Transatlantic Topographies

2021 ◽  
pp. 47-112
Author(s):  
Paul Haacke
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Empire ◽  
Hart Crane ◽  
Racial Stratification ◽  
Claude Mckay ◽  
George Oppen ◽  
Vicente Huidobro ◽  
Technological Sublime ◽  
Vertical Elevation

This first chapter explores the geographical and historical sweep of the modernist vertical imagination in both Europe and the Americas. It begins with comparisons between Franz Kafka’s imagined Amerika and Max Weber’s writings on the “spirit of capitalism” after traveling to the United States, as well as W.E.B. Du Bois’ conceptions of racial stratification and uplift after studying in Germany. From here, it considers the rise of American empire and capitalist culture in terms of industrial scale, vertical elevation, and the “technological sublime.” Key examples include Eugene Jolas’ Verticalist movement in relation to James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake; Fritz Lang’s Metropolis in relation to the rise of New York City; major writings by Vicente Huidobro, Jorge Luis Borges, Hart Crane, George Oppen, and Claude McKay; and conceptions of racial stratification, uplift, and solidarity in Richard Wright’s Native Son, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, and Aimé Césaire’s Notebook of a Return to the Native Land.

scholarly journals The War Lovers (Again)

2012 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Sanders ◽  
Caroline Emberton
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
Strong Support ◽  
The United States ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
American Empire ◽  
Theodore Roosevelt ◽  
Major Player ◽  
The World ◽  
Speaker Of The House

Evan Thomas’s recent book, The War Lovers, chronicles the “monumental turning point” of the U.S. declaration of war against Spain in 1898, and the small circle of men who pressed for war, and for an American empire. The central figures, for Thomas, were Theodore Roosevelt, Assistant Secretary of the Navy; his friend Henry Cabot Lodge, hawkish senator and foreign policy adviser to President McKinley; and William Randolph Hearst, editor of the New York Journal, whose paper did its upmost to fan war fervor in 1897-8. These men were inspired by, and had the strong support of Alfred Thayer Mahan a naval officer, history professor, and influential author of The Influence of Sea Power Upon History. Though President McKinley hesitated about war with Spain, Roosevelt and Lodge had long dreamed of a war that would establish the United States as a major player on the world stage. When another prominent politician, Speaker of the House Thomas Reed, opposed substantial increases in naval funding that he thought “invited conflict,” Lodge promptly accused him of harboring “extreme pro-Spanish prejudices.”

America and the world: (still) a work in progress?

2004 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 443-450
Author(s):  
Linda B. Miller
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Washington Dc ◽  
American Empire ◽  
Explanatory Variables ◽  
The World

Andrew J. Bacevich, American Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002).Charles Kupchan, The End of the American Era (New York: Alfred Knopf, 2002).Ivo H. Daadler and James M. Lindsay, America Unbound (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2003).Did 11 September 2001 change everything about the United States including its foreign policy? Have the subsequent US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq altered the scholarly calculus of what should be studied and how? Must authors determined to assert the continuing importance of history, geopolitics or domestic factors as explanatory variables recast or abandon their existing conclusions to highlight the newer realities after the terrorist attacks and their aftermath? If so, how? These questions lead to others. Is there a usable American past that helps illuminate the dilemmas of the present? If so, where is it found? Is there a sustainable future role for the US in the world, beyond ideology or improvisation? If so, what are its contours? Is the Bush administration truly ‘radical’ or even ‘revolutionary’ in its imperial thrusts? After Afghanistan and Iraq, is American foreign policy still largely a success story? Or is the United States en route to becoming an ordinary country, albeit one with extraordinary resources in both hard and soft power?

Gerald H. Thayer's ornithological work in St Vincent and the Grenadines, Lesser Antilles

2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
James W. Wiley
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
West Indies ◽  
The United States ◽  
Lesser Antilles ◽  
American Museum ◽  
The West ◽  
Comparative Zoology ◽  
North And South America ◽  
North And South

Gerald Handerson Thayer (1883–1939) was an artist, writer and naturalist who worked in North and South America, Europe and the West Indies. In the Lesser Antilles, Thayer made substantial contributions to the knowledge and conservation of birds in St Vincent and the Grenadines. Thayer observed and collected birds throughout much of St Vincent and on many of the Grenadines from January 1924 through to December 1925. Although he produced a preliminary manuscript containing interesting distributional notes and which is an early record of the region's ornithology, Thayer never published the results of his work in the islands. Some 413 bird and bird egg specimens have survived from his work in St Vincent and the Grenadines and are now housed in the American Museum of Natural History (New York City) and the Museum of Comparative Zoology (Cambridge, Massachusetts). Four hundred and fifty eight specimens of birds and eggs collected by Gerald and his father, Abbott, from other countries are held in museums in the United States.

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