Historical Origins of the Personal Belief Exemption to Vaccination Mandates: The View from California

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elena Conis ◽  
Jonathan Kuo
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Personal Responsibility ◽  
The United States ◽  
School Enrollment ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Personal Belief ◽  
Polio Vaccination ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Negotiation

Abstract A number of states, starting with California, have recently removed all non-medical exemptions from their laws requiring vaccinations for schoolchildren. California was also one of the earliest states to include a broad non-medical, or personal, belief exemption in its modern immunization law, which it did with a 1961 law mandating polio vaccination for school enrollment, Assembly Bill 1940 (AB 1940). This paper examines the history of AB 1940’s exemption clause as a case study for shedding light on the little-examined history of the personal belief exemption to vaccination in the United States. This history shows that secular belief exemptions date back further than scholars have allowed. It demonstrates that such exemptions resulted from political negotiation critical to ensuring compulsory vaccination’s political success. It challenges a historiography in which antivaccination groups and their allies led late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century opposition to vaccination mandates while religious groups drove mid-twentieth century opposition. It also complicates the historiographic idea of a return to compulsion in the late 1960s, instead dating this return a decade earlier, to a time when belief exemptions in polio vaccination mandates helped reconcile the goal of a widely vaccinated population with the sacrosanct idea of health as a personal responsibility.

“The Hora Staccato in Swing!”: Jascha Heifetz's Musical Eclecticism and the Adaptation of Violin Miniatures

2012 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 405-431
Author(s):  
JOSHUA S. WALDEN
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
Popular Song ◽  
Tin Pan Alley ◽  
Popular Songs ◽  
History Of

AbstractJascha Heifetz (1901–87) promoted a modern brand of musical eclecticism, recording, performing, and editing adaptations of folk and popular songs while remaining dedicated to the standard violin repertoire and the compositions of his contemporaries. This essay examines the complex influences of his displacement from Eastern Europe and assimilation to the culture of the United States on both the hybridity of his repertoire and the critical reception he received in his new home. It takes as its case study Heifetz's composition of the virtuosic showpiece “Hora Staccato,” based on a Romany violin performance he heard in Bucharest, and his later adaptation of the music into an American swing hit he titled “Hora Swing-cato.” Finally, the essay turns to the field of popular song to consider how two of the works Heifetz performed most frequently were adapted for New York Yiddish radio as Tin Pan Alley–style songs whose lyrics narrate the early twentieth-century immigrant experience. The performance and arrangement history of many of Heifetz's miniatures reveals the multivalent ways in which works in his repertoire, and for some listeners Heifetz himself, were reinterpreted, adapted, and assimilated into American culture.

Turning Aliens into Socialists

2010 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-93
Author(s):  
Jessica Moberg
Keyword(s):  
Outer Space ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
Swedish History ◽  
Second World ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Highly Evolved

Immediately after the Second World War Sweden was struck by a wave of sightings of strange flying objects. In some cases these mass sightings resulted in panic, particularly after authorities failed to identify them. Decades later, these phenomena were interpreted by two members of the Swedish UFO movement, Erland Sandqvist and Gösta Rehn, as alien spaceships, or UFOs. Rehn argued that ‘[t]here is nothing so dramatic in the Swedish history of UFOs as this invasion of alien fly-things’ (Rehn 1969: 50). In this article the interpretation of such sightings proposed by these authors, namely that we are visited by extraterrestrials from outer space, is approached from the perspective of myth theory. According to this mythical theme, not only are we are not alone in the universe, but also the history of humankind has been shaped by encounters with more highly-evolved alien beings. In their modern day form, these kinds of ideas about aliens and UFOs originated in the United States. The reasoning of Sandqvist and Rehn exemplifies the localization process that took place as members of the Swedish UFO movement began to produce their own narratives about aliens and UFOs. The question I will address is: in what ways do these stories change in new contexts? Texts produced by the Swedish UFO movement are analyzed as a case study of this process.

A Century of America on Chinese Screens

2010 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 305-323 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhiwei Xiao
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Print Media ◽  
The United States ◽  
Sharp Contrast ◽  
American People ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
Chinese Films ◽  
New Millennium

AbstractNo serious study has been published on how Chinese filmmakers have portrayed the United States and the American people over the last century. The number of such films is not large. That fact stands in sharp contrast not only to the number of "China pictures" produced in the United States, which is not surprising, but also in contrast to the major role played by Chinese print media. This essay surveys the history of Chinese cinematic images of America from the early twentieth century to the new millennium and notes the shifts from mostly positive portrayal in the pre-1949 Chinese films, to universal condemnation during the Mao years and to a more nuanced, complex, and multi-colored presentation of the last few decades.

Versatile and cheap: a global history of soy in the first half of the twentieth century

2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 461-482 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ines Prodöhl
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Cash Crop ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
Transnational Actors ◽  
History Of ◽  
Second World

AbstractThis article traces the complex and shifting organization of soy's production and consumption from Northeast China to Europe and the United States. It focuses on a set of national and transnational actors with differing interests in the global and national spread of soybeans. The combination of these actors in certain spatiotemporal contexts enabled a fundamental change in soy from an Asian to an American cash crop. At the beginning of the twentieth century, soy rapidly became Northeast China's cash crop, owing to steadily increasing Western demand. However, the versatility of soy – and soy oil in particular – offered a highly successful response to the agricultural and industrial challenges that the United States faced during the Great Depression and the Second World War. By the end of the war, American farmers in the Midwest cultivated more soybeans than their Chinese counterparts.

The Cambridge History of America and the World

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Military Power ◽  
American Empire ◽  
Global Power ◽  
Cultural Terms ◽  
The World ◽  
Fourth Volume ◽  
History Of

The fourth volume of The Cambridge History of America and the World examines the heights of American global power in the mid-twentieth century and how challenges from at home and abroad altered the United States and its role in the world. The second half of the twentieth century marked the pinnacle of American global power in economic, political, and cultural terms, but even as it reached such heights, the United States quickly faced new challenges to its power, originating both domestically and internationally. Highlighting cutting-edge ideas from scholars from all over the world, this volume anatomizes American power as well as the counters and alternatives to 'the American empire.' Topics include US economic and military power, American culture overseas, human rights and humanitarianism, third-world internationalism, immigration, communications technology, and the Anthropocene.

“The Principal Russian Church in America”: from the History of Saint Nicholas Russian Orthodox Cathedral in the City of New York

Istoriya ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (11 (109)) ◽  
pp. 0
Author(s):  
Vladimir Pechatnov
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
The United States ◽  
Russian Orthodox ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ministry Of Finance ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
Foreign Ministry ◽  
The City

Based on previously unearthed documents from the Russia’s State Historical Archive and the Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Empire the article explores the history of the first Russian Orthodox parish in New York City and construction of Saint-Nickolas Russian Orthodox Cathedral in the city. It was a protracted and complicated interagency process that involved Russian Orthodox mission in the United States, Russia’s Foreign Ministry and its missions in the United States, the Holy Governing Synod, Russia’s Ministry of Finance and the State Council. The principal actors were the bishops Nicholas (Ziorov) and especially Tikhon (Bellavin), Ober-Prosecutor of the Holy Governing Synod Konstantine Pobedonostsev and Reverend Alexander Khotovitsky. This case study of the Cathedral history reveals an interaction of ecclesiastical and civil authorities in which private and civic initiative was combined with strict bureaucratic rules and procedures.

Redefining Censorship

2018 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 134-142
Author(s):  
Esther B. Schupak
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Emotional Valence ◽  
The United States ◽  
Educational Choice ◽  
Merchant Of Venice ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Merchant Of Venice ◽  
Film Images ◽  
History Of

Abstract Because of its potential for fostering antisemitic stereotypes, in the twentieth century The Merchant of Venice has a history of being subject to censorship in secondary schools in the United States. While in the past it has often been argued that the play can be used to teach tolerance and to fight societal evils such as xenophobia, racism and antisemitism, I argue that this is no longer the case due to the proliferation of performance methods in the classroom, and the resultant emphasis on watching film and stage productions. Because images – particularly film images – carry such strong emotional valence, they have the capacity to subsume other pedagogical aspects of this drama in their emotional power and memorability. I therefore question whether the debate over teaching this play is truly a question of ‘censorship’, or simply educational choice.

scholarly journals Collecting locally : Walker Evans's photographs of Alabama in Alabama institutions

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mallory Lapointe Taylor
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
American South ◽  
The United States ◽  
History Of Photography ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Walker Evans ◽  
History Of ◽  
The American South

Within the United States, the American South can be perceived as its own entity. From the arts to Southern cuisine, the South commands attention with its own history, myths and culture. Within the history of photography, Walker Evans's photographs of Alabama are arguably some of the most culturally significant images taken of the state and its residents. This thesis investigates how photographs of Alabama are collected in the same locality. By examining the collecting practices of four Alabama institutions in regards to photographs in general, and Walker Evans specifically, this case study will expand on the question of how photographs, in a Southern cultural context, work to create a sense of place and attachment to local geography.

Reforming the tax state: Taxation and democracy in a transatlantic perspective, France-USA (1880s-1930s)

2012 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 71-85
Author(s):  
Nicolas Delalande
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Comparative Study ◽  
Tax Reform ◽  
The United States ◽  
State Building ◽  
Good Case ◽  
Tax State ◽  
State Taxation

This article highlights the recent historiographical revisions that have led historians on both sides of the Atlantic to develop innovative and refreshing views on state-building and state-society relationships through a comparative study of tax reform in France and the United States at the turn of the twentieth century*. Taxation offers a good case study because it deals with the power of the state, its capacity to act upon and shape society, and provides information about the way it is perceived by citizens, as Joseph Schumpeter summed up in his famous statement (1918).

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Laura Harris
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
The United States ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Aesthetic Theory ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
History Of ◽  
Visual Artist

In Experiments in Exile, I explore and compare projects undertaken by two twentieth-century American intellectuals while they lived in voluntary exiles in the United States: the Trinidadian writer and revolutionary C. L. R. James and the Brazilian visual artist and counterculturalist Hélio Oiticica. James and Oiticica never met. They lived and worked in the United States at different moments. My focus is on James’s stay during the 1940s and on Oiticica’s stay during the 1970s. Given the significant differences between them—not just at the level of nationality but at the level of race (James was black, Oiticica was white), class (James was situated within a precarious middle class, Oiticica was firmly established within an upper middle class), sexuality (James was straight, Oiticica was gay), and disciplinary locations (James is generally situated in the history of radical social theory and practice, and Oiticica is generally situated in the history of avant-garde aesthetic theory and practice)—this is surely an unlikely combination. This study is itself an experiment, one that goes beyond the usual parameters of comparativist or transnational research, to identify, in the surprising resonances between the projects pursued by these two very disparate figures, a common project I believe they, together, bring into relief....

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