐term stagnation in audience numbers and revenues. The greatest challenge may be an alarming decline in American historical literacy and civic responsibility, especially at the elementary and secondary school levels. This article examines three trends that are affecting both the strengths and weaknesses of history museums today: the emergence of federal support, regulation, and oversight; a more inclusive approach to interpretation of the American past; and the all‐pervasive impact of information technology on both institutions and audiences.

AMERICAN HISTORIANS AND INDIANS

United States's historians are almost alone in the scholarly world in using the term ‘Indian’ to describe the original inhabitants of the landmass that came to be called the Americas. The term is an artefact of Christopher Columbus's imagination, and it conditions American historiography in ways that reflect the particular logic of the first contact that Columbus initiated. This review draws upon several recent books in native history, as well as a few older ones, to explicate how Columbian logic has informed the evolution of such scholarship and to suggest new ways of thinking about contact, colonization, and acculturation in the Americas. The concept of ‘creolization’, developed by francophone and anglophone scholars in the Caribbean, it is argued, offers a particularly interesting and constructive way to imagine a different history of America's first and second peoples.

Three of Four Newspapers Studied Favor Israeli Instead of Palestinian Sources

A reporter for The Los Angeles Times wrote about the Israeli and Palestinian conflict:If a picture is worth a thousand words, a thousand pictures just might win the war ... Every photograph-and indeed, every word-is a weapon in the mediaU.S. newspapers are directly involved in this media war. They relay, create or help frame the press images of both Israelis and Palestinians.Because more Jews reside in the United States than elsewhere, including Israel,2 the media war between Israel and Palestine for more favorable press treatment in the U.S. press is even more intense. Coverage of Israel will likely affect how Americans and the world perceive this Jewish nation. Similarly, with a growing number of Arabic immigrants in the United States, depictions of Palestine and the Muslim world are increasingly likely to influence American politics. Both sides in this prolonged dispute3 are battling for international support for their causes, which makes it a compelling area of study as news coverage can impact regional, and perhaps worldwide peace.Research QuestionThis research explores, both quantitatively and qualitatively, one central question:RQ1:How did reporters use Israeli or Palestinian official news sources in four major U.S. newspapers-The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and the Houston Chronicle-from Jan. 21, 2000, to Jan. 21, 2002?Specifically, this research investigates if these newspapers provided balanced coverage between Israeli and Palestinian sources and if the newspapers under analyses vary.This research is important to journalists as it provides a retrospective on the coverage of two peoples in conflict. What underlies this research inquiry is a mission to determine whether journalists are fairly framing and providing context of a conflict that allows its readership to come to its own conclusions, which is central to journalistic practice.Literature ReviewSeveral studies have examined the depiction of Arabs in the U.S. press.4 In general, since the establishment of Israel as an independent country in 1948, research pointed to an anti-Arab and a pro-Israeli bias in the American press. For example, Mousa's5 content analysis of the Arabs' image in The New York Times between 1916 and 1948, a time frame the author considered the cornerstone in the development of the Arabs' images, found that Israeli sources who provided unfavorable attributions of Arabs were most often cited. Mousa suggested that unbalanced coverage contributed to negative public opinion of Arabs and positive public opinion of Israelis.6The latter opinion is reflected in Wilson's study that found that white people were more willing to have social contact with Jews than with all other minority groups, including blacks, Asians and Arab Americans.7 In a more recent study, Sylvester and Wu8 content analyzed news stories, briefs, photos, cartoons and editorials, from January through October 1998, and found that the Inquirer's news reports provided coverage of both sides of the Arab and Israeli conflict, however, Israeli sources appeared more frequently than Palestinian sources in the news stories, leading to a more pro-Israeli bias.MethodData SetThis research considers a more expansive view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than the research mentioned by content analyzing four newspapers-The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and the Houston Chronicle. The time frame, Jan. 21,2000, through Jan. 21,2002, is also lengthier than the Sylvester, et al., study and covers a turbulent time in America's history, Sept. 11, 2001. The four newspapers under study were chosen for their high circulations,9 and because the communities they cover have large populations of Jewish Americans and Arab Americans.10Using the search terms Israel and Palestine in the Lexis/Nexis database, the researchers yielded a total of 549 news stories:* The New York Times-175* The Washington Post-124* Los Angeles Times-182* Houston Chronicle-68. …

Introducción y comercialización de los cultivos precolombinos en la sociedad occidental.

After the Discovery of America in 1492, crops produced in these lands started a movement towards the West. In this writing some of the first contacted crops are mentioned, their propagation route and generalities about their original uses. There is special mention to the 17th Century, as it is during this time that most of the movement of pre-Columbian crops occurred. Dated information about grain crops, fruits, horticultural crops, roots and tubers, squash, spices, stimulants and narcotics, textiles, ornamentals, tintoreus, resins, utensils and medicinal crops.

Weaving the past: a history of Latin America's indigenous women from the prehispanic period to the present

Weaving the Past offers a comprehensive and interdisciplinary history of Latin America's indigenous women. While the book concentrates on native women in Mesoamerica and the Andes, it covers indigenous people in other parts of South and Central America, including lowland peoples in and beyond Brazil, and Afro-indigenous peoples, such as the Garifuna, of Central America. Drawing on primary and secondary sources, it argues that change, not continuity, has been the norm for indigenous peoples whose resilience in the face of complex and long-term patterns of cultural change is due in no small part to the roles, actions, and agency of women. The book provides broad coverage of gender roles in native Latin America over many centuries, drawing upon a range of evidence from archaeology, anthropology, religion, and politics. Primary and secondary sources include chronicles, codices, newspaper articles, and monographic work on specific regions. Arguing that Latin America's indigenous women were the critical force behind the more important events and processes of Latin America's history, Kellogg interweaves the region's history of family, sexual, and labor history with the origins of women's power in prehispanic, colonial, and modern South and Central America. Shying away from interpretations that treat women as house bound and passive, the book instead emphasizes women's long history of performing labor, being politically active, and contributing to, even supporting, family and community well-being.

Martín de Azpilcueta (1492-1586)

Habituados como estaban los europeos, en los siglos precedentes al descubrimiento de América, a que los precios y salarios se mantuviesen constantes, e inclusive tendieran a la baja por la falta de numerario, en un marco de recesión económica permanente, el arribo del caudal americano catapultó un proceso inflacionario de tal magnitud, que dio lugar entre ellos a las más singulares conjeturas sobre su origen y a no menos arbitrarias disposiciones administrativas para atenuar sus consecuencias. Correspondió a Martin de Azpilcueta y a otros estudiosos hispanoamericanos explicar de una manera coherente la relación entre la presencia del tesoro americano y el proceso inflacionario observado.

Rare Exceptions: Some University Professors and the Teaching of Native American History, 1900-1970

FROM 1900 TO 1970, only eight United States historians established courses on Native American history in history departments at the college and university level. This made them rare exceptions in an academic world that placed overwhelming emphasis on mainstream Euro-American history, with extremely limited attention to race and ethnicity. Except to a small degree, these professors did not introduce Indian or Native American history because of inspirational forces coming from their respective campuses. Instead, and as will be argued in this paper, they were influenced primarily by larger societal trends that surfaced offcampus.' After examining why historians did not introduce Native American history courses before 1930 this paper will look at the rare exceptions themselves and the off-campus external factors that motivated a few of them to offer Native American history at the higher education level. These contributing elements include the Meriam Report of 1928, the Indian Reform Movement of the 1920s and 1930s, the Indian claims research of the 1950s, and the political climate of the 1960s, each of which will be discussed.

Architectural History and the Colonial Question: Casablanca, Algiers and Beyond

The last decade has seen an explosion of scholarly works dealing with colonial architecture and town planning, a domain previously marginal in the historiography. In any case it has aroused the attention of ever more numerous researchers, a fact that has stimulated this attempt to take stock of it, by drawing on cases studied by this author in his own work. The exploration of colonialism now constitutes a significant field of doctoral research, of studies associated with the identification and protection of built heritage, and tends to mould new images in the history of architecture from the last few centuries. In actual fact, the innumerable works on the twentieth century – the subject here – comprise only a fraction of all the studies concerning nearly five centuries of colonization, if the beginning of the colonial era is identified with the discovery of America and the establishment of the first European trading posts in Africa.

The British Discovery of American History: War, Liberalism and the Atlantic Connection

The years following the Second World War, according to the Norwegian scholar Sigmund Skard, witnessed the “Rediscovery of America,” as European academics belatedly turned their attention to the United States at a time when its pre-eminent global role could not be ignored. In Britain some believed that the awakening was already under way, the Principal of what became Exeter University having described 1941 as the year of the British “discovery of America.” The jarring realization that the very survival of Britain depended on a close alliance with the American giant had precipitated not only frenetic governmental activity but also intense interest in the United States throughout the media. Perhaps the “discovery” or “rediscovery” of America in British consciousness cannot be dated with exact precision, but the years from the war to the mid-1960s may fairly be called the “take-off period” for the academic study of American history in Britain. This essay briefly considers the role of some of the participants in this endeavour.