Blasting Out of the Past

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ramsay Burt
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
The United States ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Contemporary Dance ◽  
World War ◽  
German Occupation ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Communist Countries

This chapter analyzes three reenactments by the Slovenian director Janez Janša, two reconstructions of experimental performances made under communism in Ljubljana during the late 1960s and early 1970s by poets and performers associated with the Pupilija group, and one which subversively reappropriates canonical contemporary dance works from the United States, Germany, and Japan. The two earlier works, it argues, interrogate the utopian ideals espoused by the communist partisans who freed Yugoslavia from German occupation during World War II. It develops a framework for this analysis by drawing on Walter Benjamin’s discussion of the philosophy of history and on Michel de Certeau’s work on memory and the everyday. It places the three reconstructions in their social, historical, and political context and evaluates their meanings in relation to misperceptions about art in post-communist countries.

Analogies at War

2005 ◽  
Vol 74 (3) ◽  
pp. 411-426 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. CHRISTOPHER JESPERSEN
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
American History ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
Frequent Use ◽  
The World ◽  
Current Events

The frequent use of the Vietnam analogy to describe the situation in Iraq underscores the continuing relevance of Vietnam for American history. At the same time, the Vietnam analogy reinforces the tendency to see current events within the context of the past. Politicians and pundits latch onto analogies as handles for understanding the present, but in so doing, they obscure more complicated situations. The con�ict in Iraq is not Vietnam, Korea, or World War II, but this article considers all three in an effort to see how the past has shaped, and continues to affect, the world the United States now faces.

Soviet and East European Studies in the United States

Slavic Review ◽  
1988 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 397-413 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dorothy Atkinson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
American Association ◽  
The United States ◽  
Academic Programs ◽  
World War ◽  
European Studies ◽  
East European ◽  
The Past ◽  
American Academic

The American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies has been engaged over the past several years in a project to collect and analyze information on the Soviet and East European field. Some of the results of the work to date are presented in this report to the profession.The field of Soviet and East European studies is a relative newcomer on the American academic scene. Not until World War II was there any considerable interest in the region in the United States. At that time, however, the federal government found itself acutely short of specialists on the area and had to scrape a shallow academic barrel. The lack of expertise led to the establishment of new military and civilian training programs; and the changed international situation in the postwar period gave further impetus to the extension of academic programs.

The Evolution of the Arctic Submarine

1984 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 380-397 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alfred S. McLaren
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
Jules Verne ◽  
History Of ◽  
John Wilkins

This paper examines the evolution of the arctic submarine and the ever-increasing scientific and commercial potential which have accompanied this evolution over the past 340 years. It is a sporadic history of arctic submarine ideas, concepts and actual experiences with vessels at sea. It happens to be a history that is largely American, with important additions as a result of the experiences of the Germans, Soviets and the British, particularly during World War II. Finally, it is a history in which five early visionaries in particular stand out: Bishop John Wilkins of England; Jules Verne of France; Professor Anschutz-Kampfe of Germany; the submarine designer Simon Lake, of the United States — whose influence extended over four decades until well into the twentieth century; and Sir Hubert Wilkins of Australia.

Social Science, Communism, and the Dynamics of Political Change

1991 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew C. Janos
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Comparative Study ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
Technological Developments ◽  
Comprehensive Framework ◽  
The Comparative Study

In the past thirty years the comparative study of communism as conducted in the United States has rested on two conceptual pillars: Weber's theory of routinization and Spencer's notion of progress through industrialism. This article points out some of the limitations of these theories and then develops a more comprehensive framework for comparisons. One of the keys to the understanding of communist politics is the model of a “military society,” also formulated by Spencer but generally ignored by contemporary social science. In terms of this model, communism is presented as a militant geopolitical response to international inequalities, the initial logic of which has been undermined by technological developments in the period following World War II.

Vietnamese Are Not Genetically Short

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1985 ◽  
Vol 76 (6) ◽  
pp. 1024-1024
Author(s):  
AMOS S. DEINARD
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Growth Curves ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
World War ◽  
Japanese Children ◽  
The Past ◽  
Recent Commentary ◽  
American Children

To the Editor.— Dr Stickler, in a recent commentary (Pediatrics 1984;74:559), mentions as an example of genetic short stature the child of a Vietnamese refugee. My experience during the past 5 years with the Vietnamese as well as the other Southeast Asian groups (lowland Lao, Hmong, and Cambodian) who have immigrated to the United States since 1979 suggests that their growth may be no different from that of post-World War II Japanese children, ie, with good maternal and postnatal medical care and nutrition, children will grow at levels comparable to American children on whom the growth curves were normed.

A Theory of Coexistence

Worldview ◽  
1965 ◽  
Vol 8 (5) ◽  
pp. 4-6
Author(s):  
Quentin L. Quade
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
The United States ◽  
Theory Theory ◽  
World War ◽  
Communist System ◽  
The World ◽  
Communist Countries ◽  
Power Position

We can learn certain things from the Communist system, and one of the most important of these is the dependence of successful practice on theory. Theory serves to guide, integrate, and rationalize a series of actions, and without it those actions tend to be atomistic and fruitless.Indeed, the classic failures of our confrontations with Communist countries can be traced at least in part fo a theoretical misperception of what the Communists were, and the lack of a guiding theory on our part. It is possible, for example, to interpret the unhappy decisions of the World War II period as resulting from a mismatch of opponents: the Soviet Union's inferior power position was more than compensated for by a relatively coherent and creative theory of the world, while the superior strength of the United States was substantially negated because this country followed a policy path that may be described as a kind of political existentialism.

United States Foreign Policy: The Legacy and the Challenge

Worldview ◽  
1977 ◽  
Vol 20 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 11-18
Author(s):  
William J. Bamds
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Foreign Policy ◽  
World War ◽  
Upward Trend ◽  
The Past ◽  
Military Strength ◽  
Relative Decline ◽  
Willingness To Use

Henry Kissinger, who has turned out a better negotiator than prophet, said in 1960: The United States cannot afford another decline like that which has characterized the past decade and a half. Fifteen years more of a deterioration in our position such as we have experienced since World War II would find us reduced to Fortress America in a world in which we had become largely irrelevant.Despite the accelerated decline of America's position in the world in the intervening years, the United States remains the world's most powerful and influential nation. (Even those who measure power in terms of military strength appear more concerned about an upward trend in-Soviet military strength and a relative decline in America's strength and its willingness to use it than about current U.S. inferiority.) The position of the United States has eroded because of its own follies and the growing strength of other countries; the latter development would have occurred irrespective of U.S. actions.

scholarly journals Foreign and International Law Collections in Selected Law Libraries of the United States: Survey, 1972 – 1973

1973 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 117-133 ◽  
Author(s):  
Igor I. Kavass
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
International Law ◽  
Research Work ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
Short Period ◽  
Critical Problems ◽  
Future Growth

From time to time during the past several years many law librarians in the United States with institutional commitments for the development of foreign and international law collections have voiced their deep concern about the intrinsic research value of their existing holdings of foreign and international law materials and, even more so, about the ability of their libraries to maintain the future growth of such collections at a sufficiently high scholarly level. Their disquietude was not without a reason. The United States could always pride itself in having several distinguished law libraries with some of the best research collections of legal materials in the world. The reputation of these collections was so great that generation after generation of legal scholars did much of their research work in them. There were also many other law libraries in the United States but they were generally small and did not specialize in foreign and international law. An unexpected development occured, however, in the two decades after World War II. Many of the smaller law libraries as well as a number of new libraries began to expand their holdings at a phenomenal rate of growth. They began also to branch out into areas they had not been previously familiar with, and some of them succeeded in establishing sizable collections of foreign and international law materials within the relatively short period of less than twenty years. After several decades of this unprecedented and frequently indiscriminate expansion, culminating in the emergence of a wide variety of foreign and international law collections, many of these libraries were suddenly faced in the early 1970's with a series of critical problems.

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