Peter N. Stearns. American Cool: Constructing a Twentieth-Century Emotional Style. (History of Emotions Series, number 3.) New York: New York University Press. 1994. Pp. ix, 368. Cloth $45.00, paper $19.95

2011 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 331-339 ◽  
Author(s):  
Glen Gendzel

When Professor Benjamin Parke De Witt of New York University sat down to write the first history of the progressive movement in 1915, he promised “to give form and definiteness to a movement which is, in the minds of many, confused and chaotic.” Apparently it was a fool's errand, because confusion and chaos continued to plague historians of early twentieth-century reform long after Professor De Witt laid his pen to rest. The maddening variety of reform and reformers in the early twentieth century has perpetually confounded historians' efforts to identify what, if anything, the progressives had in common. Back in the 1950s, Richard Hofstadter charitably allowed that progressives were “of two minds on many issues,” whereas Arthur Link argued that “the progressive movement never really existed” because it pursued so many “contradictory objectives.” In the 1960s, Robert Wiebe concluded that the progressives, if they constituted a movement at all, showed “little regard for consistency.” In the 1970s, Peter Filene wrote an “obituary” for progressivism by reasserting Link's claim that the movement had “never existed” because it was so divided and diffuse. In the 1980s, Daniel Rodgers tried to recast the “ideologically fluid” progressive movement as a pastiche of vaguely related rhetorical styles. By the 1990s, so many competing characterizations of progressivism had emerged that Alan Dawley wondered if “they merely cancel each other out.” In 2002, Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore declared emphatically that “historians cannot agree” on progressivism. In 2010, Walter Nugent admitted that “the movement's core theme has been hard to pin down” because progressivism had “many concerns” and “included a wide range of persons and groups.”


2003 ◽  
Vol 77 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 127-196
Author(s):  
Redactie KITLV

-Philip D. Morgan, Marcus Wood, Blind memory: Visual representations of slavery in England and America 1780-1865. New York: Routledge, 2000. xxi + 341 pp.-Rosemarijn Hoefte, Ron Ramdin, Arising from bondage: A history of the Indo-Caribbean people. New York: New York University Press, 2000. x + 387 pp.-Flávio dos Santos Gomes, David Eltis, The rise of African slavery in the Americas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. xvii + 353 pp.-Peter Redfield, D. Graham Burnett, Masters of all they surveyed: Exploration, geography, and a British El Dorado. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. xv + 298 pp.-Bernard Moitt, Eugenia O'Neal, From the field to the legislature: A history of women in the Virgin Islands. Westport CT: Greenwood Press, 2001. xiii + 150 pp.-Allen M. Howard, Nemata Amelia Blyden, West Indians in West Africa, 1808-1880: The African Diaspora in reverse. Rochester NY: University of Rochester Press, 2000. xi + 258 pp.-Michaeline A. Crichlow, Kari Levitt, The George Beckford papers. Kingston: Canoe Press, 2000. lxxi + 468 pp.-Michaeline A. Crichlow, Audley G. Reid, Community formation; A study of the 'village' in postemancipation Jamaica. Kingston: Canoe Press, 2000. xvi + 156 pp.-Linden Lewis, Brian Meeks, Narratives of resistance: Jamaica, Trinidad, the Caribbean. Kingston: University of the West Indies Press, 2000. xviii + 240 pp.-Roderick A. McDonald, Bridget Brereton, Law, justice, and empire: The colonial career of John Gorrie, 1829-1892. Kingston: University of the West Indies Press, 1997. xx + 371 pp.-Karl Watson, Gary Lewis, White rebel: The life and times of TT Lewis. Kingston: University of the West Indies Press, 1999. xxvii + 214 pp.-Mary Turner, Armando Lampe, Mission or submission? Moravian and Catholic missionaries in the Dutch Caribbean during the nineteenth century. Göttingen, FRG: Vandenburg & Ruprecht, 2001. 244 pp.-O. Nigel Bolland, Anton L. Allahar, Caribbean charisma: Reflections on leadership, legitimacy and populist politics. Kingston: Ian Randle; Boulder CO: Lynne Rienner, 2001. xvi + 264 pp.-Bill Maurer, Cynthia Weber, Faking it: U.S. Hegemony in a 'post-phallic' era. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999. xvi + 151 pp.-Kelvin Santiago-Valles, Christina Duffy Burnett ,Foreign in a domestic sense: Puerto Rico, American expansion, and the constitution. Durham NC: Duke University Press, 2001. xv + 422 pp., Burke Marshall (eds)-Rubén Nazario, Efrén Rivera Ramos, The legal construction of identity: The judicial and social legacy of American colonialism in Puerto Rico. Washington DC: American Psychological Association, 2000. 275 pp.-Marc McLeod, Louis A. Pérez, Jr., Winds of change: Hurricanes and the transformation of nineteenth-century Cuba. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001. x + 199 pp.-Jorge L. Giovannetti, Fernando Martínez Heredia ,Espacios, silencios y los sentidos de la libertad: Cuba entre 1878 y 1912. Havana: Ediciones Unión, 2001. 359 pp., Rebecca J. Scott, Orlando F. García Martínez (eds)-Reinaldo L. Román, Miguel Barnet, Afro-Cuban religions. Princeton NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2001. 170 pp.-Philip W. Scher, Hollis 'Chalkdust' Liverpool, Rituals of power and rebellion: The carnival tradition in Trinidad and Tobago, 1763-1962. Chicago: Research Associates School Times Publications and Frontline distribution international, 2001. xviii + 518 pp.-Asmund Weltzien, David Griffith ,Fishers at work, workers at sea: A Puerto Rican journey through labor and refuge. Philadelphia PA: Temple University Press, 2002. xiv + 265 pp., Manuel Valdés Pizzini (eds)-Riva Berleant-Schiller, Eudine Barriteau, The political economy of gender in the twentieth-century Caribbean. New York: Palgrave, 2001. xvi + 214 pp.-Edward Dew, Rosemarijn Hoefte ,Twentieth-century Suriname: Continuities and discontinuities in a new world society. Kingston: Ian Randle; Leiden: KITLV Press, 2001. xvi + 365 pp., Peter Meel (eds)-Joseph L. Scarpaci, Jonathan Benjamin-Alvarado, Power to the people: Energy and the Cuban nuclear program. New York: Routledge, 2000. xiii + 178 pp.-Lynn M. Festa, Keith A. Sandiford, The cultural politics of sugar: Caribbean slavery and narratives of colonialism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 221 pp.-Maria Christina Fumagalli, John Thieme, Derek Walcott. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999. xvii + 251 pp.-Laurence A. Breiner, Stewart Brown, All are involved: The art of Martin Carter. Leeds U.K.: Peepal Tree, 2000. 413 pp.-Mikael Parkvall, John Holm, An introduction to Pidgins and Creoles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. xxi + 282 pp.


Author(s):  
Andrea Harris

The Conclusion briefly examines the current state of the New York City Ballet under the auspices of industrial billionaire David H. Koch at Lincoln Center. In so doing, it to introduces a series of questions, warranting still more exploration, about the rapid and profound evolution of the structure, funding, and role of the arts in America through the course of the twentieth century. It revisits the historiographical problem that drives Making Ballet American: the narrative that George Balanchine was the sole creative genius who finally created an “American” ballet. In contrast to that hagiography, the Conclusion reiterates the book’s major contribution: illuminating the historical construction of our received idea of American neoclassical ballet within a specific set of social, political, and cultural circumstances. The Conclusion stresses that the history of American neoclassicism must be seen as a complex narrative involving several authors and discourses and crossing national and disciplinary borders: a history in which Balanchine was not the driving force, but rather the outcome.


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