Rugged Individualism Research Articles

Reinhardt’s Final Work

Reinhardt’s Final Work

The Analysis of Marxism in the Movie Jack the Giant Slayer

This research was about Marxism in Jack the Giant Slayer on social class and kind of Marxism. Marxism was an important thing in the society because Marxism wanted to remove social classes. Thus, this research was to describe how social classes could influence someone’s roles in the society. This research used descriptive qualitative method. The research was conducted by accommodating two theories: kinds of Marxism by Tyson (2006) and social class by Barry (2002). Tyson’s theory (2006) classifies Marxism into classism, patriotism, religion, rugged individualism, and consumerism. On the other hand, Barry’s theory (2002) classifies social class into the upper class, the middle class, and the lower class. The findings of the analysis reveal that there were ten data in Jack the Giant Slayer. The researcher found ten forms of Marxism, There were one form of classism, twelve forms of rugged individualism, and one form of consumerism. The most of kind dominant Marxism was classism. Besides, the researcher found three forms of social class, they were the upper class, the middle class, and the lower class. There were four characters of the upper class, one character of the middle class, and two characters of the lower class. The dominant social class was the upper class, which appeared in four characters.

Acting Out: "Cage Rage" and the Morning After

Acting Out: "Cage Rage" and the Morning After

The Great Cowboy Strike: Bullets, Ballots, and Class Conflicts in the American West by Mark A. Lause

Reviewed by: The Great Cowboy Strike: Bullets, Ballots, and Class Conflicts in the American West by Mark A. Lause Jeff Wells Mark A. Lause, The Great Cowboy Strike: Bullets, Ballots, and Class Conflicts in the American West. London: Verso, 2018. 304 pp. $29.95. The title of veteran working-class historian Mark A. Lause's The Great Cowboy Strike: Bullets, Ballots, and Class Conflicts in the American West refers to an 1883 strike by cowboys in the Texas Panhandle. The book, however, is not as narrow as its title suggests. This is a broad history of the American labor movement during the 1880s. The Great Cowboy Strike will be of interest to scholars of the Midwest and a variety of other fields, including readers interested in agrarian and labor organizing, Populism, and violence in the West. Lause applies Marxist analysis to his subjects. For example, when he confronts the mythology of the cowboy as a rugged individualist, he describes cowboys instead as "grossly underpaid and overworked agricultural laborers" (vii). But—thanks to his dogged research in long-neglected newspapers and histories published more than a century ago—the results herein are far from predictable. Lause makes an intriguing contribution to the ongoing debates on the origins of the Knights of Labor, Farmers' Alliance, and the Populist movement [End Page 156] by rescuing the Industrial Brotherhood from obscurity. In contrast to previous scholars, who have paid little attention to the Industrial Brotherhood, Lause observes that it expanded from Jasper County, Missouri, to become the "primary national organization of American labor between 1874 and 1878." (30). Joshua A. Bodenhamer, the publisher of the People's Press in Carthage, Missouri, launched the organization in 1874 after the Grange refused to expand its membership or engage in politics. Andrew Warner St. John, a schoolteacher and farmer near Carthage, used his affiliation with the group to emerge as a national labor leader. The Industrial Brotherhood, Lause argues, inspired the reorganization and reinvigoration of the Knights of Labor. Scholars of Populism contest whether the earliest origins of the Farmers' Alliance arose from the Texas-based southern Alliance or from the northwestern Alliance. The latter was organized in upstate New York but promoted by Milton George's Chicago-based Western Rural newspaper. Lause finds the roots of both regional Alliances in the Kansas Settlers' Alliance. As the Industrial Brotherhood grew across the border, D. G. Campbell, a Greenback leader and recent arrival from New York, sent material on the Settlers' Alliance back to his old home. A Farmers' Alliance soon flourished there, and information about the group eventually found its way to the Western Rural. Lause contends that other participants in the Settlers' Alliance followed the cattle trails south to Lampasas County, Texas, where the Knights of Reliance, a precursor to the Alliance, formed in 1875. Lause links the violence that framed the emergence of the Alliance in central Texas with the labor unrest that occurred a few years later near the Panhandle town of Tascosa. In the early 1880s, the cowboys that drove cattle from ranches on the Texas Panhandle to railroad stockyards in Kansas and Nebraska or to ranches on the northern range earned about $30 a month. In early 1883, as the big ranchers prepared to round up and send herds north, two dozen cowboys signed a strike call and demanded that their employers agree to their terms by March 31. The cowboys sought a monthly wage of $50 for hands and $75 for wagon bosses. The strike lasted two and a half months. Although there is no evidence that the ranchers recruited or hired strikebreakers, reports circulated that the strikers threatened violence against replacement cowboys. Newspapers, repeating information provided by the ranch owners, alleged that the strikers planned to burn ranches and cut fences. The employers intended that such reports and allegations would justify the use of the state's armed power. [End Page 157] In the end, the state did not send troops to end the strike, and there was no violence associated with it. Reports indicated that the strikers settled for a wage increase to $42.50 a month for hands. A year later, wagon bosses earned $75 a month. Although...

A Political Companion to Frederick Douglass ed. by Neil Roberts

Reviewed by: A Political Companion to Frederick Douglassed. by Neil Roberts David Brodnax Sr. A Political Companion to Frederick Douglass. Edited by Neil Roberts. Political Companions to Great American Authors. ( Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2018. Pp. [xii], 476. $80.00, ISBN 978-0-8131-7562-1.) In the last few weeks of his life, Frederick Douglass was asked for advice by a young African American activist. The seventy-seven-year-old crusader, who had lived through slavery, war, and the failures of Reconstruction; had [End Page 687]helped shape the nineteenth century; and would die just before W. E. B. Du Bois earned his Ph.D. and Booker T. Washington gave his Atlanta Compromise speech, replied, "'Agitate! Agitate! Agitate!'" (p. 369). That political life is the focus of this book, which brings together new and previously published essays by fifteen scholars from gender studies, philosophy, English, political science, history, literature, and theology. Part of the University Press of Kentucky series Political Companions to Great American Authors, the book explores Douglass's impact as a political thinker through his speeches and writings. The first part focuses on slavery and freedom and begins with Paul Gilroy's analysis of Douglass on the conflict between slavery and modernity. Bernard R. Boxill examines autobiographical accounts of Douglass's famous fight with Covey the slave-breaker to ask if people have "an absolute duty to defend ourselves against physical abuse in Covey-like circumstances" (p. 74). Margaret Kohn studies the theoretical connections between Hegel's master-slave dialectic and Douglass's description of his slave resistance. Angela Y. Davis's 1969 "Lectures on Liberation," reprinted in this volume, uses Douglass's struggle with Covey to argue that "[t]he master is always on the verge of becoming the slave, and the slave possesses the real, concrete power to make him always on the verge of becoming the master" (p. 130). Robert Gooding-Williams places the Du Bois–Washington conflict in conversation with Douglass's 1855 autobiography, which offers "often forgotten or unheeded conceptual possibilities for theorizing … the prospects for black politics in the postsegregation era" (p. 140). The second part focuses on Douglass's thoughts on human nature. Jack Turner's exploration of two speeches given after the 1883 Civil Rights Casesdraws parallels to recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions, arguing that Douglass, rather than taking the formalist approach that has caused him to be appropriated by present-day conservatives, looked at how power asymmetries oppressed African Americans. Ange-Marie Hancock Alfaro challenges conceptions of Douglass and other black men as rugged individualists, using their relationships to explore the "interpersonal space of choice, where the ethic of restorative care is freely exercised … as a type of expanded black masculinity" (p. 241). Nicholas Buccola analyzes Douglass's "nuanced theory" of human nature that "appreciates the competing tendencies within human beings" and led him to positions such as supporting universal suffrage (p. 253). Part 3 focuses on the law. Peter C. Myers explores Douglass's belief that the universe acts in accordance with an exorable, if slow-moving, moral law; this belief led him, for instance, to insist that African Americans fight for equality in the South rather than migrate to the West. Vincent Lloyd shows how Douglass "evok[ed] a humanity that cannot be sufficiently described … either as rational or affective, but only with the two forever together, forever in tension" (p. 314). Anne Norton examines how democracy depends both on the rule of law and on lawbreaking, looking at Douglass's life as a slave, a fugitive, and a free man in a racist society. "He became a good citizen," she argues, "not because he obeyed the law but … because he refused to obey it" (p. 337). The final section of the book explores Douglass's views on citizenship as defined in his rhetoric. Herbert J. Storing studies the tension between statesmanship and partisanship, as seen in Douglass's views on varying topics. Jason [End Page 688]Frank argues that the words and literal staging of Douglass's speeches show how he "both spoke from outside the people to whom his speech was addressed and claimed to speak in their higher name...

Introduction

Introduction Kalenda Eaton (bio), Michael Johnson (bio), and Jeannette Eileen Jones (bio) Buck: Which way are you ridin', Preacher? The Preacher: Well, that's not exactly settled in my mind yet. Buck: Well, you got three possibilities. The Preacher: Oh? Buck: North, south or east. The Preacher: What happened to west? Buck: We're going west.1 The 1972 film Buck and the Preacher tells the story of black migrants leaving the south in search of economic opportunity, self-determination, safety, and black power in the American West. Buck's (Sidney Poitier) declaration to the Preacher (Harry Belafonte) that he and his travel companions were "going west" (and implying that the Preacher should not accompany them) reads as a declaration and a provocation. As the film reveals, formerly enslaved Blacks imagined the West as a place where they could cut ties with the Old South and their former owners, and with the aid of Native Americans, establish all-black towns where they could thrive and escape Jim Crow. Blacks would go west and challenge anyone who attempted to thwart them. As a "black power" western in the revisionist tradition, Buck and the Preacher tapped into an over 100-year tradition of black performances and representations of the Black West as a site of resistance and becoming. Black communities and individuals occupied, defined, imagined, and deployed the Black West to their own ends, ever mindful that their presence in the West provided counter-narratives to the mythic Wild West [End Page 5] replete with white cowboys, pioneers, gunslingers, homesteaders, sex workers, and marauding "savage" Indians. In doing so, they not only demanded that their presence be acknowledged in Western narratives, but also critiqued the dominant white framing of the West as a utopian space for rugged individuals and frontier democracy. The cultural work performed by Buck and the Preacher and other black westerns echoed that of novels, museums, plays, paintings, photographs, nonfiction texts, and other mediums dedicated to preserving histories and articulating visions of the Black West. In the academy, the study of the Black West has primarily included historians, many of whom are concerned with correcting narratives of Western settlement featuring cowboys, Indians, and intrepid "pioneers." Interest in black cowboys, "black Indians," black homesteaders, and the famed Buffalo Soldiers fueled historical scholarship beginning in the 1970s. Kenneth Wiggins Porter's The Negro on the American Frontier and William Loren Katz's The Black West: A Documentary and Pictorial History both appeared in 1971. A year earlier, the University of Nebraska's PBS station NET had released a four-part documentary series "The Black Frontier" that sought to place Blacks firmly in the histories of the West. Nell Irvin Painter's Exodusters: Black Migration to Kansas after Reconstruction (1976) and Robert Athearn's In Search of Canaan: Black Migration to Kansas, 1879-80 (1978) offered more critical analyses of black migration westward. Historians were not alone in paying attention to the black presence in the West in the 1970s, as the aforementioned Buck and the Preacher (a clear narrative break from John Ford's 1960 revisionist western Sergeant Rutledge) and several blaxploitation westerns—Soul Soldier (1970), The Legend of Nigger Charley (1972), and Boss Nigger (1974), to name a few—sought to place Blacks (primarily men) at the center of cinematic Westerns. Documentaries like Black Rodeo (1972), narrated by Woody Strode the star of Sergeant Rutledge, drew on black cowboy histories to explain the significance of the New York rodeo invitational. The 1990s became the most significant decade for literary production, particularly by Black women, in the genre of western historical fiction. Writers produced reinterpretations of historical spaces, geographic migrations, and the realities of social relationships in the "new" frontier. Examples include Pearl Cleage, Toni Morrison, Jewell Parker Rhodes and others who turned their attentions westward in an attempt to reconstruct prosperous and thriving communities destroyed by white capitalism, racism, and terror. Other authors like Octavia Butler frequently positioned the west as a platform for Afrofuturism and reimagined black power.2 During this same period scholars produced multiple critical histories of blacks in the West—that is, histories that did not focus solely on including Blacks in Western historiography, but rather...

Resistance to Systemic Oppression by Students of Color in a Diversity Course for Preservice Teachers

In a diversity course for preservice teachers, we explored coursework by students of color to uncover instances in which they resisted the existence systemic oppression in K–12 schools. First, we examined the written responses from 3 students of color (Asian-Indian, Asian immigrant, and Latina) who were largely agreeable to the existence of different forms of oppression presented in the course content. Our work illuminated instances of what we have described as. Students initially referred to narratives of rugged individualism or the American Dream to resist the existence of systemic barriers. As the course progressed, students shifted to deeply entrenched responses that rejected the course content to refute systemic oppression. Second, we developed a case study for one student, a biracial girl that self-identified as White who consistently rejected systemic oppression during class interactions to the point of displaying openly defiant behaviors. The examples of resistance we encountered served as a reminder that students of color, along with their White peers, must be able to critically examine and understand systems of oppression that are pervasive throughout education. Furthermore, the underlying sources of the resistance were closely associated with indoctrination in Whiteness, limited understanding of systemic oppression, deeply held beliefs and understandings, and the lived experiences of individuals. Although we agree that teacher education must recruit and retain more teachers of color for an increasingly diverse US K–12 student population, we add that preparation that meets the needs of teachers of color is essential.

Introduction to the Special Issue: Everyday Self-Employment

A “partial renaissance” of self-employment in labor markets of the global North has attracted policy concern within national, supranational, and global arenas, yet sociological thought has been somewhat slower to respond to this phenomenon. In response, this special issue focuses on everyday self-employment among workers drawn from countries across the world. The collection of articles in this volume originated, in part, from a recent symposium that took place at City, University of London, which highlighted the contribution of sociology and cognate disciplines to the study of self-employment. The volume considers the social and structural forces that condition this economic activity as an ideology and practice, as well as the constraints and opportunities for its maintenance and reproduction. It also examines the everyday lives of self-employed workers and in particular the ways in which self-employment is experienced across a range of geographical, occupational, and industrial contexts, and with regard to social categories including race, class, nationality, and gender. As neoliberal subjects, we are increasingly required to inhabit an entrepreneurial self. As such, a sociological understanding of the global patterns and everyday experiences of self-employment—or entrepreneurialism as practice—and the cultural legitimations associated with this oft-celebrated and aspirational economic activity are essential to a critical understanding of the economy and society. What are the current national and international trends in self-employment? What characteristics distinguish entrepreneurs from small-business owners or self-employed workers? If the image of an entrepreneur is an economically mobile rugged individualist, how do social relationships shape entrepreneurialism among transnational migrants or dependent visa holders? Is financial remuneration or maximizing profit always the primary goal, or are the self-employed from different social locations motivated by other, nonpecuniary benefits, such as spiritual fulfillment? Might vulnerable populations, such as undocumented immigrants, have the less lofty goal of basic survival? How is self-employment organized across different occupations? Can self-employment function as a strategy of collective resistance or subversion? The contributors in this volume often challenge mainstream views of self-employment and entrepreneurship to reveal the complexity and scope of self-employed activity; their perspectives provide new insights for researchers and policy- makers regarding the function of self-employment in a changing economy and society. This introduction initiates a discussion of the central debates in the study of self-employment and presents a brief synopsis of the articles in this volume.

Cowboy Christians by Marie W. Dallam

Reviewed by: Cowboy Christians by Marie W. Dallam Sean P. Cunningham Cowboy Christians. By Marie W. Dallam. ( New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. 248. Notes, bibliography, index.) Marie W. Dallam's Cowboy Christians is an engaging, interdisciplinary analysis of one of the lesser studied, but certainly more interesting subcultures within the broader scope of modern American evangelicalism. Relying heavily on a mix of personal communication, first-hand accounts, and secondary literature, Dallam illuminates the human dimensions of this subculture. The result is a study that is informative, compelling, and consumable. The book begins with an extended introduction of "cowboy Christianity" detailing its various definitions, characteristics, and iterations, including a discussion of historiographical placement and methodology. An associate professor in religious studies, Dallam is not a professionally trained historian. But she is clearly comfortable with many of the historio-graphical parameters that will be of great interest to historians, and she effectively positions her study within these parameters. She is particularly effective when discussing her work as part of a larger conversation about western mythos, as opposed to western history, not so much in distinguishing fact from fiction, but in the enduring value of the fiction as summative reflection on muscular Christian tradition in the United States. Dallam describes the incorporation of heroic, romantic themes like rugged individualism, liberty, and courage into the organizing soul of cowboy Christianity. [End Page 242] In her words, the "core of cowboy culture relates to an imagined history of white, able-bodied men riding horses across a pristine landscape, assuming authority as caretakers of land and animals, and interacting with each other in noble ways" (7). To the degree that adherents have perceived this culture to be under siege by the forces of secular modernity, cowboy Christians have rallied to a sort of movement in which nostalgia reigns and traditional order is well protected. However, the growth of cowboy Christian culture has also been enhanced by an ability to balance preservation of order with a raw, stripped down, pretention-free quest for authenticity that prioritizes personal conversion (justification) and growth (sanctification) ahead of collective behavior modification, politicized culture wars, or the "health, wealth, and prosperity" gospel of stereotypical suburban megachurches. Thanks to more than fifty personal visits to cowboy church services, Dallam skillfully takes her readers into this world, or more accurately, into the arena. Though this book relies heavily on the author's personal experiences in Texas and Oklahoma, Dallam extrapolates most of her conclusions to all cowboy churches in the United States, a number that she estimates is between 500 and 1000. This approach seems justifiable and valid, but Dallam makes no effort to hide what some may see as potential holes in her methodology. Similarly, Dallam acknowledges that racial homogeneity, and possibly even an underlying belief in white supremacy, is part of cowboy culture; yet, for reasons briefly outlined, she does not use race as a lens for analysis. However, she does eagerly tackle issues of gender and sexuality, with laudable balance and sensitivity, because her goal is sociocultural understanding, not polemical agitation. In fact, as an evangelical myself, I applaud Dallam for her delicate and respectful tone, which avoids much of the condescension and judgment that in some ways inspires the very cowboy subculture she has written about. Even if those she interviewed choose to disagree with some of her conclusions, few should question Dallam's original intent, nor will many scholars find her critical assessments lacking in bite. I should add that the book is not only about church services, but also explores Christian consumerism, sport, and the growing dichotomies between rural and urban life, or perhaps more accurately, between exurban and suburban life. In short, this is a good book that deserves a wide audience. It is a slice of modern Americana. One could quibble with the methodology, the bibliography, or the failure to chase a few seductive rabbits. But at the end of the day, one should not question its interdisciplinary value. [End Page 243] Sean P. Cunningham Texas Tech University Copyright © 2018 The Texas State Historical Association

Coming Home

Coming Home

Innocent Experiments: Childhood and the Culture of Popular Science in the United States by Rebecca Onion

Reviewed by: Innocent Experiments: Childhood and the Culture of Popular Science in the United States by Rebecca Onion John L. Rudolph (bio) Innocent Experiments: Childhood and the Culture of Popular Science in the United States. By Rebecca Onion. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016. Pp. 240. $29.95. Many of us (at least those of a certain age) can recall a variety of childhood experiences with science. There were the chemistry sets that showed us how to produce dramatic color changes in a test tube, the science fairs where we could watch a simulated volcano fizz and bubble, and field trips to science museums where we encountered awe-inspiring displays that excited our interest in the natural world. These are the activities Rebecca Onion chronicles in her book, Innocent Experiments: Childhood and the [End Page 197] Culture of Popular Science in the United States. In this work, Onion examines the “emotional pedagogy” that occurred in various spaces outside of the formal school curriculum, where children encountered science with all its social and cultural appurtenances and explores, in particular, the longstanding association between ideas of childhood curiosity and scientific thinking—the idea that the young child is a scientist by nature in her wonderment about the world around her. Throughout, she applies a cultural lens to consider how issues of race, gender, and class were woven through the fabric of the out-of-school activities she describes. Although there is no strong historical narrative connecting the various episodes of the book, each contributes in its own way to our understanding of how science and children have come together in a variety of informal settings during the course of the twentieth century. She opens with a look at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, where white, middle-class children were provided their own space to internalize adult values of “community building, carefulness, and thrift” as they collected and studied birds, minerals, and other natural objects. This is followed by a historically rich look at the efforts of chemical manufacturers and commercial toy companies to sell chemistry sets to boys in the interwar years. The detailed instructions they provided for putting on “chemical magic” shows for appreciative audiences—with the help of an assistant dressed as “an Ethiopian slave”—are particularly fascinating. Onion goes on in the longest chapter (which seems more a stand-alone piece than an integral part of the whole) to detail the history of the Science Service and Westinghouse-sponsored science talent searches following World War II, using it to argue for a shift in the public perception of science from something to encourage for its natural ability to inspire (as depicted in the Brooklyn Children’s Museum of the early 1900s) to a career goal to which adolescents might aspire. The last two chapters cover young adult science fiction novels of the 1950s and the story of the founding of the Exploratorium in San Francisco in 1969. The discussion of science fiction centers on the writings of Robert Heinlein, of Stranger in a Strange Land fame, and his efforts to reassert a vision of rugged individualism for boys in the face of the overly feminized culture of mid-1950s America. In the story of the Exploratorium, Onion comes back to the theme of youthful delight and engagement with the wonders of science. She relates the radical vision of free play and active engagement that the founder Frank Oppenheimer (brother of Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb) advanced in the space of the museum. It was a place where even adults could be children again as they pushed, pulled, and climbed on the various elements of each exhibit. Beyond the delightful stories of the individual chapters and the rich historical details they contain, it’s difficult to see any strong argument being made about the interactions between children and science across these spaces and times. Onion makes her points about the exclusion of girls [End Page 198] and the privileging of middle-class sensibilities and whiteness along the way, to be sure. But these points don’t seem to tell us much about the particular issue of how children and science came together—they could be...

Recent American Stupidity

The New Deal: In the early 1930’s, Americans did not perceive giant business organizations as “Governing bodies” but as eminently successful rugged individuals. Another part of American fiction was that the nominal government in Washington had some kind of power to control events and the knowledge to do so beneficently.1 Actually, a private organization determined the daily life of the average citizen–when to get up in the morning, what to eat, what to wear, what working conditions would be and how leisure time would be spent.1 FDR changed all that.2 The government now goes beyond just governing. However ineffective it may be, the bureaucracy attempts to control us and virtually every aspect of our daily lives. The other big change in thinking–i.e., a paradigm shift3–which occurred during the 1930’s was that the “People” were mixed into the Government=Business equation. All the regulations which had been cultivated by the business community to harness government to the promotion and development of corporations4 were converted into mechanisms of government regulation over the industrial complex.5 The change occurred for the best of reasons—it had to. The business community had been granted the license to run itself and the country into the ground and then had proceeded to do precisely that. Had necessity not been quite so compelling at the time, Americans would have been more reluctant than they were to convert from worshiping big business to worshiping big government. Rituals and jargon all favored the status morbus. The only problem was pragmatic—the system did not work. Of course, nothing the befuddled New Dealers did for eight years worked very effectively either until World War II bailed the country out of the Depression. In a general and abstract sense, the New Deal amounted to an admission that the old beliefs in capitalism and the mechanisms by which business controlled politics worked to everyone’s worst interest. The new, emerging schema was based on belief in legislation6 designed to help people by limiting business. Unfortunately, the pragmatic result of FDR’s effort to surpass Wilson’s progressive warfare state was not government by law but by organization. Although the underlying principles upon which government is based may be theoretically sound, human organizations take on selfserving lives of their own. Hence, the efforts to realize our ideals by legislating control resulted in strangling business with fascistic regulations,7 but the president’s efforts were appreciated by some: in 1934, an expression of admiration for his “Successful battle against economic distress” was received2 from none other than financial analyst Adolf Hitler.8

Natural Disasters and the Rhetorical Construction of American Values: Community Exceptionalism as Representative Anecdote

ABSTRACTThis study examines the rhetoric of U.S. senators and representatives regarding natural disasters in their home states. Using Kenneth Burke’s dramatism, we examine four model speeches by members of Congress and identify the representative anecdote of community exceptionalism. This anecdote portrays disaster-affected communities as exemplars of rugged individualism, patriotism, and faith, and thus worthy of national praise and federal aid. In this anecdote, aid becomes partly contingent upon the exhibition of a set of values rather than simply upon the material conditions of the disaster. Moreover, the term community exceptionalism—like any term—creates both unity and division, as linguistic concepts cannot be understood without contrasting dialectical terms. Thus, following Burke’s conceptions of order, hierarchy, and perfection, the representative anecdote points toward American exceptionalism, where conceptions of American uniqueness and moral superiority are sustained and renewed by the subtle themes within speeches that are ostensibly about comforting disaster victims and securing federal aid for devastated communities.

Hope in Hard Times: Norvelt and the Struggle for Community during the Great Depression, The Mutual Housing Experiment: New Deal Communities for the Urban Middle Class

Hope in Hard Times: Norvelt and the Struggle for Community during the Great Depression, The Mutual Housing Experiment: New Deal Communities for the Urban Middle Class

KSHV episomes: rugged individualists on the factory floor

We have recently developed tools to study Kaposi’s sarcoma-associated virus (KSHV) reactivation at the single-episome level. Using immunofluorescent labeling of latent nuclear antigen (LANA) protein to localize viral episomes, combined with fluorescence in situ RNA hybridization (RNA-FISH) of an intron region of immediate early transcripts, we have visualized active transcription of viral genomes in infected cells. At this level, we observed that not all episomes within a single cell were uniformly transcribed following reactivation stimuli. However, those episomes that were transcribed, formed large aggregates containing a significant fraction of cellular RNA polymerase II (RNAPII), foci consistent with previously described viral transcriptional factories. This focal assembly of RNAPII on viral episomes was accompanied by an overall decrease in the pool of cellular RNAPII. Additionally, the viral transcriptional factories localized with replicating viral genomic DNAs. This co-localization suggests that KSHV may assemble an “all-in-one” workroom for both gene transcription and DNA replication. While previous studies have reported on the variable response of individual KSHV infected cells or episomes derived from a population during reactivation, our results expose this variation further by demonstrating heterogeneity in the response of individual KSHV episomes within a single reactivating cell.

The Cinema of Cruelty: Olympus Has Fallen and the Action-Spectacle Aesthetic

Abstract Olympus Has Fallen is one of the most blatant pieces of right-wing propaganda to emerge in recent Hollywood cinema. The US president, with the help of Secret Service member Mike Banning, asserts his rugged individualism against a horde of invading North Koreans. Given that the film’s blustering about freedom in the face of the evil Other is ethically and aesthetically puerile, what about the film appeals to the viewer? Is the political configuration of the film indeed reducible to the dimension of message over medium? Drawing on Herbert Marcuse’s The Aesthetic Dimension, this article suggests that the putative “message” of Olympus Has Fallen is in fact undercut by the nature of its engagement with the viewer at the level of the spectacle. The article, furthermore, hypothesizes a distinction between modes of spectacle in action cinema—“cinematic-spectacle” and “action-spectacle”—through comparative analysis of the screen-spectator relationship in Olympus Has Fallen and Avatar.

Operation Coffeecup: Ronald Reagan, Rugged Individualism, and the Debate over “Socialized Medicine”

Abstract In 1961, the American Medical Association (AMA) funded a persuasive campaign called Operation Coffeecup. The campaign, which was designed to defeat Medicare, featured a speech by a young Ronald Reagan outlining the dangers of “socialized medicine.” The speech was recorded on a long-play record and distributed to the Women’s Auxiliary of the AMA, a group primarily composed of the wives of doctors who were instructed to write seemingly spontaneous letters to Congress detailing their opposition to the program. This essay investigates Operation Coffeecup mainly through a rhetorical analysis of Reagan’s speech. I argue that “socialized medicine” drew upon a problematic articulation of American culture that privileges the individual at the expense of the larger community. I conclude by discussing the thread of individualism that has persisted in the United States from the pre-Depression era mythos of rugged individualism to neoliberal discourses that shape debates about health policy today.

Hugh Glass: Grizzly Survivor by James D. McLaird

Reviewed by: Hugh Glass: Grizzly Survivor by James D. McLaird Steven J. Bucklin Hugh Glass: Grizzly Survivor. By James D. McLaird. Pierre: South Dakota Historical Society Press, 2016. xx + 228 pp. Illustrations, map, notes, bibliography, index. $14.95 paper. Growing up in Mobridge, South Dakota, I could look west across the Missouri River and see a vista of buttes and high plains that memorialized three people who filled the stories my father told me. Two of them—Tatanka Iyotanka and Sacagawea—had monuments on a bluff, but Hugh Glass did not. Like the two others, though, his physical and spiritual journey served, and still does, as a monument of inspiration for generations of Americans. James D. McLaird, professor emeritus of history at Dakota Wesleyan University, in Hugh Glass: Grizzly Survivor, requires the reader to ask, though, inspiration for what? For the sort of rugged individualism that many Americans have promoted since colonial times? Perhaps it serves a greater purpose as inspiration for the search for truth. In that pursuit, McLaird has written a gem of a book for the South Dakota Biography Series. Because of limited direct evidence about Glass, McLaird set himself the task of "blazing a different trail." Along the way, McLaird uses Plains history to bring the reader closer to the truth about Hugh Glass. He also uses the "perhapses" and "what ifs" surrounding the legend of Glass to deconstruct it through careful analysis of the limited primary sources, as well as the abundant monographs, articles, novels, and films. He does this in almost the opposite way that, say, Natalie Davis uses conjecture to reconstruct Bertrande de Rols in The Return of Martin Guerre. McLaird demonstrates that there are limits to what history can tell us about "the truth." He demonstrates that many of the "facts" of the Glass legend—his dutiful participation in Major Andrew Henry's party, his survival of multiple Native American attacks and a grizzly attack, his "crawl" across the plains—are either contested or unsubstantiated across the secondary literature and primary sources. In fact, there is something of a heroic template novelists and historians alike have used to develop the legend of Glass that may bring about an entertaining story, but does "not result in good history." McLaird concludes that whatever "the truth of his story," Glass "stands out as a legendary figure embodying traits that Americans revere." If those same Americans also revere the search for truth about themselves and their heroes, whether on the plains of Dakota or elsewhere, this book is a great place to start. Steven J. Bucklin Department of History University of South Dakota Copyright © 2017 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln

Becoming a Person of Dialogue

AbstractIt is imperative that Social Sciences examine in depth the underlying issues in human relations that have contributed to divisions among persons, within families, institutions, between nations and religions. If we accept that dialogue is the main currency of statecraft, diplomacy, negotiation, mediation and peacebuilding (Rieker and Turn 2015), then we need to ask ourselves, what are the characteristics of a person capable of engaging in dialogue? Are they characteristics that can be taught? Are they characteristics that make us human?In his book “Relational Being” Gergen (2009) warns of the dire consequences we face if we continue on the pathway of “rugged individualism”. He explains how our relationships have become instruments for our own satisfaction. From Freud to Skinner, psychology has described human relationships as being primarily about seeking the greatest pleasure from others. But, the so-called “freedom” that we achieve gives us a satisfaction that is transitory at best. “Freedom contains an emptiness that only relationship can fill” (Gergen, 2009, p. 20). It is essential that we find the path to discovering the true meaning of relationship and more importantly cross-racial/ethnic relationships.Jean Baker Miller described what she termed “growth-fostering relationships” (Miller, 1986), and Chodorow (2001) has developed a theory regarding development suggesting that women develop along a relational pathway whereas men follow the developmental phases that move them toward autonomy. These theorists, and others, view the relational trait to be particularly characteristic of women. A more comprehensive understanding of the nature of the human person can be attained only by taking into consideration both autonomy and relational ability as equally important.Capacity for dialogue, therefore, is an important contribution that women bring to the world stage. Women from traditionally marginalized groups offer an essential and unique perspective to this topic due to their understanding of the role of power in the dynamics of relationships. To foster cross-cultural dialogue it is important to examine the power dynamics of what it means to be honest, empathetic and collaborative across cultures.In this discussion, the authors draw upon the fields of technology, child development, feminism, and the social justice literature in an attempt to articulate the benefits of dialogue. It is far from exhaustive and provides a cursory purview of this challenging topic. It is an example of how integration among different theories can help move our literature forward in understanding a challenging topic as dialogue. It also offers a perspective on how men and women can grow in their relationship building ability, and therefore ability to dialogue, by embracing characteristics like being vulnerable, cooperative, selfless, and nurturing, relating this to the teachings of Chiara Lubich.

Social media use by physicians: a qualitative study of the new frontier of medicine.

BackgroundA growing number of physicians are using social media as a professional platform for health communication. The purpose of this study was to understand perspectives and experiences of these “early adopter” physician bloggers and social media users.MethodsThis was an exploratory qualitative study involving in-depth semi-structured telephone interviews of physicians who were early adopters, defined as physicians who used social media to distribute health information. Participants were recruited through snowball sampling. Interview transcripts were manually analyzed for common themes by three separate investigators who came to common conclusions via the constant comparative method.ResultsSeventeen physicians participated in this study, including 35 % females, 76 % pediatricians and 76 % bloggers. Participants identified multiple perceived benefits and barriers to social media use by physicians; further, four major themes were identified. First, participants often saw themselves as rugged individualists who set their own rules for social media health communications. Second, participants expressed uncertainty about boundaries or strategies for social media use. Third, participants described using social media much like traditional media, as a one-way communication platform, rather than as an interactive forum. Finally, participants expressed disparate views regarding the time involved in participating in social media; some felt that time spent on social media was unproblematic to fit into their day while others felt that it was an impediment to patient care.ConclusionsUncertainty remains regarding roles and responsibilities of physicians providing medical content within social media forums and few providers appeared to be using the platform to its full potential. Future studies may inform best practices to optimize social media health communication to benefit patients.