scholarly journals Why Pandemics Matter to the History of U.S. State Development

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 315-333
Author(s):  
Stephen Colbrook
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War I ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
The United States ◽  
State Governments ◽  
World War ◽  
Playing Field ◽  
History Of

When a new strain of influenza circled the globe in the fall and winter of 1918, it swept through the United States at terrifying speed, infecting at least 25 million Americans—roughly one-quarter of the population—over the next two years. Based on any metric, the pandemic was the country's largest mass-mortality episode of the twentieth century, killing approximately 675,000 Americans and surpassing the death toll of World War I. Even as the virus struck the United States with unprecedented ferocity, however, the federal government left most public health decisions to the states, producing a disjointed and hyper-localized approach to a crisis that was national and global in scope. In the absence of a strong federal role, state governments carved out their own policy paths, adopting widely divergent strategies to stem the spread of the disease. This preventive playing field was wildly uneven. Some states were well-equipped with robust public health infrastructures; others lacked the tools to manage the disease's rampant spread.

scholarly journals PLAYING ON UNCLE SAM'S TEAM: AMERICAN CHILDHOODS DURING WORLD WAR I

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 677-690 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mischa Honeck
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Young People ◽  
World War I ◽  
Children And Adolescents ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Childhood And Youth ◽  
Constructions Of Childhood

If World War I has interested historians of the United States considerably less than other major wars, it is also true that children rank among the most neglected actors in the literature that exists on the topic. This essay challenges this limited understanding of the roles children and adolescents played in this transformative period by highlighting their importance in three different realms. It shows how childhood emerged as a contested resource in prewar debates over militarist versus pacifist education; examines the affective power of images of children—American as well as foreign—in U.S. wartime propaganda; and maps various social arenas in which the young engaged with the war on their own account. While constructions of childhood and youth as universally valid physical and developmental categories gained greater currency in the early twentieth century, investigations of young people in wartime reveal how much the realities of childhood and youth differed according to gender, class, race, region, and age.

A (Very Selective) Early History of Ballet in America

Ballet Class ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 3-24
Author(s):  
Melissa R. Klapper
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Young People ◽  
World War I ◽  
The United States ◽  
Early History ◽  
World War ◽  
Ballet Dancers ◽  
Metropolitan Opera ◽  
History Of

Ballet developed slowly in the United States and depended on European dancers and teachers at first, but by mid-nineteenth century a few American-trained ballet dancers were beginning to make their mark. The opening of the Metropolitan Opera Ballet School in 1909 and the tours of Anna Pavlova contributed greatly to popularizing ballet and inspiring young people to begin taking ballet class before World War I. Expansion continued from the 1920s through the 1940s with the founding of the School of American Ballet and the performances of the various Ballet Russe companies in every corner of the country. The Littlefield sisters and Christensen brothers helped make ballet American by establishing important homegrown ballet companies with primarily American dancers. The regional ballet movement fostered further growth. All these developments in professional ballet encouraged ever-increasing numbers of Americans not only to enjoy performances but also to take ballet class themselves.

Evergreen: The First U.S. Veterans’ Blind Rehabilitation Center

2019 ◽  
Vol 113 (2) ◽  
pp. 180-193
Author(s):  
Gregory L. Goodrich ◽  
Tom Zampieri
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War I ◽  
Role Model ◽  
Vision Loss ◽  
The United States ◽  
Rehabilitation Program ◽  
World War ◽  
Rehabilitation Facility ◽  
Adult Inpatient ◽  
History Of

Evergreen was a World War I (WWI) adult, inpatient vocational rehabilitation facility for war-blind soldiers, sailors, and marines in the United States. Although Evergreen shared similarities with European war-blind rehabilitation organizations, it was novel in its philosophy and approach. It was also unlike any civilian blind rehabilitation program of its day. Although there are no comprehensive records known to us of how many troops became blind or sustained vision loss during WWI, studying published reports of the veterans served by Evergreen provides some insight into this population. As the United States’ only blind rehabilitation facility for adults, Evergreen achieved several firsts, including having a national scope, being racially integrated (at least to some degree), and innovating a residential family training program. A role model of its day, it is now largely a footnote in the history of blind rehabilitation. We argue that the story of Evergreen contains lessons that should be remembered.

The Presidents of the United States in the Eyes of Austro-Hungarian Diplomats: 1901–1913

1966 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 153-171
Author(s):  
Margaret Sterne
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War I ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Historical Events

The interpretation of unpublished political documents in the light of known historical events resembles Penelope's efforts to convince her many suitors of the necessity of her avowed goal, namely to fabricate a new garment out of old material. The Austro-Hungarian diplomatic reports from Washington written in the first two decades of the twentieth century will not necessarily provoke a re-evaluation of the events leading to World War I. However, as in Penelope's case, their craftsmanship will arouse interest; they may well serve as a new source of study, and they certainly shed new light on old material.

In Defense of Justice

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eileen H. Tamura
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
The United States ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
Japanese Americans ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
World War ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

As a leading dissident in the World War II concentration camps for Japanese Americans, Joseph Yoshisuke Kurihara stands out as an icon of Japanese American resistance. In this biography, Kurihara's life provides a window into the history of Japanese Americans during the first half of the twentieth century. Born in Hawaiʻi to Japanese parents who immigrated to work on the sugar plantations, Kurihara was transformed by the forced removal and incarceration of ethnic Japanese during World War II. As an inmate at Manzanar in California, Kurihara became one of the leaders of a dissident group within the camp and was implicated in “the Manzanar incident,” a serious civil disturbance that erupted on December 6, 1942. In 1945, after three years and seven months of incarceration, he renounced his U.S. citizenship and boarded a ship for Japan, never to return to the United States. Shedding light on the turmoil within the camps as well as the sensitive and formerly unspoken issue of citizenship renunciation among Japanese Americans, this book explores one man's struggles with the complexities of loyalty and dissent.

Brainstorming Revisited

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-69
Author(s):  
Claudia Mareis
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Creativity Research ◽  
Human Creativity ◽  
Self Actualization ◽  
History Of

This article discusses a particular strand in the history of creativity in the mid-twentieth century shaped by an instrumental, production-oriented understanding of the term. When the field of creativity research emerged in the United States after World War II, debates around creativity were driven not only by humanist intents of self-actualization but also by the aim of rendering individual creative potentials productive for both society and economy. Creativity was thus defined in terms of not mere novelty and originality but utility and productivity. There was a strong interest, too, in methods and techniques that promised to systematically enhance human creativity. In this context, the article looks at the formation of brainstorming, a group-based creativity method that came into fashion in the United States around 1950. It discusses how this method had been influenced by concepts of human productivity developed and applied during World War II and prior to it. Using the brainstorming method as a case in point, this article aims not only to shed light on the quite uncharted history of creativity in the mid-twentieth century, but also to stress the conducive role of allegedly trivial creativity methods in the rise of what sociologist Andreas Reckwitz has identified as the “creativity dispositif”: a seemingly playful, but indeed rigid, imperative in post-Fordist and neoliberal societies that demand the constant production of innovative outcomes under flexible, yet self-exploitative working conditions.

“Steeped in Greek Mythology”

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheila Murnaghan ◽  
Deborah H. Roberts
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War I ◽  
The United States ◽  
Greek Mythology ◽  
World War ◽  
Classical Myth ◽  
Folklore Studies ◽  
American Children ◽  
The Impact

This chapter surveys myth retellings for children in the first half of the twentieth century, mostly in anthologies but also in other fictional forms in which modern children interact with figures from classical myth. Key developments include the impact of anthropology and folklore studies, the emergence of the United States as a center of children’s publishing after World War I, questions about the relevance of myth to American children, the assimilation of myths to fables and tall tales, innovative approaches to illustration, and mid-century nostalgia for earlier myth books. Among the authors discussed are Andrew Lang, Padraic Colum, James Daugherty, Robert McCloskey, Edith Hamilton, Roger Lancelyn Green, and Ingri and Edgar Parin D’Aulaire.

From Workshop to Factory: The Evolution of the Instrument-Making Industry, 1850–1930

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paolo Brenni
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War I ◽  
Precision Measurement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Scientific Instruments ◽  
Measurement Instruments ◽  
World War ◽  
Instrument Making ◽  
History Of ◽  
Materials Used

This article focuses on the evolution and transformations of the instrument-making industry between 1850 and 1930. It begins with an overview of some broad categories of instruments, namely: research and precision measurement instruments, didactic and teaching instruments, industrial instruments, professional instruments, and scientific instruments. It then examines the history of the production of physics instruments and how workshops were organized, along with some of the techniques and materials used in the production of instruments. It also discusses the advertising, trading, and selling of instruments during the period; how instrument-makers in France, Britain, and Germany fared; the state of instrument-making from 1900 to World War I; and instrument-making in the United States and other countries in Europe. Finally, it evaluates instrument-making during the inter-war years.

Mythologies Without End

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jerome Slater
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War I ◽  
The United States ◽  
Early Years ◽  
War And Peace ◽  
World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
Entire History ◽  
Historical Truth ◽  
The Cold War

Every nation has narratives or stories it tells itself about its history but which typically contain factually false or misleading mythologies that often result in devastating consequences for itself and for others. In the case of Israel and its indispensable ally, the United States, the central mythology is “the Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity,” as the Israeli diplomat Abba Eban famously said in a 1973 statement that has been widely quoted ever since. However, the historical truth is very nearly the converse: it is Israel and the United States that have repeatedly lost or deliberately dismissed many opportunities to reach fair compromise settlements of the Arab-Israeli and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts. The book reexamines the entire history of the conflict from its onset at the end of World War I through today. Part I begins with a reconsideration of Zionism and then examines the origins and early years of the Arab-Israeli state conflict. One chapter is devoted to the question of what accounts for the nearly unconditional US support of Israel throughout the entire conflict. Part II focuses on war and peace in the Arab-Israeli state conflict from 1948 through today, arguing that all the major wars—in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973—could and should have been avoided. This section also includes an examination of the Cold War and its impact on the Arab-Israeli conflict. Part III covers the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from 1917 through today, and examines the prospects for a two-state or other settlement of the conflict.

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