Bruce Catton, Middlebrow Culture, and the Liberal Search for Purpose in Cold War America

2012 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-126
Author(s):  
ROBERT COOK
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Civil War ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
Middlebrow Culture ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The New Deal

This essay provides a case study of one man's transition from the reform-oriented liberalism of the New Deal period to the burgeoning rights-focussed liberalism of the 1960s. It contends that Bruce Catton, the most popular Civil War historian of his generation, played an influential role in forging the culture of Cold War America. He did so in his capacity as a prominent “middlebrow” intellectual who sought to instil his legions of adoring fans with a sense of moral purpose at a time when political elites were fretting about ordinary Americans' ability to fight the Cold War effectively. While his finely crafted narratives of the Civil War demonstrated the courage and conviction of nineteenth-century Americans, his many public appearances in the 1950s enabled him to disseminate further his conviction that the timeless values of American democracy remained as relevant in the disturbing present as they had been in the country's divided past. Catton's characteristically middlebrow commitment to antiracism as a contribution to the Cold War struggle was by no means unfaltering but an assessment of his writings and actions during the Civil War centennial reveals his continuing determination to render American democracy sufficiently vigorous to counter the ongoing communist threat.

scholarly journals Cultural Trauma of the Civil War of 1918 Staged and Commemorated in Finland

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 102-131
Author(s):  
Pentti Paavolainen
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Cultural Trauma ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Cold War

The Centennial of one of the cruelest of European civil wars fought in Finland between the Reds and the Whites from January to May 1918 has evoked a spectrum of theatre productions illustrating variations of styles and approaches on the events. The turn in the treatment of this cultural trauma occurred with the interpretations and narrative perspectives that were fixed in the 1960s, when an understanding for the defeated Red side was expressed in historiography, literature and theatre. Since that, the last six decades the Finnish theatre and public discourse on the Civil War have been dominated by the Red narrative as the memory of the 1918 Civil War provided an important part in the new identity politics for the 1969 generation. Since the 1980’s the topic was mostly put aside so that before the 2018 revivals of the Civil War topic, the productions seem to have been reactions by the artists confronting the developments at the end of the Cold War. Some theatrical events can even be tied to the cultural trauma of the 1969 left evoked by the collapse of the socialist block. The Centennial productions repeated the Red narrative but they also provided more balanced interpretationson the tragic events.

SOCIAL POLITICS IN A TRANSOCEANIC WORLD IN THE EARLY COLD WAR YEARS

2010 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 401-421 ◽  
Author(s):  
JONATHAN BELL
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
New Deal ◽  
The United States ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The New Deal

ABSTRACTThis article argues that those termed ‘liberals’ in the United States had the opportunity in the late 1940s to use overseas case studies to reshape the ramshackle political agenda of the New Deal along more specifically social democratic lines, but that they found it impossible to match interest in the wider world with a concrete programme to overcome tension between left-wing politics and the emerging anti-totalitarianism of the Cold War. The American right, by contrast, conducted a highly organized publicity drive to provide new meaning for their anti-statist ideology in a post-New Deal, post-isolationist United States by using perceived failures of welfare states overseas as domestic propaganda. The examples of Labour Britain after 1945 and Labour New Zealand both provided important case studies for American liberals and conservatives, but in the Cold War it was the American right who would benefit most from an ideologically driven repackaging of overseas social policy for an American audience.

Queer Legal History: A Field Grows Up and Comes Out

2011 ◽  
Vol 36 (02) ◽  
pp. 537-559 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felicia Kornbluh
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Legal History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Military Law ◽  
The One ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The New Deal

This essay examines recent scholarship on the legal history of sexuality in the United States. It focuses on Margot Canaday's The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in Modern America (2009) and Marc Stein's Sexual Injustice: Supreme Court Decisions from Griswold to Roe (2010). It also reviews recent work on the history of marriage, including Sarah Barringer Gordon's The Spirit of the Law: Religious Voices and the Constitution in Modern America (2010) and George Chauncey's Why Marriage? The History Shaping Today's Debate Over Gay Equality (2004), and the history of military law Defending America: Military Culture and the Cold‐War Court Martial (2005), by Elizabeth Lutes Hillman. The essay argues that this scholarship is significant because it offers a different view of sex and power than the one derived from the early writing of Michel Foucault. “Queer legal history” treats the liberalism of the 1960s‐1970s as sexually discriminatory as well as liberatory. It underlines the exclusions that were part of public policy under the federal G.I. Bill and the New Deal welfare state.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colleen Doody
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Urban Center ◽  
World War ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
The New Deal

This introductory chapter sets out the book's purpose, namely to explore the beginnings of post-World War II popular conservatism, particularly the glue that held this disparate movement together: anti-Communism. Building upon recent scholarship on conservatism, the book brings their insights to bear on the debate on the nature of early Cold War domestic politics. It argues that the key elements of twentieth-century conservatism—antipathy toward big government, embrace of religious traditionalism, celebration of laissez-faire capitalism, and militant anti-Communism—arose during the 1940s and 1950s out of opposition to the legacy of the New Deal and its modernizing, centralizing, and secularizing ethos. The book examines a specific urban center, Detroit, and grounds its conception of politics in the daily decisions of a wide variety of individuals rather than on the actions of political elites.

Bilateralism, Multilateralism, and the Making of an Alliance Consensus

2019 ◽  
pp. 25-56
Author(s):  
Andrew Yeo
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
South Korea ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
The Us ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Over Time

Chapter 2 recounts the origins of bilateralism in Asia and the legitimization of the US-led hub-and-spokes system among Asian elites during the Cold War. It also outlines the rise of ASEAN in the 1960s. Exploring postwar US alliances forged with the Philippines, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and Thailand, I demonstrate how material threats, institutions, and ideas interact to produce an alliance consensus among political elites in Asia. Despite periodic domestic opposition to US alliances, and the weakness of ASEAN, the hub-and-spokes system and ASEAN become entrenched over time.

scholarly journals T. J. Woofter Jr. and Government Social Science Research During the New Deal, World War II, and the Cold War

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 241-272
Author(s):  
MARK ELLIS
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Social Security ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Central Intelligence Agency ◽  
World War ◽  
Intelligence Agency ◽  
Emergency Relief ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The New Deal

AbstractThe work of southern sociologist Thomas Jackson Woofter Jr. (1893–1972) is frequently cited by American historians, but his contribution to government policy on agriculture in the New Deal, Social Security in the 1940s, and demography in the Cold War remains underappreciated. He left the University of North Carolina to direct government research on rural relief in the 1930s, Social Security enhancement during and after World War II, and foreign population and manpower projections during the Cold War. Contributing to the delivery of essential programs in key agencies, he participated in internal and external debates over policy and social attitudes between 1930 and 1960. Woofter worked for the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, the Works Progress Administration, the Farm Security Agency, the Federal Security Agency, and the Central Intelligence Agency, improving data-gathering and assisting transitions in federal policymaking. This article assesses his role in those agencies, using official records, other primary materials, and secondary sources.

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