Introduction

Heart Beats ◽  
2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Robson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
The United States ◽  
History Of ◽  
American Society

This introductory chapter briefly discusses the history of verse recitation and poetry memorization in Great Britain and the United States and how their societies have come to perceive such practices, as well as the role poetry plays within both the British and American imaginary. It also provides an overview of the case studies to be undertaken in this volume, and the ways in which they will be approached for study. In addition, the chapter goes on to embark on brief explorations of the felt, internal aspects of memorized poetry in British and American society. These, as the chapter attempts to show, combine to tell a story that both augments and to an extent challenges the arguments put forward elsewhere in this book.

Univision, Telemundo, and the Rise of Spanish-Language Television in the United States

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Craig Allen
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Mass Communication ◽  
The United States ◽  
Spanish Language ◽  
Spanish Speaking ◽  
History Of ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
American Society ◽  
The U.S

The first completely researched history of U.S. Spanish-language television traces the rise of two foremost, if widely unrecognized, modern American enterprises—the Spanish-language networks Univision and Telemundo. It is a standard scholarly history constructed from archives, original interviews, reportage, and other public materials. Occasioned by the public’s wakening to a “Latinization” of the U.S., the book demonstrates that the emergence of Spanish-language television as a force in mass communication is essential to understanding the increasing role of Latinos and Latino affairs in modern American society. It argues that a combination of foreign and domestic entrepreneurs and innovators who overcame large odds resolves a significant and timely question: In an English-speaking country, how could a Spanish-speaking institution have emerged? Through exploration of significant and colorful pioneers, continuing conflicts and setbacks, landmark strides, and ongoing controversies—and with revelations that include regulatory indecision, behind-the-scenes tug-of-war, and the internationalization of U.S. mass media—the rise of a Spanish-language institution in the English-speaking U.S. is explained. Nine chapters that begin with Spanish-language television’s inception in 1961 and end 2012 chronologically narrate the endeavor’s first 50 years. Events, passages, and themes are thoroughly referenced.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David R. Mayhew
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Regulatory State ◽  
World Power ◽  
Federal Debt ◽  
American Society

This introductory chapter talks about Congress's imprint on American society and life as driven by the aches, anxieties and headlines of the day. But instead of dwelling on aspirations, processes, and optics, it looks at the effects or results of congressional activities. Going as far back as 1789, the chapter examines Congress's distinctive imprint on American society from those of the presidency, cradling the analysis in the experience of peer countries. These congressionl imprints include the launching of the country in the 1790s, the coming of the regulatory state, the rise of the United States to world power, the onsetof economic neoliberalism, and the management of federal debt and deficits.

Response to James Lebovic's review of Why Intelligence Fails: Lessons from the Iranian Revolution and the Iraq War

2010 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 1169-1170 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Jervis
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Iraq War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Foreign Policy Analysis ◽  
History Of ◽  
Bright Side ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Cold War

Among the many issues raised by James Lebovic's perceptive review are two that strike me as crucial: the relationships between intelligence and social science and those between intelligence and policymaking. The first itself has two parts, one being how scholars can study intelligence. Both access and methods are difficult. For years, diplomatic historians referred to intelligence as the “hidden dimension” of their subject. Now it is much more open, and Great Britain, generally more secretive than the United States, has just issued the authorized history of MI5 (see Christopher Andrew, Defend the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5, 2009). Since the end of the Cold War, the CIA has released extensive, if incomplete, records, and the bright side (for us) of intelligence failures is that they lead to the release of treasure troves of documents, which can often be supplemented by memoirs and interviews. But even more than in other aspects of foreign policy analysis, we are stuck with evidence that is fragmentary. In this way, we resemble scholars of ancient societies, who forever lament the loss of most of the material they want to study.

Locating Nowhere

2018 ◽  
pp. 17-36
Author(s):  
Michael Robertson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
The United States ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
Edward Bellamy ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
History Of ◽  
Charles Fourier ◽  
Total Reconstruction

This chapter examines the proliferation of utopian literature in the United States and Great Britain during the late nineteenth century, mainly due to the economic and social upheavals resulting from industrial capitalism. In particular, it shows how writers such as Edward Bellamy and Thomas More came up with their visions of peaceful and egalitarian future worlds in response to the turbulence of their era. The chapter first provides an overview of the Great Depression experienced by both the United States and Great Britain between 1873 and 1896, a period characterized by extreme poverty and unemployment, before discussing the history of More's Utopia (1516). It then considers how utopian socialists in Europe and the United States, including Henri de Saint-Simon, Robert Owen, and Charles Fourier, devised schemes for the total reconstruction of society. It also analyzes Henry George's utopian vision, which he articulated in his 1879 book Progress and Poverty.

Introduction

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann Taves
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Alcoholics Anonymous ◽  
The United States ◽  
Spiritual Path ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book's main themes. This book analyzes the role of revelatory claims in three groups that emerged in the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: Mormonism, Alcoholics Anonymous, and the network of students associated with A Course in Miracles. These three case studies are not only richly documented but also present intriguing comparative possibilities. Each had a key figure whose unusual experiences and/or abilities led to the emergence of a new spiritual path and to the production of scripture-like texts that were not attributed directly to them. However, the three groups do not make the same claims for their scripture-like texts, and their respective collaborations generated very different social formations.

Know Thyself: What Is “Wilsonianism”?

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Tony Smith
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Policy Decisions ◽  
Woodrow Wilson ◽  
Liberal Internationalism ◽  
History Of

This introductory chapter provides an overview of Wilsonianism, which comprises a set of ideas called American liberal internationalism. More than a century after Woodrow Wilson became president of the United States, his country is still not certain how to understand the important legacy for the country's foreign policy of the tradition that bears his name. Wilsonianism remains a living ideology whose interpretation continues either to motivate, or to serve as a cover for, a broad range of American foreign policy decisions. However, if there is no consensus on what the tradition stands for, or, worse, if there is a consensus but its claims to be part of the tradition are not borne out by the history of Wilsonianism from Wilson's day until the late 1980s, then clearly a debate is in order to provide clarity and purpose to American thinking about world affairs today.

Anti-Catholicism in the United States

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark S. Massa
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
North American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Human Society ◽  
Boundary Maintenance ◽  
Different Types ◽  
History Of ◽  
American Society ◽  
American Catholic

Historian John Higham once referred to anti-Catholicism as “by far the oldest, and the most powerful of anti-foreign traditions” in North American intellectual and cultural history. But Higham’s famous observation actually elided three different types of anti-Catholic nativism that have enjoyed a long and quite vibrant life in North America: a cultural distrust of Catholics, based on an understanding of North American public culture rooted in a profoundly British and Protestant ordering of human society; an intellectual distrust of Catholics, based on a set of epistemological and philosophical ideas first elucidated in the English (Lockean) and Scottish (“Common Sense Realist”) Enlightenments and the British Whig tradition of political thought; and a nativist distrust of Catholics as deviant members of American society, a perception central to the Protestant mainstream’s duty of “boundary maintenance” (to utilize Emile Durkheim’s reading of how “outsiders” help “insiders” maintain social control). An examination of the long history of anti-Catholicism in the United States can be divided into three parts: first, an overview of the types of anti-Catholic animus utilizing the typology adumbrated above; second, a narrative history of the most important anti-Catholic events in U.S. culture (e.g., Harvard’s Dudleian Lectures, the Suffolk Resolves, the burning of the Charlestown convent, Maria Monk’s Awful Disclosures); and finally, a discussion of American Catholic efforts to address the animus.

Government Publications and the Development of Libraries

2003 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-62
Author(s):  
Kenneth E. Carpenter
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Public Support ◽  
The United States ◽  
Statistical Information ◽  
Conscious Decision ◽  
Government Documents ◽  
History Of ◽  
Library Support ◽  
National Libraries

This paper examines the history of statistical publishing by governments, looks at other kinds of government publishing, and provides brief case studies of the collecting of government documents by libraries in Europe and the United States. These are revealing of attitudes toward government documents and in some cases show a relationship between government-document collecting and the goals of the library. The author argues that collecting and disseminating statistical information was a conscious decision made by governments on the grounds that information would lead to public support. It is arguable that the budget increases for national libraries in Britain and France, which occurred as well in the 1830s, derived from the value those governments placed on disseminating information. A connection in one era between library support and what is considered to be knowledge and the value placed on it suggests a way of looking at libraries in other periods. Indeed, for all libraries, policies and practices in collecting government documents may be indicative of a library's goals.

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