The Gay South

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jerry Watkins
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
Class Differences ◽  
Gay History ◽  
Straight Line ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Gender Presentation ◽  
The Cold War

Regional variation, race, gender presentation, and class differences mean that there are many “Gay Souths.” Same-sex desire has been a feature of the human experience since the beginning, but the meanings, expressions, and ability to organize one’s life around desire have shifted profoundly since the invention of sexuality in the mid-19th century. World War II represented a key transition in gay history, as it gave many people a language for their desires. During the Cold War, government officials elided sex, race, and gender transgression with subversion and punished accordingly by state committees. These forces profoundly shaped gay social life, and rather than a straight line from closet to liberation, gays in the South have meandered. Movement rather than stasis, circulation rather than congregation, and the local rather than the stranger as well as creative uses of space and place mean that the gay South is distinctive, though not wholly unique, from the rest of the country.

Creatures of Cain

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erika Lorraine Milam
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
Late Night ◽  
Hollywood Films ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
American Science ◽  
Human Exceptionalism ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Gender

After World War II, the question of how to define a universal human nature took on new urgency. This book charts the rise and precipitous fall in Cold War America of a theory that attributed man's evolutionary success to his unique capacity for murder. The book reveals how the scientists who advanced this “killer ape” theory capitalized on an expanding postwar market in intellectual paperbacks and widespread faith in the power of science to solve humanity's problems, even to answer the most fundamental questions of human identity. The killer ape theory spread quickly from colloquial science publications to late-night television, classrooms, political debates, and Hollywood films. Behind the scenes, however, scientists were sharply divided, their disagreements centering squarely on questions of race and gender. Then, in the 1970s, the theory unraveled altogether when primatologists discovered that chimpanzees also kill members of their own species. While the discovery brought an end to definitions of human exceptionalism delineated by violence, the book shows how some evolutionists began to argue for a shared chimpanzee–human history of aggression even as other scientists discredited such theories as sloppy popularizations. A wide-ranging account of a compelling episode in American science, the book argues that the legacy of the killer ape persists today in the conviction that science can resolve the essential dilemmas of human nature.

scholarly journals In self defense : black female journalists' advocacy in the Cold War

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Rachel (Rachel Lindsey) Grant
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
White Woman ◽  
Black Female ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
Self Defense ◽  
Female Journalists ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Cold War

"Mary Church Terrell, Black female journalist and civil rights activist, stood in front of the United Nations board in Lake Success, New York, on Sept. 21, 1949, to present a brief on Rosa Lee Ingram. Ingram and her two sons had been sentenced in 1948 to life in prison after they were accused of murdering John Stratford, their white neighbor who attacked Ingram after her livestock ventured onto his Georgia property. As a mother of 14 children, Ingram believed she acted in self-defense, but the Southern justice of an all-white jury convicted her. In front of an audience of 75 people, Terrell stated: "Under similar circumstances it is inconceivable that such an unjust sentence would have been imposed upon a white woman and her sons." She went further in noting the role that both race and gender played in the Ingram case." -- Introduction

US Interventions and Occupations in Latin America

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan McPherson
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
The United States ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Good Neighbor ◽  
Almost All ◽  
The Cold War

From 1800 to the present, US troops have intervened thousands of times in Latin America and have occupied its countries on dozens of occasions. Interventions were short-term and superficial, while occupations lasted longer and controlled local governments. The causes of these troop landings reflected the United States’ motivations as it expanded from a strong, large republic into first a continental and then an overseas empire at the expense of its smaller, weaker neighbors. Those motivations included colonial land hunger, cultural chauvinism, the exploitation of resources, the search for markets abroad, competition against other great powers, political reformism, global ideological struggle, and the perception that US domestic problems originated in Latin America. US troops undertook almost all these interventions and occupations, although private groups sometimes joined. The major periods were the expansion of the continental republic from 1811 to 1897, the war in Cuba and the apex of occupations (1898–1933), the Good Neighbor years (1934–1953), the Cold War (1954–1990), and the post-Cold War period (1991–2018 and ongoing). Scholars of these events have become increasingly critical and diverse, not only seeing them often as unnecessary brutal failures but also foregrounding extra-military aspects of these episodes, such as economics, race, and gender.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charissa J. Threat
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Gender Discrimination ◽  
The United States ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
Army Nurse Corps ◽  
Agents Of Change ◽  
Military Nursing ◽  
And Gender

This book examines the battles over race and gender discrimination and social justice by linking the civil rights story of the Army Nurse Corps (ANC) to critical events in the United States between World War II and the Vietnam War. Using the microcosm of military nursing, it considers how agents of change became defenders of exclusionary practices when some of the same women who challenged their exclusion from the military or civilian nursing profession, or those who had gained considerable status within the profession, were unwilling to extend the opportunities to men who sought out military nursing careers. The book also explores the connection between the campaigns to integrate the ANC and the domestic and international anxieties during the Cold War by suggesting that anticommunism both hindered and supported the prospect for gender and race equality within the ANC and, by extension, civilian society.

Disruption in Detroit

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel J Clark
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
White Women ◽  
Cold Weather ◽  
United Auto Workers ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
Auto Workers ◽  
Hot Weather ◽  
Job Instability ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Almost All

It is conventional wisdom that because of lucrative contracts negotiated by the United Auto Workers (UAW) under Walter Reuther's leadership, most autoworkers in the U.S. enjoyed steady work, increasing wages, and improved benefits in the postwar boom following World War II. In short, autoworkers entered the middle class. In contrast, this book argues that for Detroit autoworkers there was no postwar boom. Instead, the years from 1945 to 1960 were dominated by job instability and economic insecurity. This argument is based largely on oral history interviews and research in local newspapers, which covered the auto industry extensively. Conditions were worse for African Americans and white women, but almost all autoworkers experienced precarious, often dire circumstances. Recessions, automation, decentralization, and the collapse of independent automakers in Detroit are part of the story, but materials shortages, steel, coal, and copper strikes, parts supplier strikes, wildcat strikes, overproduction (especially in 1955), hot weather, cold weather, plant explosions, age, race, and gender workplace discrimination, and the inability of autoworkers to afford new cars contributed to instability and insecurity. Hardly anyone in the 1950s—whether ordinary autoworkers, union leaders, auto company executives, business analysts, or local shopkeepers—thought that the decade was marked by steady work, improving wages, or anything resembling predictable income for autoworkers.

Creating a “Home Away from Home”: Korean Women’s Performances of the Imaginary American Home at US Military Clubs in South Korea, 1955–64

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 203-236
Author(s):  
Yu Jung Lee
Keyword(s):  
United States Army ◽  
Military Service ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
Us Military ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military ◽  
Occupied Zone

Abstract This article considers the proliferation of Korean native camp shows and the roles of Korean women entertainers at the military service clubs of the Eighth United States Army in Korea in the 1950s and the 1960s. The role of the “American sweethearts” in USO camp shows—to create a “home away from home” and boost the morale of the American troops during wartime—was carried out by female Korean entertainers in the occupied zone at a critical moment in US-ROK relations during the Cold War. The article argues that Korean entertainers at military clubs were meant to perform the entertainment of “home” and evoke nostalgia for American soldiers by imitating well-known American singers and songs. However, what they performed as America was not simply the reproduction of American entertainment but often a manifestation of their imagination; they were constructing their own version of the American home. Their hybrid styles of American performance were indicative of how the discourse of the American home itself was constructed around ambivalence, the very site where women entertainers were enabled to exceed the rigid boundaries of race and gender, transcend their roles as imitators, and exercise their agency by productively negotiating this ambivalence.

“Up for it” or “asking for it”? Violence against women in the age of postfeminism

2020 ◽  
pp. 095935352096397
Author(s):  
Kathryn E Frazier
Keyword(s):  
Female Body ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
The Body ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
Perceptions Of Risk ◽  
Competing Demands ◽  
The Us ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Gender Presentation ◽  
Discursive Constructions

Postfeminist young women are encouraged to “embrace” their sexuality by sexualizing their bodies as a means of empowerment. In stark contrast, dominant understandings of violence identify these same bodily displays as risk factors, condemning women who enact them as “asking for” victimization. While these competing demands on the female body have been widely documented in popular media, empirical work has not investigated if, and the extent to which, women reproduce these tension-filled constructions of the body in their own lives. Using in-depth interviews with 15 participants of varied race, class and gender identity in the US, this paper explores the ways in which these conflicting discursive constructions of the body are enacted by participants in their everyday lives. While participants took up varied sensibilities of the body and empowerment (including several that emphasized sexiness and sexuality), participants uniformly discussed perceptions of risk that inscribed the female body as vulnerable. This produced tensions in reasoning for some participants (but not all), in ways that were intersectionally inflected by race and gender presentation. More broadly, data suggests that postfeminist (and other) visions of the body that appear to otherwise produce lived experiences of empowerment are deemed invalid in contexts of risk.

Exiles in Mexico

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pablo Yankelevich
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Latin American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Asylum ◽  
Refugee Status ◽  
Us Government ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Political Persecution

In the Latin American milieu, Mexico stands out as a host nation for exiles. It is somewhat paradoxical that a country with very restrictive migration policies was always willing to receive victims of political persecution, and later expanded this behavior to include victims of ethnic, religious, and gender persecution, generalized violence, and natural disasters. Explaining this paradox involves considering the transformations that the 1910 Revolution introduced into Mexico’s domestic and international politics and how these transformations impacted abroad, above all in the Latin American space, projecting the idea of a nation committed to the construction of political order and just and democratic societies. Political asylum and the Refugee Status Determination are the legal instruments by which Mexico has welcomed foreigners in conditions of extreme vulnerability. The widespread use of these instruments forged the image of Mexico as a nation of exiles. Many victims of persecution entered the country under the protection provided by the instruments of political asylum and refugee status; undoubtedly, many more did so by circumventing migratory obstacles thanks to generous governmental conduct in situations of political persecution. A journey through the most important experiences of exiles in Mexico must start with the first Latin American exiles persecuted by dictatorial regimes in the 1920s, before turning to the case of the Spanish Republicans after the Civil War in the late 1930s, and then immediately incorporating European victims of Nazism during World War II. During the Cold War a second stage of exile began with the arrival of Americans persecuted by McCarthyism in the United States, and later by the influx of thousands of Latin Americans victims of new military dictatorships. This cycle ended at the beginning of the 1980s when large contingents of Guatemalans crossed the border with Mexico to protect themselves from a war of extermination launched by the army of that country. The size and the social composition of this exile obliged Mexico to draft policies for the reception of victims of persecution that led to adjustments in national legislation and strategies for collaboration with the United Nations. In the final decades of the 20th century, the redemocratization processes in Latin America led to a marked decrease in the number of victims of political persecution. Nevertheless, since the beginning of the 21st century Mexico has faced new challenges, no longer in terms of political asylum but in terms of refuge. The increasing flows of foreign migrants who, irregularly, transit through Mexican territory to reach the border with the United States and the migration enforcement policies implemented by the US government have generated a considerable increase in requests for refugee status in Mexico. This phenomenon, unprecedented in the history of the reception of victims of persecution, leaves Mexico facing an enormous challenge in terms of humanitarian protection for foreigners who flee their countries to preserve their freedom and protect their lives.

The Secular Rabbi

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Doris Kadish
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New Left ◽  
Proletarian Literature ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
Bernard Malamud ◽  
Experience Teaching ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Historical Accounts ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Partisan Review

The Secular Rabbi is an intellectual biography of Philip Rahv, co-founder of Partisan Review. It focuses on the ambivalent ties that Rahv, a Russian immigrant, retained to his Jewish cultural background. Drawing on letters Rahv wrote to her mother from 1928 to 1931, Doris Kadish delves into Rahv’s complex and enigmatic character, his experience teaching Hebrew in Savannah, GA and Portland, OR; his attitudes toward class, race, and gender. Kadish positions herself in relation to Rahv in attempting to understand her own Jewish identity and perspective as a 21st century woman. The book draws on historical accounts, genealogical records, memoirs by Rahv’s friends and associates, interviews, and secondary scholarship devoted to the New York intellectuals, the history of Partisan Review, and Jewish studies. Key components of Rahv’s Jewishness—appearance, voice, name, attitudes toward Yiddish and Zionism—are explored, as is his deep-seated faith in Marxism. Textual analyses of Rahv’s works are interwoven with analyses of writers whose works appeared in Partisan Review: Delmore Schwartz, Franz Kafka, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Bernard Malamud, Saul Bellow. Rahv’s relations with writers who figured prominently in his life—most notably T.S. Eliot, Mary McCarthy, and Irving Howe—are explored. Events relating to anti-Stalinism, responses to the Holocaust, and alleged ties with the CIA, are discussed. Kadish sheds light on modernism, proletarian literature, and Jewish writing as well as movements that defined American political history in the 20th century: immigration, socialism, Communism, fascism, the cold war, feminism, and the New Left.

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