“Last Night, I Prayed to Matthew”: Matthew Shepard, Homosexuality, and Popular Martyrdom in Contemporary America

2011 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott W. Hoffman
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Social Action ◽  
News Media ◽  
Hate Crime ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Gays And Lesbians ◽  
American Society ◽  
Historical Moment ◽  
The University ◽  
Matthew Shepard

AbstractIn October 1998, Matthew Shepard, a young gay student at the University of Wyoming, was brutally murdered. Upon hearing the news, many Americans described him as a victim of a hate crime. Others, however, proclaimed Shepard a gay martyr. This declaration was not simply political rhetoric. Despite long-standing conservative religious opposition to homosexuality, they believed that Shepard had been granted salvation and a place among the saints in heaven. This article addresses the questions, “How and why was Matthew Shepard declared a popular martyr?” More specifically, how does this popular martyrdom relate to contemporary debates surrounding civil rights for gays and lesbians in America? As part of a series of social movements that followed the Second World War, sexual minorities have struggled to claim legitimate space in American society, leaving dramatic social changes in their wake. Noting this, while contrasting the news media’s construction of Shepard with the simultaneous popular discussion on the Internet, this article argues that a long tradition of popular martyr-making came together with social and political circumstances at a certain historical moment to transform the obscure victim of a hate crime into a popular martyr residing in heaven. That is, although the news media constructed Shepard as simply the affable young victim of a fatal hate crime, these contingencies allowed many Americans to reconstruct Shepard as a popular martyr. They expressed this belief in political, cultural, and social action. In time, Shepard's popular martyrdom helped further a growing acceptance of gays and lesbians into America's mainstream.

Civil Rights, Free Speech, and War

2019 ◽  
pp. 32-37
Author(s):  
Michael V. Metz
Keyword(s):  
Graduate Students ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Free Speech ◽  
News Media ◽  
Democratic Society ◽  
University Of California ◽  
Student Newspaper ◽  
The University

By the middle of the decade, civil rights dominated the nation’s news media, but the war was escalating, and the student newspaper, the Daily Illini, was filled with stories of both. The paper introduced a different news theme when free-speech protests at the University of California at Berkeley made the headlines. Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) sponsored an event on the UI quad to debate the war, a fraternity sponsored a blood drive for the soldiers, and graduate students Vincent Wu and Vern Fein recall their experiences surrounding free speech, civil rights, and early antiwar activities.

The 1970s

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Borstelmann
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Free Market ◽  
The United States ◽  
Global Perspective ◽  
Retirement Plans ◽  
Free Agency ◽  
The World ◽  
The Disabled ◽  
Oil Crisis ◽  
American Society

This book looks at an iconic decade when the cultural left and economic right came to the fore in American society and the world at large. While many have seen the 1970s as simply a period of failures epitomized by Watergate, inflation, the oil crisis, global unrest, and disillusionment with military efforts in Vietnam, this book creates a new framework for understanding the period and its legacy. It demonstrates how the 1970s increased social inclusiveness and, at the same time, encouraged commitments to the free market and wariness of government. As a result, American culture and much of the rest of the world became more—and less—equal. This book explores how the 1970s forged the contours of contemporary America. Military, political, and economic crises undercut citizens' confidence in government. Free market enthusiasm led to lower taxes, a volunteer army, individual 401(k) retirement plans, free agency in sports, deregulated airlines, and expansions in gambling and pornography. At the same time, the movement for civil rights grew, promoting changes for women, gays, immigrants, and the disabled. And developments were not limited to the United States. Many countries gave up colonial and racial hierarchies to develop a new formal commitment to human rights, while economic deregulation spread to other parts of the world, from Chile and the United Kingdom to China. Placing a tempestuous political culture within a global perspective, this book shows that the decade wrought irrevocable transformations upon American society and the broader world that continue to resonate today.

“A Woman's World”: The University of California, Berkeley, During the Second World War

2008 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 534-564 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Dorn
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
Female Students ◽  
Home Front ◽  
University Of California ◽  
World War ◽  
Young Women's Christian Association ◽  
Christian Fellowship ◽  
The University

The fairer sex takes over and the campus becomes a woman's world. They step in and fill the shoes of the departing men and they reveal a wealth of undiscovered ability. The fate of the A.S.U.C. [Associated Students of the University of California] and its activities rests in their hands and they assume the responsibility of their new tasks with sincerity and confidence. —Blue and Gold, University of California, Berkeley, 1943During World War II, female students at the University of California, Berkeley—then the most populous undergraduate campus in American higher education—made significant advances in collegiate life. In growing numbers, women enrolled in male-dominated academic programs, including mathematics, chemistry, and engineering, as they prepared for home-front employment in fields traditionally closed to them. Women also effectively opposed gendered restrictions on extracurricular participation, filling for the first time such influential campus leadership positions as the presidency of Berkeley's student government and editorship of the university's student newspaper. Female students at Berkeley also furthered activist causes during the war years, with the University Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) serving as one of the most popular outlets for their political engagement. Historically rooted in a mission of Christian fellowship, by the 1940s the University YWCA held progressive positions on many of the nation's central social, political, and economic issues. Throughout the war years, women dedicated to promoting civil liberties, racial equality, and international understanding led the organization in its response to two of the most egregious civil rights violations in U.S. history: racial segregation and Japanese internment.

Burney's The Wanderer and Early-Nineteenth-Century Commodity Fetishism

2002 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Henderson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Commodity Fetishism ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Labor Theory ◽  
History Of ◽  
Theory Of Value ◽  
Historical Moment ◽  
The Wanderer

This essay explores a particular moment in the history of commodity fetishism by means of an examination of Frances Burney's The Wanderer (1814). The novel, which is explicitly concerned with the social changes facing early-nineteenth-century England, reveals that at this historical moment the commodity inspired emotions of a particular kind: it was idealized and perceived as attractively individualized, aloof, exotic, and changeable, and it elicited a passionate and sometimes even painful form of desire. In The Wanderer Burney explores the human repercussions of this new way of engaging with objects in the marketplace. She reveals, moreover, the extent to which the fetishism of the commodity reflected not just developments within the economy but also political change: under the influence of the French Revolution the charisma once generated by social status was transferred to the economic realm, where, embodied in the commodity, it gave rise to a pleasurable but masochistic reverence. Burney'sargument for the usefulness of economic independence necessarily leads her to appreciate the commodity fetishism she describes: even while she develops a labor theory of value, Burney promotes a mystification of the commodity by insisting on the aloof independence of both labor and its products. Thus, Burney uses the apparent autonomy of things——which Marx decries——as a means to argue for the autonomy of the makers of those things.

Beyond the border war : student civil rights activism at the University of Kansas and the University of Missouri, 1946-1954

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Mary Beth Brown
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Race Relations ◽  
Student Activism ◽  
University Of Kansas ◽  
University Of Missouri ◽  
Effect Change ◽  
Student Activists ◽  
The University ◽  
The 19Th Century

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI-COLUMBIA AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR.] This dissertation examines post-World War II student civil rights activism at two Midwestern college campuses, the University of Missouri (MU) and the University of Kansas (KU). Missouri and Kansas have conflicting histories concerning race dating back to Bleeding Kansas and the history of race relations on the campuses of KU and MU. This history is especially complicated during the period between 1946 and 1954 because of heightened student activism that challenged racial injustices. Race relations on campus largely mirrored that of the state's political environment, with KU having integrated in the 19th century, whereas MU did not desegregate until 1950. However, the same did not apply to the success of student activists at each school where MU students found success fighting against discriminatory practices in Columbia, whereas local business leaders and the university administration stymied KU students. The dissertation examines the exchange of ideas and strategy among students, which occurred through athletics, debates, guest speakers, and various regional and national groups. In particular, the study argues that campus spaces, such as residential co-ops and student organizations, were deeply significant because they served as incubators of activism by offering students a place to talk about racial and social injustice and plan ways to challenge these inequalities and effect change on campus and in the broader community.

scholarly journals Bella Abzug, queer rights, and disrupting the status quo

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Trevor G Gates ◽  
Margery C Saunders
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Social Action ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The United States ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Working Environment ◽  
Field Analysis ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Status

Workers who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ)-identified have always been a part of the workplace in the United States, yet there has been a lack of awareness about how to advocate for the needs of these people. This lack of awareness was challenged by Congresswoman Bella Abzug. Abzug’s campaign for creating an equal working environment for sexual minorities initiated gradual changes in the public discourse concerning workplace and other broad equality measures for these communities. To frame these gradual transformations within a historical context, we use Lewin’s force field analysis framework to examine the change efforts of Abzug. Abzug had beginning success in thawing the status quo yet her visions for equality for LGBTQ people have yet to be realized. Using Abzug’s social action as an example, this article concludes that allies must continue to challenge societal oppression, power, and privilege and to demand civil rights protections for LGBTQ individuals.

scholarly journals The Rali affair: A case study for a free press

1999 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 114-124
Author(s):  
David Robie
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Free Press ◽  
Student Newspaper ◽  
The University ◽  
Cover Up

In early 1996, a PNG news media cover-up was alleged over the so-called Topul Rali affair. An exposé by the student newspaper Uni Tavur led to a clash with the University of PNG administration and the journalism programme was closed down three years later. 

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