scholarly journals A Dozen Images Made in or Near Youngstown, Ohio, That Show Why People Need Both Jobs and Fish

2021 ◽  
pp. 115-137
Author(s):  
Alice Whittenburg
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
The United States ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Local Economy ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Reciprocal Relationship ◽  
Steel Workers ◽  
Environmental Consequences ◽  
River Landscape

Economy vs. ecology. That’s one way to frame the debate that once raged in Youngstown, Ohio, between those who focused on the health of the Mahoning River and those who gave priority to the health of the local economy and the jobs it provided. The latter point of view was often stated in terms of ‘Jobs, not fish!’ and its proponents asked: Compared to jobs in steel mills, which make it possible for workers to have homes and a decent way of life, what does it matter that fish can’t live in the river? Initially, the steel industry benefitted a surprisingly small number of people, mostly owners and investors who treated workers as a resource to be exploited, much like the air and water. But later, thanks to union struggles, workers lived well in the Mahoning Valley, and environmental problems, such as a dirty river, were viewed as a necessary evil. In fact, the foulness of the river assured residents that the mills were going strong and were a source of prosperity. In Youngstown today, deindustrialization has made economic insecurity a fact of life, and the Mahoning, once known as the dirtiest river in the United States, is home to many species of fish. The story of the changes that have taken place in the river landscape centers around the supposed incompatibility of having both jobs along the river’s banks and fish in its waters. Ideas from cultural geography can teach us how to view a landscape where so much conflict has played out. When geographer James S. Duncan presented the idea of a landscape as texts which communicate and transmit information, he also argued that reading the landscape can reveal how power relations have played out in a given region. Sherry Lee Linkon and John Russo built on similar notions in Steeltown USA: Work and Memory in Youngstown as they showed how people's memories, experiences, and struggles are represented in the landscape.  Linkon & Russo also noted that conflict and landscape have a reciprocal relationship. ‘Landscapes not only are constructed by economic and social conflict,’ they stated, ‘but also reinforce such divisions of power.’ ( Linkon & Russo, 2002, pp. 15-16). Such a reading of the Mahoning River landscape yields a complex story about the ways people transformed the natural world in order to benefit from it and then lived with the environmental consequences of that transformation. Though this story is very much about how power and class relations have played out there, in the twentieth century such conflict was often overshadowed by tensions between advocates for steel workers and advocates for the river. Recently, however, the growing understanding of the concept of environmental justice, which has been applied to working-class issues by, among others, Christina Robertson & Jennifer Westerman in their call for a working-class ecology (Robertson & Westerman, 2015) and Karen Bell in her agenda for a just transition to sustainability (Bell, 2020), lays the groundwork for alliances between environmentalists and working-class people that were not present when the Mahoning River was an ‘industrial stream.’ Cultural geographers have also shown us that depictions of a landscape contribute to its meaning(s). Building on such ideas,  Linkon & Russo examined the landscape of Youngstown through the lens of images and stories, and this essay will view the more specific landscape of the Mahoning River by examining a dozen images created in or near Youngstown since the early twentieth century. Not all of these images depict the river itself, yet all help to clarify the way the conflict between economy and ecology has played out in the Mahoning Valley.

scholarly journals Russian Orthodoxy and Autobiographies in the Early Modern Period from a Mediterranean Perspective

Slovene ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 474-486
Author(s):  
Relja Seferović
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
The United States ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Russian Society ◽  
Russian Orthodoxy ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Religious Sects ◽  
Changing Society

[Rev. of: Faith and Selfhood in a Changing Society: Autobiography and Orthodoxy in Russia from the End of the Seventeenth to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century, ed. Laurie Manchester and Denis A. Sdvizhkov. Moscow: NLO, 2019. 408 pp. (in Russian)] The collection of papers “Faith and Selfhood in a Changing Society: Autobiography and Orthodoxy in Russia from the End of the Seventeenth to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century” served as a stimulus for reflection on Orthodoxy in Russia and autobiographies as a literary genre at the beginning of the early Modern Age from a Mediterranean point of view. Studying the contributions of fifteen prominent scholars from Russia, Poland, Germany, Canada and the United States on various aspects of the immensely rich Russian spiritual heritage from the mid-17th until the first half of the 20th centuries, the author recognizes their fundamental connection in a sincere interest in the gradual modernization of the Russian society, deeply rooted in the Russian Orthodox faith, as well as in the gradual development of individualism, both in its institutional and non-institutional forms: within the framework of the Russian imperial state and official patriarchal church institutions, but also on the periphery of political movements and religious sects. Despite the relatively narrow area of research devoted to various forms of autobiographies (written mainly by the clergy, less often by the members of secular aristocratic and bourgeois circles), this collection of papers represents not only a carefully written and reliable way to understand one of the fundamental aspects of the Russian spiritual culture, but it also invites for comparison with other similar environments. This prompted the author of the review to make a journey through the parallel literary world of the Republic of Dubrovnik (as the only independent Slavic state in that period, with the exception of the Russian Empire) from the 16th to the 19th centuries, with the conclusion that the predominance of biographies to the detriment of autobiographies in Dubrovnik at that time also speaks of strong pragmatism and aspiration to take care exclusively of the state interests in the literary sphere.

scholarly journals A partire da «Underworld»

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicola Turi
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Nuclear Threat ◽  
Contemporary Novel ◽  
Verbal Representation ◽  
Continuous Interaction ◽  
Textual Strategies

The volume is a commentary on Don DeLillo’s hypertrophic novel Underworld (1997). Starting from the analysis of the text – which intertwines several plots, locations and point of view –, Nicola Turi retraces the entire production of the author to follow the evolution of themes (paranoia, nuclear threat, alienation, violence…) and textual strategies. At the same times he considers some widespread trends in the contemporary novel which Underworld, narrative tableau of the United States of the second twentieth century, embodies or anticipates: the resumption of the collective novel; the construction of characters drawn from reality; the continuous interaction between verbal representation and image (both static and moving).

scholarly journals Transatlantic Translations of the Button-down Shirt

2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 97
Author(s):  
Nathaniel Weiner
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
The United States ◽  
Ivy League ◽  
Class System ◽  
Class Mobility ◽  
National Imaginary ◽  
Youth Subcultures ◽  
Class Youth

This article looks at how the button-down shirt has been translated in the American and British contexts. Employing Barthes’ notion of ‘fashion narrative,’ I describe how in the United States, the button-down shirt is closely associated with the Ivy Look, a style that had emerged from the elite Ivy League universities but became mass fashion by the mid-1960s. While the garment remained youthful, continuing to draw on the collegiate fashion narrative, it also spoke to an American national imaginary of affluence, abundance and class mobility. Both the garment and its paratextual meanings circulated through the global fashion system, emerging in a very different context in 1960s Britain. Speaking to British imaginings of America, it remained youthful but was transformed by the particularities of the British class system, becoming closely associated with two of Britain’s working-class youth subcultures: the mods and the skinheads. Emblematic of the subterranean passion for clothing that characterised the culture of young working-class men in Britain during the latter half of the twentieth century, the button-down shirt became a subcultural icon. In turn, the historicisation and commodification of these subcultures has ensured the button-down shirt’s place in the British national imaginary. Comparing publicity materials produced by American and British clothiers, I examine how the garment’s fashion narratives, both British and American, continue to circulate.

Mexican Workers and Life in South Chicago

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Innis-Jiménez
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Mexican Americans ◽  
Mexican Immigrants ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cultural Environment ◽  
Steel Workers ◽  
Politics Of Culture ◽  
Shed Light

By recognizing and not underestimating the significance of everyday forms of resistance and the politics of culture, as well as institutions and organizations not normally seen as vehicles for everyday and working class change, we can delve into the strategies that helped Mexicans in interwar South Chicago cope with the oppressive environment that surrounded them. Individual Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans in interwar South Chicago, including steel workers, shop owners, union organizers, and social workers, formed a community that was able to change its physical and cultural environment to help its members and create a degree of resistance that helped Mexicans persevere against intimidation and prejudice. These individual and community histories—the stories of people, organizations, and their physical surroundings—shed light on Mexicano life in a place far from the border and at the industrial heart of the United States.

Postmodern Curriculum

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen A. Krasny ◽  
Patrick Slattery
Keyword(s):  
First Nations ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
The Past ◽  
Life Itself ◽  
First Nations People

Postmodernism is a mid-20th-century response to 18th-century Enlightenment rationality. As a movement that developed across a diverse range of disciplines, it is not so much defined by a distinct chronology but rather is predicated on a recognition of the past and has come to represent a way of operating. The late Italian semiotician and writer Umberto Eco argued from an ideological point of view that every period in history has had its postmodernism. Architect and critical theorist Charles Jencks further polemicized postmodernism as a specific form of cultural resistance. In his view, postmodernism operates as a communicative set of values to address the needs of a society, and he cites architecture’s response to the pressing need for mass housing and large-scale urban redevelopment as an example of postmodern innovation. Inspired by postmodernism as a critical movement in the arts, architecture, and philosophy, postmodern curriculum similarly works to reject the universalizing ideals of modernity. It shares Jencks’s polemic stance and would have us reimagine the literal and metaphorical bricks and mortar of schools, colleges, and universities to advance a broader understanding of curriculum with the aim of addressing the need to provide fair and equitable access to education. The postmodern notion that the past has everything to do with the present is central to decolonizing efforts aimed at acknowledgment and reconciliation of the devastating and oppressive ends of curriculum as institutions. For example, government-sponsored residential schools in Canada and the United States stand as a glaring example of the abject failure of modern education to embrace the communicative ideals of postmodernism in its response to First Nations people. Postmodern curriculum is committed to a decentering and challenging agenda aimed at exposing and undermining master narratives of truth, language, knowledge, and power. Dynamic and responsive, postmodern curriculum’s holistic and ecological approach to education works to dissolve the artificial boundary between the outside community and the classroom to celebrate and honor the interconnectedness of knowledge, experience, international and local communities, the natural world, and life itself.

Trust, Trump, and the Turnout: A Marketers Point of View

2017 ◽  
Vol 61 (5) ◽  
pp. 526-532 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean Tracey
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
The United States ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Middle America ◽  
The Face

The election of Donald Trump as President of the United States was considered shocking for many pundits and political-communication scientists. Nonetheless, the success of Mr. Trump was predictable from a marketing point of view. This article tells a narrative about how two campaigns connected differently with people. The rhetorical and media techniques of Trump enabled him to connect with working-class folks from “Middle America.” In contrast, the face of the Hillary campaign did not connect well with this segment of the population.

His-Panic / My Panic

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isar P. Godreau
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Puerto Ricans ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Affiliation

This chapter explores the Hispanophobia of U.S. colonial officials and of those working-class Puerto Ricans who supported annexation to the United States at the turn of the twentieth century. For both of these groups, Spain represented a backward, antidemocratic influence and—albeit for different reasons—a suspect source of whiteness. San Antón residents expressed disdain for Spaniards in various ways in formal and informal conversations, regardless of their political affiliation. These stories do not portray Spaniards as a civilizing source of national identity but rather as a barbaric people engaged in gruesome practices. However, opinions about Spaniards were less negative in narratives of older residents who were more specifically grounded in San Antón and who personalized stories through telling about their own families.

Picturing a Crude Past: Primitivism, Public Art, and Corporate Oil Promotion in the United States

2012 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 395-422 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROSS BARRETT
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Public Art ◽  
Petroleum Industry ◽  
Oil Industry ◽  
The United States ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Public Image ◽  
Cultural Representations ◽  
Civic Architecture

This essay examines the first monument dedicated to the US oil industry, the Drake Memorial in Titusville, Pennsylvania (1899–1901), as an influential project of corporate self-representation. Commissioned by Standard Oil, the memorial shaped a public image for the petroleum industry that addressed concerns about the sustainability and social effects of oil capitalism, and established the key terms for a promotional discourse that would circulate throughout the twentieth century. This discourse, which I call “petro-primitivism,” reimagined the ultramodern oil industry as an extension of timeless practices rooted in an imagined archaic past. By shaping a primitivist spectacle that figured oil as an eternal component of the natural world and a primordial object of “human” endeavor, I argue, the Drake Memorial encouraged audiences to take the long view on oil: to adopt an expansive perspective that reconceived oil as a timelessly abundant element, and the boom-and-bust oil industry as an age-old venture. These tropes proved useful to the industry throughout the crises of the early twentieth century, reappearing in corporate displays and filtering into the rhetoric of industry advertising and publicity. Accordingly, I examine two later projects that appropriated the themes of petro-primitivism: the Sinclair Oil exhibit at the 1933–34 World's Fair, and Sun Oil's exhibit Oil Serves America at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia (1953–c.1962). Echoing the earlier Drake Memorial, these displays employed strategies drawn from public art and civic architecture to organize collective experiences around the image of oil. By examining these popular exhibits alongside the Drake Memorial, I aim to offer a new account of the promotional culture of the early petroleum industry that explores the intersections between the traditional arts and industry publicity and illuminates the vital role that cultural representations played in accommodating twentieth-century Americans to the dynamic structures of petro-capitalism.

Revolutionary Spaces: Photographs of Working-class Women by Esther Bubley 1940–1943

1996 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacqueline Ellis
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
The United States ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Farm Security Administration ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
American Nationalism ◽  
Boarding House ◽  
Working Class Women ◽  
American Society

This article had several purposes. First, I wanted to highlight the work of Esther Bubley, an American photographer whose documentary work for the Farm Security Administration and the Office of War Information in the early 1940s is largely unknown. Second, I wanted to show how her images complicated and undermined the traditional themes of Depression era photography in the United States, Third, by looking at her images of women, my intention was to reveal how she worked against depictions of femininity during the Depression, and in confrontation with one-dimensional portrayals of women as America entered the Second World Wan In conclusion, I contend that Bubley's images were fundamentally portrayals of working-class femininity represented as being an individual – rather than a symbolic – experience. Most specifically in the images I have examined, Bubley deconstructs an ideological image of female working-class identity which was central to documentary photography in 1930s America. For example, unlike in photographs by Dorothea Lange, Bubley did not portray working-class women as metaphoric sites of passive endurance which would eventually lead to the rejuvenation of American nationalism. Rather, she showed working-class women to be potentially subversive in the ways they defined themselves against the legacy of 1930s photography and in opposition to the ideological impositions of wartime propaganda. As a result, Bubley's images of working-class women waiting in bars for lonely soldiers, or looking for a future beyond the confines of their boarding house existences while remaining outside the middle-class boundaries defined by capitalist consumerism, set out a pictorial foundation for working-class female identity which exists beyond the context in which the photographs were taken. Consequently, Bubley's work highlights individual self-identity, personal empowerment and self-conscious desire in working-class women which was – and still is – confined and repressed by economic disadvantage and systematic marginalization from an American society defined from a middle-class point of view.

scholarly journals Application of telemedical technologies in neurology – a historical aspect

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 24-30
Author(s):  
A.V. Vladzymyrskyy ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Clinical Neurology ◽  
Historical Aspect ◽  
Remote Transmission ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Seizure Syndrome ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Intensive Development

Introduction. In the middle of the twentieth century, biotelemetry technologies were actively used in neurology, in the form of remote transmission and interpretation of an electroencephalogram (tele-EEG) for solving scientific and practical problems. Previously, this aspect of the development of clinical neurology has not been studied sufficiently. Materials and methods. The period of 1940-1980 was chosen for study. The relevant papers were identified thought electronic database (eLibrary ru, Pubmed). There are 28 papers are included in review. Results. In a global prospect, tele-EEG concepts, methods and technologies have evolved in parallel. The main contribution of the USSR is the development of methodology and technological solutions for tele-EEG, also as its application for solving scientific problems of sports and occupational medicine. The most significant are the works of the Sverdlovsk biotelemetric group. The main contribution of the USA is the development of computational tele-EEG and applications for scientific solutions in clinical neurology and psychiatry. Also, in the United States, tele-EEG was first limitedly used to solve personnel problems. The main contribution of European countries is in the formation of in-hospital and outpatient tele-EEG systems, their application for solving scientific problems of clinical neurology. Conclusion. In the middle of the twentieth century, the intensive development of telemetric electroencephalography (tele-EEG) led to the formation of a new direction in clinical telemedicine – teleneurology. Distant fixation of the brain electrical activity carried out both for the purpose of neurophysiology study and for solving clinical problems. General methodological issues and neurophysiological results of the tele-EEG highlighted in papers published in 1974-1977 by scientists from the USSR, USA, Hungary, Germany, Canada, the Netherlands, France. From the clinical point of view, the main contribution of tele-EEG is the study of the pathophysiology and innovative diagnosis of seizure syndrome and epilepsy.

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