War in Peace

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Rice
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Government Policy ◽  
World War ◽  
Critical Juncture ◽  
American Legion ◽  
American National Identity ◽  
Political Targets ◽  
Government Films

The American Legion emerged in March 1919, in the immediate aftermath of world war, a point at which the focus of conservative discourse and government policy shifted from overseas campaigns to domestic threats, from military to political targets. This chapter, by Tom Rice, examines the myriad ways in which the hugely influential American Legion used film at this critical juncture, extending military activities and imperatives into the postwar nation. Whether appropriating wartime government films; becoming an influential and respected voice on film reform; or—after the establishment of a designated film service in 1921—producing, distributing, and exhibiting movies, the American Legion used film to mold American citizens and to visualize, project, and shape the postwar nation. The American Legion’s initial uses of film reveal an industry—and a nation—challenged and torn apart by anxieties about immigration and foreign threats and by a wider battle over American national identity.

A Tower of Tangled Histories: The Upper Silesia Tower in Poznań and the Making of an Unromantic Poland, 1911–1955

Slavic Review ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 79 (3) ◽  
pp. 566-590
Author(s):  
Patryk Babiracki
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Cold War ◽  
World War I ◽  
Material Structure ◽  
World War ◽  
Upper Silesia ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The City ◽  
Over Time

Engaging with regional, international, and spatial histories, this article proposes a new reading of the twentieth-century Polish past by exploring the vicissitudes of a building known as the Upper Silesia Tower. Renowned German architect Hans Poelzig designed the Tower for the 1911 Ostdeutsche Ausstellung in Posen, an ethnically Polish city under Prussian rule. After Poland regained its independence following World War I, the pavilion, standing centrally on the grounds of Poznań’s International Trade Fair, became the fair's symbol, and over time, also evolved into visual shorthand for the city itself. I argue that the Tower's significance extends beyond Posen/Poznań, however. As an embodiment of the conflicts and contradictions of Polish-German historical entanglements, the building, in its changing forms, also concretized various efforts to redefine the dominant Polish national identity away from Romantic ideals toward values such as order, industriousness, and hard work. I also suggest that eventually, as a material structure harnessed into the service of socialism, the Tower, with its complicated past, also brings into relief questions about the regional dimensions of the clashes over the meaning of modernity during the Cold War.

Before the summit: News media framing, scripts and the flag-raising at Iwo Jima

2021 ◽  
pp. 175063522199094
Author(s):  
Matthew Pressman ◽  
James J Kimble
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Government Policy ◽  
News Media ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Media Framing ◽  
Pacific Island ◽  
World War ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Cognitive Scripts ◽  
New Interpretation

Drawing upon media framing theory and the concept of cognitive scripts, this article provides a new interpretation of the context in which the famous World War II photograph ‘Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima’ appeared. This interpretation is based primarily on an examination of American newspaper and newsreel coverage from the Pacific island battles prior to Iwo Jima. The coverage – especially the pictorial coverage – often followed a three-step sequence that showed US forces proceeding from a landing to a series of skirmishes, then culminating with a flag-raising image. This created a predictable cognitive script. That script, combined with other framing devices found in the news coverage (such as metaphors and catchphrases), conveyed the misleading message that the Allies’ final victory over Japan was imminent in early 1945. The Iwo Jima photo drove home that message more emphatically than anything else. This circumstance had profound implications for government policy at the time and, in retrospect, it illustrates the potency of media framing – particularly in times of crisis or war.

scholarly journals Britishness and otherness: Representing and constructing identity in BBC’s Land Girls

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 90-105
Author(s):  
Bonnie White
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Cultural Institutions ◽  
World War ◽  
Second World

This article situates Land Girls (BBC, 2009–2011) in dialogue with the Second World War and its legacy. Although the series ostensibly deals with the experience of British Land Girls during the war in a melodramatic way, Land Girls is best understood as an anxious commentary on the place of Britain and its cultural institutions following the war. The series uses national, racial and economic others in order to de-romanticise notions of a collective national identity, while simultaneously using those others to help articulate an idealised sense of Britishness for a 21st-century audience.

The Crowded Prairie: American National Identity in the Hollywood Western.

2000 ◽  
Vol 87 (1) ◽  
pp. 289
Author(s):  
Robert Murray Davis ◽  
Michael Coyne
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
American National Identity

Interpretative theories as roadmaps to constitutional identity: The case of the United States

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 289-327 ◽  
Author(s):  
OR BASSOK
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Affordable Care Act ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Identity ◽  
American Constitution ◽  
Patient Protection ◽  
American National Identity ◽  
Constitutional Identity

AbstractAs long as the American Constitution serves as the focal point of American identity, many constitutional interpretative theories also serve as roadmaps to various visions of American constitutional identity. Using the debate over the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, I expose the identity dimension of various interpretative theories and analyse the differences between the roadmaps offered by them. I argue that according to each of these roadmaps, courts’ authority to review legislation is required in order to protect a certain vision of American constitutional identity even at the price of thwarting Americans’ freedom to pursue their current desires. The conventional framing of interpretative theories as merely techniques to decipher the constitutional text or justifications for the Supreme Court’s countermajoritarian authority to review legislation and the disregard of their identity function is perplexing in view of the centrality of the Constitution to American national identity. I argue that this conventional framing is a result of the current understanding of American constitutional identity in terms of neutrality toward the question of the good. This reading of the Constitution as lacking any form of ideology at its core makes majority preferences the best take of current American identity, leaving constitutional theorists with the mission to justify the Court’s authority to diverge from majority preferences.

"Militarizacija materinstva" – ženski "naravni poklic" in vélika vojna

2015 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 71-89
Author(s):  
Ana Cergol Paradiž
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
First World War ◽  
Promotional Material ◽  
World War ◽  
Educational Work ◽  
Female Authors ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Mothers And Children ◽  
Representations Of Women ◽  
First World

With the help of publications, legislation, memoranda and promotional material, this article shows how various actors in the Slovene-speaking area, during the First World War, addressed their mothers, and if also in their cases, the phenomenon of the "militarization of motherhood" was shown, which was typical of other European countries. In the context of the discourse "militarization of motherhood", it analyzes the ways of how female (national) identity was formed. It tries to answer the question of what (patriotic) duties were imposed to women as mothers, for example, if as a result of declining birth rates in that time, even we encountered pronatalistic initiatives, especially those that were advocating social and health protection of (illegitimate) mothers and children. It also analyzes the views on the educational work of mothers at the time when this was, due to the absence of fathers, irregular lessons and the difficult war situation, even more difficult. At the same time, it studies the representations of women as mourning mothers at the deaths of their sons-soldiers. In this context, it establishes that during the war, the motif of a mourning, but brave and proud mother was frequent also in the Slovene press. A separate chapter presents the views of female authors on the topic of motherhood.

scholarly journals War and the Contest over National Identity

2002 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 586-609 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roberta L. Coles
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Peace Movement ◽  
American People ◽  
American Character ◽  
Us Military ◽  
American President ◽  
American National Identity ◽  
Gulf Crisis ◽  
The Persian Gulf ◽  
Historical Moment

This paper looks at a recent historical moment in which the American national identity was defined and contested in the public arena. The Persian Gulf crisis of 1990–91 presents a case in point in which official actors attempted to define the American character and in so doing prescribed particular actions necessary to fulfill what it means to be an American. President George Bush's discourse used the crisis to rejuvenate US prestige and American confidence. He described Americans as unique in esteemed values and America as the only country capable of leading the world. In so doing, he invited American participation in support for US military intervention. On the other side, the peace movement chose to emphasize American weaknesses, domestic problems, and the gullible nature of the American people. In so doing, it attempted to shame Americans into supporting the anti-war movement.

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