Period In American History Research Articles

"The Crusade Against the Whisker" and the Birth of the Modern Radical Beard

This paper seeks to investigate the shift in style in the last decade of the nineteenth century, when it again became customary for men to shave their beards. In order to address this topic, the historiographies of facial hair, masculinity, and radical politics in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the United States demand attention. The convergence of these three areas of study will provide the basis for this examination into this shift in style, and the social meanings that may have been placed on beards and beardlessness during this period in American history.

The Disillusionment of the American Dream in "The Great Gatsby"

F. Scott Fitzgerald is regarded as the spokesman of the American "Jazz Age." "Jazz Age" denotes the temporal span, including 1919 to 1929. The economy flourished during this particular period in American history, leading to a significant shift in societal ideals. Consequently, a discernible decline emerged in individuals' cognitive and ethical faculties. The Great Gatsby, a literary work that portrays the terrible existence of Gatsby and carries notable scholarly and pragmatic ramifications, symbolizes the disintegration of the "American Dream." The cohort of individuals in the United States, commonly called the "lost generation" during the 1920s, saw a notable discrepancy between their aspirational objectives and the prevailing realities of their day. This study examines the fundamental significance of Gatsby's interpretation of the "American Dream" and uncovers the inescapable inevitability of Gatsby's sad demise and the disillusionment associated with the "American Dream" through a thorough analysis of the primary textual elements inside the novel. The primary aim of this essay is to enhance readers' understanding of the widespread appeal of riches and worldly possessions while encouraging them to reflect on the development of moral, healthful, and dynamic principles.

Spiraling down the Smelting Pot: Economic Determinism and the Working-Class Hero in The Deer Hunter (Cimino, 1978) and Out of the Furnace (Cooper, 2013)

Abstract: Coming thirty-five years after The Deer Hunter, Out of the Furnace , a largely overlooked drama directed by Scott Cooper, seems to revisit Michael Cimino's Vietnam War classic: both focus on working-class Pennsylvania communities against the backdrop of industrial landscapes and decay, war trauma, and even deer hunting. Yet the resemblance between the two films should not overshadow their differences. Cooper's film acknowledges the material limitations of working-class life, which were partly dismissed in The Deer Hunter 's representation of a humble yet convivial Russian American community of steel workers, three of whom set out to fight for their country in Vietnam. Conversely, in Out of the Furnace , two brothers grow apart as one accepts his unsatisfactory working-class position and the other serves in Iraq, hoping to make enough money to escape the mill. This article proposes a parallel between the two films' treatment of working-class masculinity and class determinism in the Rust Belt region at two different yet comparable periods in American history.

Threat of Dissent: A History of Ideological Exclusion and Deportation in the United States

Threat of Dissent explores the United States’ history of excluding or deporting individuals (particularly non-citizens) that held ideological beliefs the US government viewed as threatening to American society. It shows how recent events have a long history that extends further back than the Red Scares of the twentieth century. Kraut's work details America's attempts to restrict or punish citizens, non-citizens, visitors, and residents who the US government deemed radicals.Beginning with the Alien Friends Act in the 1790s and concluding with the War on Terror in the 2000s, Threat of Dissent examines case studies of these ideological exclusions throughout different periods of American history. Organized chronologically, Kraut's book opens with the Alien Friends Act, Alien Enemies Act, and Sedition Act to show how Congress's creation of a Board of Special Inquiry, created to hear deportation cases, set the stage for later restrictions on immigration. Although restricting immigrants based on their health or wealth was already common, the Board introduced the idea of restrictions based on a person's beliefs. Kraut argues that President McKinley's assassination was a turning point that led to bans on anarchists entering the United States and anti-anarchist suppressions of speech such as the case of Emma Goldman, who lost her US citizenship. Wars or the threat of war also produced restrictive legislation; the 1924 Johnson-Reed Act was followed by the 1952 McCarran-Walter Act with both laws containing ideologically restrictive elements. The threat of Communism was another important factor that Kraut discussed, both in the wake of World War I as well as in the 1930s during the Great Depression. Kraut concludes her study by bridging the gap between the Cold War and the September 2001 terrorist attacks, with her final chapter discussing the War on Terror and its aftermath. Threat of Dissent brings the discussion to the present by highlighting the Trump administration's attempts to bar certain individuals from entering the country, particularly with the creation of a travel ban.Contributing an important piece to the historiography of both immigration studies and exclusions and deportations, the book achieves its stated goal to “explore the constitutionality of ideological restrictions” and the “intersection of American immigration and First Amendment law and history” (p. 9). Threat of Dissent was not written to provide a survey of restrictions throughout American immigration history, nor does it attempt to address discrimination based on non-ideological factors. Yet the work strongly demonstrates the author's historical knowledge of both the fields of legal and immigration history; Kraut holds a law degree from American University Washington College of Law and a PhD in History from New York University.The book's eight chapters each investigate a different ideological restriction presented to the US courts. While the information itself may not be new, the author's careful archival work is impressive in her recounting of each case study. The chapters themselves are also well organized, and students in particular will find the detailed conclusions at the end of each chapter a welcome addition. The author's clear, concise writing and her success at connecting the past to the present are major strengths of the work.Historians and experts in the field of legal or immigration studies will appreciate the book's careful scholarship, while students and the public will find Threat of Dissent accessible. The author's writing is free of jargon; whenever Kraut does use legal terminology, she includes definitions in parentheses. Additionally, the presence of at least one image per chapter—photographs, political cartoons, pamphlets, and posters—helps the reader visualize the actors involved with the different case studies. This book is engaging and well suited for undergraduate or graduate legal history courses, immigration and ethnicity courses, or as selected readings for either US history survey.

The US-Mexican Border and Contemporary American Immigration Policy

There have been several periods in American history that are referred to as turbulent times. They were characterized by a wide range of changes that happened to respond to issues that brought anxiety, threat, discontent, or trouble. Donald Trump’s presidency and the Covid‑19 pandemic significantly influenced American immigration policy and the lives of immigrants. The present article pays special attention to the Mexican‑American border. This area plays a crucial role in migration studies focusing on the Americas for at least two reasons: international relations between Mexico (and the Latin American region) and the United States, and homeland security issues related to irregular and regular migrant flows. This study aims to determine what changes have been implemented in border policy, investigate why they occurred, and finally, discuss their results. The article analyzes the most challenging issues characteristic of the situation of unaccompanied minor migrants, the concept of Trump’s wall or the ‘remain in Mexico’ program. The US‑Mexican border studies have played a crucial role in research dedicated to American immigration policy since its inception. Today, it is also an area of concern and special attention is paid to this region due to the dynamics of processes taking place at the border. The work presented here discusses and highlights the most turbulent issues that echoed not only in the United States but also worldwide.

"Arnold the Traitor": George Lippard, the Mexican-American War, and the Search for an Antebellum George Washington, 1846–1852

Abstract: During the Mexican-American War (1848–1846), Pennsylvania native and literary giant George Lippard promoted the nation-changing conflict by invoking the heroes and villains of the revolutionary era—most notably Benedict Arnold. An active member of the urban Democratic movement Locofocoism, Lippard used Arnold's infamy to paint political opponents and Mexican War skeptics as traitors while actively seeking to recruit the conflict's hero, General Zachary Taylor, for the presidential election of 1848 as a non-party candidate and antebellum era George Washington. Disillusioned by Taylor's affiliation with the Whig Party, Lippard went on before his death to form a secret society to further his expansionist goals. Although previous historians have examined Lippard's political activities, scholars have overlooked his role in propagating Arnold's traitorous legacy during a contentious period in American history.

A Fire Bell in the Past: The Missouri Crisis at 200: Western Slavery, National Impasse ed. by Jeffrey L. Pasley and John Craig Hammond

Reviewed by: A Fire Bell in the Past: The Missouri Crisis at 200: Western Slavery, National Impasse ed. by Jeffrey L. Pasley and John Craig Hammond Van Gosse (bio) Keywords Missour Crisis, Slavery, Antislavery, Sectionalism A Fire Bell in the Past: The Missouri Crisis at 200: Western Slavery, National Impasse. Edited by Jeffrey L. Pasley and John Craig Hammond. (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2021. Pp. 426. Cloth, $45.00.) This volume is that rare thing: an edited collection in which the whole is considerably greater than the sum of the parts. Pasley, Hammond, and their authors offer a profound reconsideration of the early republic, challenging the edifice built by historians like Gordon Wood, in which race and slavery register as distractions from the main thrust of post-Revolutionary consolidation. The editors' Introduction proposes revisions on multiple fronts, since "the first two decades of the nineteenth century remain one of the least studied and most poorly understood periods in American history" (11). This gap reflects the periodization of the First Republic (1790–1860) as a series of discrete chunks (the Era of Federalism, the Age of Jackson, and so on), avoiding the larger continuity of sectional contestation over the problem of slavery. Positing the struggle in 1819–1821 as a fulcrum in this [End Page 642] larger dynamic indicts the blinkered historiography of the early republic, which has never "dealt easily or accurately with anything connected to the Missouri Crisis: slavery, the trans-Appalachian West, or even the nineteenth century" (11). This volume not only challenges scholarship that elides the centrality of slavery; it also poses a powerful corrective to historians of race and slavery who elide formal politics. In the editors' sum-up, "By the 1990s, historians working on the social and cultural history of race and slavery often felt free to eschew political events altogether" (15). That silence made it easier for political historians to pose grand narratives skating over the "peculiar institution." With great brio, this volume rides into the terrain left open by these mutually reinforcing exclusions. Putting the Missouri Crisis at the center of post-Revolutionary history, its authors explore both the "crisis" itself and what it represents, the long struggle over the explosion of racial capitalism inside a putatively republican order. What was hidden is revealed; the partisan fissuring of the Era of Good Feelings is no longer a meaningless churn; Jackson's southwestern wars no longer predestined "expansions"; James Tallmadge's amendment to bar slavery from Missouri not premature sectionalism but the eruption of rising antislavery outrage. The biggest shift proposed here is not temporal but spatial. In decisive ways, its authors turn the focus back to the West and away from Congress. Most previous studies (Glover Moore's pro-southern The Missouri Controversy, 1819–1821 in 1953; Sean Wilentz's influential 2004 article in the Journal of the Historical Society; Robert Pierce Forbes's groundbreaking The Missouri Compromise and Its Aftermath in 2007) focused on maneuvers in and around Washington.1 Missouri and the frontier into which it fit scarcely figured, a testament to enduring regional prejudices. No longer! Collectively, these essays clarify that the extraordinary influx of slaveholders into Missouri after 1810, and the possibility that such men would control the entire frontier, was the issue—not sectional power plays. Obviously, the latter precipitated the crisis: Tallmadge represented a strongly [End Page 643] antislavery constituency, as Sarah Gronningsater explicates with great subtlety, and, as John Van Atta outlines, the South felt threatened by "an aggression not just on slavery and slave-state sovereignty but also on them personally and their cultural identity … a comprehensive northern attack on the entire structure of their society, on their concept of manhood and the roots of their self-respect" (189). A re-centering on the trans-Mississippi West linked to both the juridically slaveless Northwest Territory and the new Cotton Kingdom is explored in three key articles (John Craig Hammond, "The Centrality of Slavery: Enslavement and Settler Sovereignty in Missouri, 1770–1820"; Robert Lee, "The Boon's Lick Land Rush and the Coming of the Missouri Crisis"; Christa Dierksheide, "Border Control: Slavery, Diffusion, and State Formation in the Era of the Missouri Crisis"). Dierksheide, in...

Assessing anti-racist resources online

Examining the response of a library during a tumultuous period not only provides insight about the library’s past, but also allows the library to improve its actions to better serve its communities in the future. The summer of 2020 marked such a period in American history. Amidst the cries for systemic change following the murder of George Floyd, the social media profiles of individuals and organizations alike–including academic libraries–flooded with anti-racist reading lists, informational articles, webinars, and other such educational materials. How do we qualify these resources? How do we understand the roles that academic libraries play in this resource sharing, and how do we use that information to assess their involvement? Building upon Dr. Bharat Mehra and Dr. Rebecca Davis’ (2015) Strategic Diversity Manifesto, this talk describes the beginning of a project meant to determine how academic libraries can examine their online presences: where and how they have raised their voices, incorporated the voices of others, or stayed silent.

The Sports Revolution: How Texas Changed the Culture of American Athletics by Frank Andre Guridy

Reviewed by: The Sports Revolution: How Texas Changed the Culture of American Athleticsby Frank Andre Guridy David K. Wiggins The Sports Revolution: How Texas Changed the Culture of American Athletics. By Frank Andre Guridy. Texas Bookshelf. ( Austin: University of Texas Press, 2021. Pp. x, 418. $29.95, ISBN 978-1-4773-2183-6.) I like this book very much. Frank Andre Guridy, utilizing a nice combination of secondary and primary source material, provides a very interesting and insightful analysis of sports in Texas and, by extension, in American culture more generally. Although some might be overwhelmed by its 353 pages of text and disappointed by its limited coverage of interscholastic athletics, the book provides important and detailed information largely about the role and [End Page 590]changing pattern of college and professional sports in the Lone Star State from the end of the Jim Crow era to the 1980s. I have no doubt readers of The Sports Revolution: How Texas Changed the Culture of American Athleticswill gain a better appreciation of the large number of outstanding athletes and culturally significant sporting events that took place in Texas during a rapidly changing and tumultuous period in American history. Guridy covers some frequently told stories such as the integration of football at Southern Methodist University and the subsequent scandal that rocked its gridiron program, the well-known Battle of the Sexes tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs at the Houston Astrodome, the enormous success of the University of Houston's basketball program popularly referred to as Phi Slama Jama, the football dominance of the University of Texas Longhorns, and the emergence and ultimate success of the San Antonio Spurs professional basketball team. He also examines some stories not as well known, including perhaps most important the origin and cultural significance of the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders. In the process, Guridy provides interesting details on the athletes, coaches, owners, and support personnel who contributed to the vibrant and nationally prominent sports programs in Texas. He furnishes significant details and background information, for example, on perhaps the greatest woman athlete of all time, Mildred Ella "Babe" Didrikson; the University of Texas's great running back Earl Campbell; Jerry LeVias, who integrated the Southern Methodist University football program; coach Guy Lewis, who masterminded the University of Houston's highly successful basketball team; oil tycoon Lamar Hunt, who co-founded the American Football League (AFL); Gussie Nell Davis, who led the highly skilled Kilgore Rangerettes drill team; tennis legends Rosemary "Rosie" Casals and Gladys Medalie Heldman; the Dallas Cowboys' famous coach Tom Landry; Texas Rangers owner Robert E. Short; and University of Houston football coach Bill Yeoman. Adding immeasurably to the effectiveness of the book is the fact that Guridy places sports in Texas in proper historical context and consistently draws connections to what was taking place in the industry on a national scale and how sport in the state both impacted and was impacted by larger societal changes and movements. Virtually every page of the book is filled with engaging details about the business side of athletics and how smart, wealthy, and imaginative entrepreneurs transformed how sports were organized, viewed, and financed. Guridy effectively connects sports in the Lone Star State to the larger civil rights struggle and explains how Black athletes increasingly found their way into intercollegiate and professional sports while still suffering the pangs of racial discrimination and being viewed as commodities in institutions still controlled largely by white men. Guridy also effectively connects sports in Texas to the second-wave feminist movement and illuminates how women athletes negotiated for better treatment while at once struggling to overcome the sexist views and gender stereotypes so rampant in a culture that continued to trivialize their efforts at bodily excellence and skill development. In all, there is much to recommend about Frank Guridy's The Sports Revolution. It is a nicely written, compelling, and thoughtful book that provides an awareness of and appreciation for the changing nature of sports in [End Page 591]Texas specifically and American culture more broadly. I expect it to have a long shelf life and to be of interest to those who want to learn more...

Roman Pucinski: A Visionary Congressional Leader

Abstract Roman Pucinski served in the US House of Representatives for fourteen years during one of the most turbulent and transformative periods in American history. Protests about the war in Vietnam, racial tensions, and technological development added to what was then an unprecedented number of urban riots, all combined to place exceptional pressure on legislators to respond to the various crises. In all these areas, Pucinski played a leading part in finding solutions to the nation's problems. This article explores his prominent congressional leadership role in promoting positive domestic change against the background of historical events between 1959 and 1973.

Blues as a Symbolic Resistance and Representation of Countercultural Groups in the United States in the late 19 – early 20 centuries

Introduction. This article examines the blues music tradition from the perspective of the use of symbolic representations by the creators of this form of culture, which formed a unique “hidden transcripts” transmitted by certain socio-cultural groups that lived and worked in a certain historical era. Since the blues tradition in the United States originates in black communities, in terms of the self-representation of representatives of this groups to the dominant culture, we can talk abut the music of this socio-cultural period of American history as an instrument for conveying “hidden transcripts”.Methodology and sources. The author used the comparative-historical methodology in the context of studying the relationship of domination and subordination between groups and individuals. All subordinate groups use resistance strategies that go unnoticed by superior groups. Open public interaction between dominant and oppressed groups is defined by the term “public transcripts” and criticism of power that takes place offstage by the term “hidden transcripts”. Forms of hidden transcripts are coded demonstrations by oppressed groups to resist and oppose themselves, their way of life, and the difficulties of inequality to dominant groups.Results and discussion. In the context of any dominance-subordination relationship, spaces of autonomy for oppressed racial and social groups were formed, in which there was an opportunity for self-expression as acts of resistance to existing inequality, which found its expression in songs, folk tales, clothing, language, and religious expression. The development of hidden transcripts depends not only on the creation of relatively uncontrollable physical places and free time, but also on the active human agents who create and disseminate them. The bearers are likely to be as socially marginalized as the places where they gather.Conclusion. Oppressed or marginalized groups create not just their art and culture as a social group caught up in a certain cultural context, but a culture of integration into society, as well as a culture of interaction with the social hierarchy in which these groups have a rather low position. Groups excluded from the decision-making process or weakly involved in it, develop their own models for demonstrating their presence in society, and also try to convey their content to all other members of society, whether groups and individuals close or distant in status and hierarchy.

Manufacturing Advantage: War, the State, and the Origins of American Industry, 1776–1848

Manufacturing Advantage: War, the State, and the Origins of American Industry, 1776–1848

Racism: A Part of History That Has Never Been Lost

There have been many cases of racism in its history that have occurred from ancient times to the present. Many factors cause racial conflicts. Factors that often trigger these actions, among others, are due to injustice, oppression, and racial discrimination by certain groups against other groups. In America itself, the era of slavery was a dark period in American history. This article aims to find out the impact and solutions to the problem of racism in general. How to find out the impact and solution to the problem of racism is to examine some of the cases that have occurred recently. The method used in this research is qualitative-descriptive with a literature review method to analyze data with 20 sources from books, journal articles, theses and websites. The findings of this study reveal that cases of racism still occur today, for example, last year because of the COVID-19 problem that initially occurred in Wuhan, China, Asian people received hatred from citizens and Western media. There are many factors that cause racial conflict, and the triggers vary in each country that experiences it, among others, because of injustice, oppression, and racial discrimination by certain groups against other groups. Through cases of racism that have occurred, one thing that according to the researcher can be concluded is how before the conflict between groups occurred, actually it started from problems that occurred between individuals. Tolerance is the main thing to stem this kind of thing.

Young children’s play during a time of social distancing

ABSTRACT Through a 48-item questionnaire shared via social media, 546 participants from 47 American States reported on their children’s (ages 0–8) play activities during early social distancing efforts as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used for data analysis. Results from the questionnaire indicate participants took social distancing guidelines seriously by keeping children at home and away from other children during the period of social distancing, thus affecting play behaviours. The study’s findings are significant in that they document some parents’ perspectives of their children’s play during a unique period in American history. The authors discuss implications for parent and child play behaviours including the need for more unstructured play time, realities of parents working from home with children present, and the effects of children having a lack of access to peers to play with for sociodramatic and symbolic play. Recommendations for future research are provided.

Hungry minds: the visual and verbal language of taverns and coffee houses in early American periodicals

Eighteenth-century American periodicals utilized depictions of taverns and coffee houses to aid subscribers in their navigation of complex political environments. Many eighteenth-century artists and publishers drew upon public knowledge of the significance of small variations in drinking habits, imported beverages, and tavern life as a communication strategy. Public knowledge of, and interest in, tavern and coffee-house culture made this subject matter a particularly legible and engaging vehicle for discussions about politics, class, and identity. Editors and artists built on public knowledge to affirm the status of a socioeconomically and geographically limited readership. As connective spaces for the performance of norms and distribution of knowledge, magazines, coffee houses, and taverns served as hubs for knowledge distribution. Depictions of taverns and coffee houses, in contrast to other popular subject-matter in early American periodicals, worked to reaffirm the status and ideals of subscribers during this tumultuous period in American history.

Ethics in Comedy: Essays on Crossing the Line

Ethics in Comedy: Essays on Crossing the Line

Ethics in Comedy: Essays on Crossing the Line

Ethics in Comedy: Essays on Crossing the Line

History of Emergency Powers of the US Presidents: From Abraham Lincoln to Donald Trump

Introduction. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic announced by the WHO in 2020, American researchers bring up the question of the legitimacy, adequacy, or, on the contrary, redundancy of measures taken by the US leadership to protect the population. The study of the US President’s history of emergency powers can demonstrate how previous American Presidents managed to preserve or, conversely, subvert the established liberal foundations of American society in emergency situations. Methods and Materials. The author used methods of structural analysis and synthesis, historical and legal comparative method, formal legal method, and method of legal modeling. Analysis. The author studied A. Lincoln’s extra-constitutional authority to emancipate slaves, suspend the Habeas Corpus Act, create a volunteer army, and declare a naval blockade. On the basis of legal sources, we carried out the analysis of F. Roosevelt’s decisions on the creation of courts-martial and the internment of people of Japanese descent; reviewed the activities of G. Bush after the September 11 attacks and D. Trump’s emergency measures related to building the border wall in the south of the USA. Results. During the research, we found, that each military, economic, or social crisis increased the political significance and role of the executive branch in emergencies. We can characterize the increase of the emergency powers, delegated to the US Presidents, as steadily growing due to the crises that took place in various periods of American history. It was proved, that the precedents of emergency measures created by A. Lincoln, F. Roosevelt and George W. Bush had a long-term impact on the actions of the next US Presidents, opening up new legal opportunities for the use of emergency powers. At the same time, Congress and the US Supreme Court have taken a controversial stance on the validity of the President’s actions at various historical stages. Most of the time, the status of the legislative and judicial branches of government, as well as the understanding of “emergency situation” itself depended on the specific case and practical political needs.

Probing the Unorthodox and Reappraising Nonconformity: Recent Historiographical Perspectives on Early America and the Antebellum Period

Over the past several decades, critical developments in the study of early America and the antebellum era have reshaped the ways we think about this period of American history. Scholars have examined the interaction between early American national and individual identities; they have expanded the geographical as well as chronological limits of early America; they have shown how the dynamics of the Atlantic world were embedded in the very patterns of early American society, territory, and repr...

Philosophy of History in E. L. Doctorow’s Welcome to Hard Times and Its Affinities with the Biblical Book of Ecclesiastes

Unlike the majority of E. L. Doctorow’s novels which present a revisionary account of specific periods in American history, his first novel, Welcome to Hard Times, deals with history in a more general and allegorical manner. The narrator of the novel is preoccupied with the nature of history and historical phenomena, and this preoccupation pervades the whole book, from which a philosophy of history can be derived: history is cyclic and it tends to repeat itself in a deterministic fashion. Since Doctorow was an American Jew who was influenced by the Jewish tradition, in this paper, Welcome to Hard Times is placed within a Jewish context and read from the perspective of this multilayered tradition. Hence, the novel’s philosophy of history is compared to the historical vision of the biblical book of Ecclesiastes, which also espouses a cyclic conception of history, thereby demonstrating that their visions are almost identical. In Doctorow’s novel, however, this cyclic view also serves to repudiate the American Dream and its associated ideas of progress and optimism. It is further shown that the two aforementioned books also share a fatalistic and nihilistic attitude toward life, and their response to the Problem of Evil and innocent human suffering is a pessimistic one, arguing that there is no justice and moral order in the world.