Americans All: World War II and the Shaping of American Identity

1981 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 483-518 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Gleason
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Identity ◽  
World War ◽  
American Life ◽  
Present Essay ◽  
The Subject ◽  
General Studies ◽  
Wartime Experience

Although it is four decades since the United States entered World War II, some aspects of the nation's wartime experience are still virtually unstudied. Military and diplomatic historians have labored productively for many years, but historians interested in American social and intellectual developments are just beginning to turn their attention to the wartime era. Recent general studies by Richard Polenberg and John M. Blum are especially welcome since, by drawing greater attention to the period, they should stimulate further research. There is much left to be done because the war affected practically every dimension of American life. The present essay deals with one of its less obvious effects —the way in which it shaped the thinking of a whole generation on the subject of American identity.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura E. Ruberto ◽  
Joseph Sciorra
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Brain Drain ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Identity ◽  
World War ◽  
Italian American ◽  
Migration History ◽  
European Migration

This introductory essay documents the data of Italian migration to the United States from 1945 to the present and offers organizational categories through which to better conceptualize these seventy years of migration. Post-World War II Italians were mostly working class immigrants and constituted town-based Italian diasporas, while the last four decades have witnessed elite immigrants, or professionals considered a brain drain, leaving Italy for the United States (and elsewhere). Immigrant replenishment by new or “real Italians” greatly impacted the preexisting and still-developing sense of Italian American identity with its changing notions of race and style, and patterns of consumerism. By reconceptualizing migration history, this essay seeks to assess more generally how ongoing European migration is related to the continual development of postmodern notions of Italian ethnicity.

TOP-DOWN RELIGION AND THE DESIGN OF POST-WORLD WAR II AMERICAN PLURALISM

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 233-243
Author(s):  
R. LAURENCE MOORE
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
American Culture ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central Component ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
World War ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Islamic Movements ◽  
The Subject

Academics are falsely rumored to have a low regard for religion. Although Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, authors of The God Delusion and God Is Not Great, respectively, made atheism a best-selling subject in the United States, it is not coincidental that Hitchens and Dawkins are English. They were educated in a country where a strident antipathy toward religion is not unpatriotic. American atheists with as much brass are rare. Kicking religion around cannot be an American sport because, from colonial to contemporary times, religion has been a central component of American culture. To be sure, a lot of scholarly criticism has been directed at right-wing Christian and Islamic movements. But scholars whose personal views on faith incline them to echo Hitchens's mordant formula that “religion poisons everything” should probably look for a country other than the United States to study. The recent books of historians and sociologists of American religion have taken a tone toward the subject that has ranged from gentle to friendly.

The United States, Italy, and the Opening to the Left, 1953–1963

2002 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 36-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leopoldo Nuti
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
Test Case ◽  
World War ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Cold War

Drawing on newly declassified U.S. and Italian documentation, this article as-sesses U.S. policy toward Italy under the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations and uses this test case to draw some general conclusions about the nature of U.S. -Italian relations during the Cold War. The first part of the article focuses on issues that have been neglected or misinterpreted in the existing literature on the subject, and the second part presents some of the lessons that can be learned from the study of U.S. -Italian relations in the 1950s and 1960s. The aim is to cast broader light on the current debate about the role and influence of the United States in Western Europe after World War II.

Making History Visible

2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-46
Author(s):  
Sarah Phillips Casteel
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Visual Art ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Holocaust Memorial ◽  
Memorial Museum ◽  
Field Of Vision ◽  
Camp System ◽  
Wartime Experience

While interned by the Nazis in Belgium and Bavaria during World War II, the little-known Surinamese artist Josef Nassy (1904–76) created a series of paintings and drawings documenting his experiences and those of other black prisoners. Nassy’s artworks uniquely register the presence of Caribbean, African, and African American prisoners in the Nazi camp system. While the Nassy Collection at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum cannot render transparent a wartime experience that has gone largely unrecorded, it illustrates how shifting from a textual to a visual lens can enable an unremembered history to enter our field of vision, thereby generating an alternative wartime narrative. After tracing Nassy’s family history in Suriname and the conditions of his European incarceration, this essay discusses two paintings that demonstrate the significance of visual art in the context of black civilian internment—for both the artist-prisoner and the researcher.

The Liberal Consensus Reconsidered

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
Social Transformations ◽  
Lively Debate ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Definition Of

The paradigm of the “liberal consensus” has critically shaped scholarly understanding of the United States during the two decades after World War II. Both influential and controversial, it remains the subject of lively debate among scholars seeking to explain the political and social transformations of that era. Some historians contest the existence of consensus in post-1945 America, while others employ the term—sometimes unreflectively—as a shorthand descriptor of the contemporary mood. In contrast, this book argues that a revised, nuanced, and dynamic definition of consensus liberalism provides a compelling way to appreciate how the vitality of the postwar economy and the external challenges of the early Cold War shaped the United States in profound ways, both politically and socially.

Bones of Contention: China’s World War II Military Graves in India, Burma, and Papua New Guinea

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linh D. Vu
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Papua New Guinea ◽  
New Guinea ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
Chinese State ◽  
International Status

Abstract Exploring the construction and maintenance of Nationalist Chinese soldiers’ graves overseas, this article sheds light on post-World War II commemorative politics. After having fought for the Allies against Japanese aggression in the China-Burma-India Theater, the Chinese expeditionary troops sporadically received posthumous care from Chinese veterans and diaspora groups. In the Southeast Asia Theater, the Chinese soldiers imprisoned in the Japanese-run camps in Rabaul were denied burial in the Allied war cemetery and recognition as military heroes. Analyzing archival documents from China, Taiwan, Britain, Australia, and the United States, I demonstrate how the afterlife of Chinese servicemen under foreign sovereignties mattered in the making of the modern Chinese state and its international status.

Do We Need a Postmodern Anthropology for Mission in a Postcolonial World?

2011 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-169 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael A. Rynkiewich
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
The United States ◽  
Symbiotic Relationship ◽  
World War ◽  
Fields Of Study ◽  
The Social ◽  
Cross Fertilization

Abstract There was a time when mission studies benefitted from a symbiotic relationship with the social sciences. However, it appears that relationship has stagnated and now is waning. The argument is made here, in the case of cultural anthropology both in Europe and the United States, that a once mutually beneficial though sometimes strained relationship has suffered a parting of the ways in recent decades. First, the article reviews the relationships between missionaries and anthropologists before World War II when it was possible to be a ‘missionary anthropologist’ with a foot in both disciplines. In that period, the conversation went two ways with missionary anthropologists making important contributions to anthropology. Then, the article reviews some aspects of the development of the two disciplines after World War II when increasing professionalism in both disciplines and a postmodern turn in anthropology took the disciplines in different directions. Finally, the article asks whether or not the conversation, and thus the cross-fertilization, can be restarted, especially since the youngest generation of anthropologists has recognized the reality of local Christianities in their fields of study.

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