scholarly journals Educating the Mainland Public

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Indica Ayn Mattson
Keyword(s):  
Puerto Rican ◽  
Young Adult Literature ◽  
Publishing House ◽  
Spanish American ◽  
Spanish American War ◽  
White American ◽  
Political Sovereignty ◽  
Uncertain Future ◽  
Nancy Drew ◽  
Adventure Novels

This research focuses on two examples of young adult literature—Young Hunters in Porto Rico; or, the Search for a Lost Treasure, and A Yankee Lad’s Pluck: How Bert Larkin Saved His Father’s Ranch in the Island of Porto Rico—published by the Stratemeyer Syndicate and the syndicate’s league of mass-market imitators immediately following the end of the Spanish-American War in 1898. These imperialistic adventure novels coincided with the U.S. implementation of the doctrine of Americanization, or the American colonial mission to instruct Puerto Ricans in self-government and democratic values in anticipation for some uncertain future form of economic and political sovereignty for the island. Edward Stratemeyer built his vast fiction empire, the publishing house for such series as Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, upon imperial romances which glorified the events of the Spanish-American War and presented recently-acquired U.S. territories—such as Puerto Rico—as sites of adventure beyond mainland confines to a predominately male, teenage audience. Borrowing from an English literary tradition, these novels energized young, white, American men to act as willing participants in the imperial imagination while simultaneously instilling in them expectations for Puerto Rican behavior and identity.

Spanish and Puertorriqueñidad

2020 ◽  
pp. 7-20
Author(s):  
Amílcar Antonio Barreto
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Puerto Rican ◽  
Puerto Ricans ◽  
Spanish American ◽  
Language Of Instruction ◽  
Holy Grail ◽  
Spanish American War ◽  
Official Languages ◽  
Puerto Rican Nationalism ◽  
Language Law

In the aftermath of the 1898 Spanish-American War, federal policymakers sought to transform Puerto Ricans from loyal Spaniards to trustworthy Americans. Public schools employing English as the language of instruction were the primary vehicles implementing this change. Behind this policy were deeply ingrained attitudes that took for granted the superiority of Anglo Saxons and, by extension, their English vernacular. Contrary to expectations, the Americanization effort backfired and even fueled Puerto Rican nationalism. The island’s intelligentsia took up the banner of preserving Puerto Rican identity (Puerto Ricanness) and canonized the Spanish language as a core feature of puertorriqueñidad. In tandem with a change in education policy was the adoption of a new language law—one that declared Spanish and English co-official languages of the Puerto Rican government. Repealing that law became a holy grail for the island’s nationalists.

The Rise and Fall of Puerto Rico as a Social Laboratory, 1945–1965

1995 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Lapp
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Puerto Rico ◽  
Puerto Rican ◽  
Spanish American ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Spanish American War

Before the 1940s Puerto Rico was an obscure possession for most American social scientists, as indeed it was for most United States citizens. Conquered in the Spanish-American War, Puerto Rico was overshadowed in the American consciousness by its more tumultuous neighbor Cuba. To be sure, by the 1930s, there were sparks of interest among foundation staffs, New Dealers, and radicals in the plight of the Puerto Rican poor. Yet on the whole the island continued to merit only cursory attention.

The United States and the Economic Development of Puerto Rico

1952 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-59
Author(s):  
Harvey S. Perloff
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Economic Development ◽  
Puerto Rico ◽  
Puerto Rican ◽  
Sugar Industry ◽  
The United States ◽  
Spanish American ◽  
Spanish American War ◽  
Tariff Structures

Puerto Rico became an insular possession of the United States following the Spanish-American War in 1898. Shortly thereafter the island was brought within the monetary and tariff structures of the United States, and mainland capital began to flow into the island, especially in the form of investments in the sugar industry. These factors were mainly responsible for shaping the Puerto Rican economy and for tying it closely to the economy of the United States.

Indescribable Beings

2021 ◽  
pp. 30-70
Author(s):  
Marilisa Jiménez García
Keyword(s):  
Puerto Rico ◽  
Young People ◽  
Puerto Rican ◽  
Picture Books ◽  
Visual Media ◽  
Spanish American ◽  
Spanish American War ◽  
The Us ◽  
History Of

This chapter establishes literature for young people and school readers as prominent, visual media used by US and Puerto Rican writers, both those in the diaspora and Puerto Rico, throughout the history of the US and Puerto Rico relationship beginning in 1898 with the Spanish American War. This chapter analyzes several prominent picture books, and illustrated textbooks read in the US and PR, from a variety of authors including Ezra Jack Keats and Ángeles Pastor.

The Campaign for Realism in the New York Periodical Press

2019 ◽  
pp. 285-301
Author(s):  
Mark J. Noonan
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Spanish American ◽  
Periodical Press ◽  
Spanish American War ◽  
Massive Growth ◽  
Realism In Literature

This chapter demonstrates that the fight for greater realism in literature and life was long-lasting and transpired not on a single front but across many battlefields involving a wide variety of actors. Often, war itself was the impetus, first in the rewriting of the “facts” and significance of the Civil War and later as a means of response to the masculine bluster and bloodlust wrought by the Spanish-American War. The gender and class wars of the 1880s and 1890s were also relevant to this embattled genre, as were the effects of industrialization and immigration, which led to the massive growth of New York at this time, where so many of the newspapers and magazines promoting the various strands of realism were based. New York, war, and social issues were all entangled in the emergence of this genre, as numerous New York authors and artists sought to make sense of modern America and mold it to their own visions.

The Politics of US Latino Literature and American Realism

2019 ◽  
pp. 231-248
Author(s):  
Ramón J. Guerra
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Mexican Revolution ◽  
The United States ◽  
Spanish American ◽  
Spanish American War ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Latino Literature ◽  
The Common ◽  
Racial Ethnic

This chapter examines the development of Latino literature in the United States during the time when realism emerged as a dominant aesthetic representation. Beginning with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) and including the migrations resulting from the Spanish-American War (1898) and the Mexican Revolution (1910), Latinos in the United States began to realistically craft an identity served by a sense of displacement. Latinos living in the United States as a result of migration or exile were concerned with similar issues, including but not limited to their predominant status as working-class, loss of homeland and culture, social justice, and racial/ethnic profiling or discrimination. The literature produced during the latter part of the nineteenth century by some Latinos began to merge the influence of romantic style with a more socially conscious manner to reproduce the lives of ordinary men and women, draw out the specifics of their existence, characterize their dialects, and connect larger issues to the concerns of the common man, among other realist techniques.

Walter Rauschenbusch and the Brotherhood of the Kingdom

1938 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 138-155 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Howard Hopkins
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
Society Of Jesus ◽  
Spanish American ◽  
Spanish American War ◽  
Storm And Stress ◽  
The Social ◽  
Walter Rauschenbusch ◽  
Jacob Riis ◽  
Manchester School ◽  
The Church

The Brotherhood of the Kingdom was organized in December, 1892, by a small group of converts to the ideal of the kingdom of God on earth who, not unmindful of the examples of St. Francis and of the Society of Jesus, planned to reestablish the idea of the kingdom “in the thought of the church and to assist in its practical realization in the world.” The year 1892 had witnessed a rising crescendo of social turbulence and political unrest throughout America. In the midwest the populist revolt was growing, while industrial warfare had broken out in the violent Homestead strike at the Carnegie steel plants. Jacob Riis had opened wide the festering tenements of the great cities in his revelation of How the Other Half Lives, while in intellectual circles the younger economists were rebelling against the tenets of the Manchester school. William Jennings Bryan's campaign for free silver was only four years away, and the Spanish–American War but six years in the future. Into such an atmosphere of storm and stress was born the Brotherhood of the Kingdom, dedicated to the realization of a spiritual ideal in the social order.

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