Rebellious Nature Research Articles

Southern Sons: Becoming Men in the New Nation, and: Scarlett's Sisters: Young Women in the Old South (review)

Reviewed by: Southern Sons: Becoming Men in the New Nation, and: Scarlett's Sisters: Young Women in the Old South Evan A. Kontarinis (bio) Southern Sons: Becoming Men in the New Nation. By Lorri Glover. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. Pp. 250. Cloth, $50.00.) Scarlett's Sisters: Young Women in the Old South. By Anya Jabour. (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2007. Pp. 374. Cloth, $39.95.) Historians studying elite young men and women in the early republic South have often fallen victim to employing southern stereotypes in approaching their topics: Men are studied as creatures of honor who live and die by the sword to defend their reputation, while women are presented as one-dimensional southern belles. These studies have provided interesting insights on the meanings of manhood and womanhood in this time period, but they have been criticized for being too restrictive. A new crop of historians is more interested in studying southern men and women on their own terms, as incomplete identities who were always changing, always negotiating and transforming themselves toward a more perfect version of a gendered ideal. Two such historians, Anya Jabour and Lorri Glover, take issue with earlier approaches and make good on taking earlier historians to task by studying manhood and womanhood not as static categories of analysis, but as goals toward which young men and women labored in processes that over time shaped and reshaped the definitions of gender. In Southern Sons, Glover studies the ideal of manhood to which elite young men between the 1790s and the 1820s aspired. Glover finds fault with previous studies that posited honor as the central theme in understanding young southern men. Instead, she argues that honor is merely a single [End Page 760] component of manhood, and that manhood was the culmination of a process that young boys navigated and negotiated in the early republic. Jabour's Scarlett's Sisters traces the lifelong self-fashioning process of womanhood through which coming-of-age women adopted racial, regional, and gender identities. Jabour's "ladies-in-training" rebelled against and resisted society's patriarchal prescriptions and promoted female agency. Both books trace the processes through which elite men and women experienced life stages: youth, adolescence, courtship, adulthood, and the shakeup of the status quo with the coming of the Civil War. While young men and women faced different challenges, both genders exhibited a sense of rebelliousness and questioned authority throughout their journeys of self-definition. Elite families trained their young sons to exhibit an independent nature and a spirit of autonomy. The goal for these youths was to attain what Glover terms "manly independence," a balance between deference to social expectations and an autonomous spirit, and the young men in Southern Sons display that independent spirit extensively. But families who sought to rein in those sons who showed too much independence never ruled these young men with heavy hands. Instead, parents negotiated authority and left good and proper behavior up to their sons. Glover cites many rich examples of parents seeking to coax sons toward good behavior rather than compel them. This type of parenting helped to spur young men toward manhood while nurturing a constant questioning of authority. As a result, we read about young men who exhibited a lifelong negotiation with authority, with society's expectations, with one another, and eventually with the North. Young women on the other hand were expected to embody self-denial, to revel in the pleasing of others, and, in that pleasing, to find personal happiness. But in these expectations for young women, Jabour still finds room for a rebellious nature and individual agency. Young southern women did not display an outward streak of resistance, but in their own way, in what Jabour terms a "safely invisible" manner, they resisted patriarchal notions of womanhood by extending each stage of their lives and avoiding responsibilities they were not ready to face (13). For example, young women who feared the birthing process, and in the early nineteenth century there was much to fear indeed, resisted motherhood and prolonged their single lives. The life stage of engagement allowed women their final opportunity for holding out for true...

Einstein: His Life and Universe

By the author of the acclaimed bestseller 'Benjamin Franklin', this is the first full biography of Albert Einstein since all of his papers have become available. How did his mind work? What made him a genius? Isaacson's biography shows how his scientific imagination sprang from the rebellious nature of his personality. His fascinating story is a testament to the connection between creativity and freedom. Based on newly released personal letters of Einstein, this book explores how an imaginative, impertinent patent clerk - a struggling father in a difficult marriage who couldn't get a teaching job or a doctorate - became the mind reader of the creator of the cosmos, the locksmith of the mysteries of the atom and the universe. His success came from questioning conventional wisdom and marveling at mysteries that struck others as mundane. This led him to embrace a morality and politics based on respect for free minds, free spirits, and free individuals. These traits are just as vital for this new century of globalization, in which our success will depend on our creativity, as they were for the beginning of the last century, when Einstein helped usher in the modern age.

Assembly Has Evolved Into Powerful Voice for Psychiatry

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article From the SpeakerFull AccessAssembly Has Evolved Into Powerful Voice for PsychiatryMichael Blumenfield, M.D.Michael BlumenfieldSearch for more papers by this author, M.D.Published Online:5 Jan 2007https://doi.org/10.1176/pn.42.1.0010 The APA Assembly was formed in 1954 with representatives from 16 district branches (DBs). Twenty years ago Speaker Irwin Cohen described that first Assembly as “an impudent, rebellious body consisting largely of a collection of private practitioners who were totally unsophisticated in matters of psychiatric body politics as compared to board members who were mostly academic.”While the rebellious nature may not have changed, certainly the disparity between the type of practice that Board and Assembly members have has largely disappeared. In fact, I would say that the makeup of the Assembly has evolved considerably and well represents the membership in the district branches. The structure of the Assembly incorporates a number of minority and underrepresented groups. It is better able than any other component to represent the diverse APA membership. The Assembly now includes members-in-training, early career psychiatrists, and representatives from allied psychiatric organizations, making it even more inclusive.However, like most of you, I spent nearly half my professional life having no idea what the Assembly did. It was only when, after several years on my DB Executive Council, I became president-elect of my DB and I came to Washington to watch the Assembly in action that I realized what a dynamic body it is. I subsequently became the Assembly representative from my DB.In the 13 years that I have been in the Assembly I have also seen it evolve into the clear, influential voice of our profession. While the Board of Trustees has the fiduciary responsibility for APA, the Assembly, in my opinion, is APA's creative force. It is the moral compass of our profession and its watchdog. Most of the members of the Board of Trustees are former Assembly members. The Board respects the actions of the Assembly and is greatly influenced by its debates and actions.I am very appreciative of the chance to write a periodic speaker's column for Psychiatric News. I am greatly challenged to show the membership how the Assembly is working for them on the local and national levels and how I can get you to interact with your Assembly representatives.Fortunately, we live in the era of instantaneous communication. I can show you with the click of a mouse all the actions proposed for the most recent Assembly meeting, held in November (Psychiatric News, December 1, 2006), as well as the summary of the actions that took place at the three-day meeting. You can immediately identify your DB representative and send him or her an e-mail and open up channels of communication on any issue. (DBs with large memberships have more than one representative.) Just go to Members Corner on APA's homepage at<www.psych.org>, where you will find a list of the Assembly representatives and links to descriptions of previous actions taken by the Assembly.To contact your Assembly rep, go to<www.psych.org/members/components/assemblydetail.cfm>. To see a summary of actions from the November 2006 Assembly meeting, go to<www.psych.org/members/gov/assembly/aps/actionpaperstatus_nov06.cfm>. Or you can e-mail me at [email protected].There are many important issues confronting our profession and our patients that require attention and the development of Assembly action papers to help move us toward achieving our goals.Three critical issues to which I am directing the Assembly's attention are access to care, problems of returning war veterans, and collaboration with coalition partners such as the National Alliance on Mental Illness and others.I hope that you will share your thoughts with your Assembly representative on these and other issues that are pertinent to our patients and our profession. ▪ ISSUES NewArchived

Drug Disposition and Therapy in Adolescence: The Effects of Puberty

Puberty, a part of adolescence, is a time of rapid physical, psychological, and psychosocial changes. Variability in drug absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion occurs due to physical and hormonal changes, as well as those of body composition. Environmental factors affecting nutrition and compliance in the pubescent individual also affect success in achieving desired pharmacologic effects while minimizing toxicities. Based on available data, pharmacologic research has been relatively inadequate in providing information about drug disposition during puberty. The majority of available studies have neglected to provide staging for pubescent adolescents or have altogether excluded this population from their investigations. However, data are available that describe the effects of puberty on the pharmacokinetics of agents such as theophylline, digoxin, carbamazepine, lamotragine, vigabatrin and benzodiazepines.To date, few clinically significant changes in drug disposition have been noted during puberty. However, factors such as compliance, concomitant drug use, and the potentially rebellious nature of adolescents must be taken into consideration in the medical management of the adolescent.

Margery Kempe and Medieval Anti-Judaic Ideology

AbstractAlthough Margery Kempe (1373-1440) probably never had regular contact with a Jewish person, she depicts the Jews as symbols of evil in her autobiographical Book. Despite the rebellious nature Kempe displays to patriarchal authorities in the church by refusing to behave as a nun, to wear black, or to remain in a cloister, she is entirely orthodox in portraying the Jews as Christkillers in her vision of the Crucifixion. This anti-Judaic ideology appears in the Gospels and in official doctrine, beginning with Augustine, continuing with Pope Gregory I the Great, and worsening with Aquinas and the Franciscan and Dominican friars in the lourteenth century. Medieval drama, especially the N-Town Passion Play (which Kempe may have seen) provides a striking analogue tor Kempe's vision at Calvary. Kempe, extraordinary in some ways, is entirely conventional in her dratnatiration of the Jewish soldiers as dcicides.

Claiming an Identity

Several English-speaking Caribbean women writers stress the importance of knowing one's history. The interrelationship leads to the formation of female identity. All write about mothers as vehicles of culture and history. Once this function is removed from biological mothers, the daughters become confused about their history and place in it. From the slave narrative to two contemporary novels, we see a slide from the nurturing mother to two surrogate mothers that plummets to an emotionally absent one. This fall results in the need for the daughters to claim and reclaim their historical and cultural identity. In 1831, Mary Prince of Bermuda finished writing The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave, Related by Herself (Prince, 1831/1987). Published simultaneously in London and Edinburgh in 1831, this is the first known book and slave narrative by an English-speaking Caribbean woman writer. Its value lies in the details that it gives of the British-Caribbean slave trade and the rarely documented recollections of an enslaved Caribbean woman. Prince identifies specific roles played by African women both on sugarcane plantations and in the salt fields. She recounts sufferings, humiliations, psychological trauma, and constant physical abuses rained on her by her various European masters and mistresses in their attempts to tame her emergent rebellious nature. Although The History of Mary Prince was structured and edited for use as propaganda for the Anti-Slavery Movement in Britain, Prince attempts to assert herself and to reflect her presence and her place. She speaks the truth about slavery and retraces her plight as

Chaumette porte-parole des sans-culottes

Son of a shoemaker from nevers, france, expelled from secondary school at the age of 13 because of his rebellious nature, having lived the tough life of a merchant marine during of american war for independence, chaumette quickly took up the radical positions of parisian democracy in the spring of 1791, alongside the cordeliers, journalists from revolutions de paris, elected member of the insurrectional commune by the theatre francais section, he broke with the girondins over the question of the formation of a regional militia based in paris to protect the convention. Elected paris commune procureur in december 1792, he played a role in the may 31, 1793 victory over the girondins by placing the commune at the centre of the movement of parisian sections, mobilised against the girondins in order to ensure the forced borrowing of money from the rich. He was at the head of the september 5, 1793 demonstrators who obtained the creation or a revolutionary army from the convention. He rallied to the dechiristianisation offensive due to his hate of the vendee counter-revolutionary uprising and through revolutionary pragmatism : the epispocal palace then became the temple of humanity, welcoming the old and the sick. When he tried to win control of the parisian terrorist apparatus of the comite de surete generale, he lost the support of the cordeliers. He approved saint-just's decrees hand those abolishing slavery ; he refused to be associated with the cordelian attempt to purge the convention. Accused for having accepted gold from abroad and for having attempted to demoralise the republic by imposing atheism, he was guillotined. The real reason for his conviction, in fact was the need for the newly stabilised revolutionary government to do away with any sort of political independence on the part of the sans-culottes.

"Broke by the War": Letters of a Slave Trader (review)

book reviews265 "Broke by the War": Letters of a Slave Trader. Edited by Edmund L. Drago. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991. Pp. xi, 152. $24.95.) In February 1865, the Union army at last forced its way into Charleston, quickly followed by a flood of newspaper correspondents. Among them was James Redpath, an ardent abolitionist who must have taken particular delight in expropriating some 652 letters from the offices of Z. B. Oakes, an extremely successful slave broker and auctioneer. Several weeks later Redpath presented the correspondence to William Lloyd Garrison during his visit to South Carolina. The letters, however, remained generally unknown until the Garrison family presented them to the Boston Public Library in 1891. From this superb collection, Edmund L. Drago of the College of Charleston has selected 135 letters written to Oakes between 1852 and 1857 by his agent A. J. McElveen from rural Sumter County. Six additional letters concern the agent himself. Although McElveen frequently kept his employer informed about various investment opportunities in the South Carolina backcountry, his main task was to find, evaluate, and purchase suitable slaves for shipment to Charleston and profitable sale. Like so many itinerant slave traders that crisscrossed the South, McElveen hoped to please his employer and perhaps one day strike out on his own. It was a hard road: he constantly remarked on his absences from home, fretted about his fiscal responsibilities, worried about transporting his human inventory, and second-guessed his own purchases. "The fact is," he wrote in October 1853, "I cant find negros for Sale that will pay a profit" (58). Still, he labored on, thereby leaving us with a remarkable record of the slave trade. Several recurring themes stand out. First, the slave traders and their agents saw themselves as practical businessmen engaged in the sale of a commodity. Thus McElveen remarked of an eighteen-year-old female that she "never was abused" and carried "no Surplus flesh" (52); that he "could not Get one dollar nocked off" (44) the price of a young male who had lost a toe; and that although a sixteen-year-old girl was "cross Eyed" she was nevertheless "likely otherways" (121). Occasionally , however, McElveen was affected by his African-American charges. In August 1853, for example, he remarked of a frequent runaway that despite his rebellious nature he should not be punished "if you can help it" as he "is very Easy fritened." "If you can sell Edward in the city," he added, "do So . . . his wife is there" (48). Second, like so many others', McElveen's employment and fate were dependent on the peculiar institution. But he enjoyed no independent sphere of action. He was not a merchant, certainly not a planter, not even a farmer. His letters thus provide glimpses into the dependent and deferential relationship between white wage-employee and employer. 266civil war history McElveen's regular correspondence is peppered with such reassurances as "I never wish to deceive" (81) or admissions that "I am troubled very much a bout this matter" as "I have never failed before" (142). Finally, McElveen was unusual, seemingly an honest man in a fraternity of connivers. "They are," he wrote in 1854, "very few men you can rely on" (96). His own forthrightness allows us to see something of the African-Americans themselves. The barely literate trader who never used the word "slave" had to admit some of the laborers were smarter. Many resisted; McElveen seems constantly distracted by their clever deceptions; there were always runaways. Many, he observed, had suffered the lash, and others were to be sold only to distant buyers. The outbreak of the Civil War sealed McElveen's fate. By 1863 he was serving in the state militia; he reenlisted the next year but by the autumn was absent without leave. After the war he attempted farming but never succeeded. Simply put, he was, as a credit investigator reported in 1871, "Broke by the war—old man" (22). With Edmund Drago's superb introduction and careful editing, the collection deservedly emerges as a fascinating addition to the history of slavery. Edward D. C. Campbell, Jr. Virginia State Library and Archives Republicans and Reconstruction in...

Time and the Millennium: On the Religious Experience of the American Slave

Few scholarly debates have equaled, either in emotional intensity or in linguistic acrimony, the recent controversy surrounding the publication of Robert. W. Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman'sTime on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery. Although much of the energy of that particular dispute has been focused on the assumptions of Fogel and Engerman's quantitative methodology, the substance of many of the exchanges has been reminiscent of similar debates that have taken place among students of black American history throughout the past several decades. The issues in these debates have been large in number and diffuse in nature, but at their core has been a constantly recurring theme: the concern with the cultural source and the social viability of this or that black institution. The black family has been the institution receiving the most scholarly attention of late, but remaining unresolved are two nagging and closely related questions—that concerning the degree of African cultural survivals in the slave community and that concerning the docile or rebellious nature of slave religion.