scholarly journals How to get away with colour

2017 ◽  
pp. 117-134
Author(s):  
Emiel Martens ◽  
Débora Póvoa
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Analysis ◽  
Economic Status ◽  
Racial Diversity ◽  
The United States ◽  
Racial Minorities ◽  
American Media ◽  
History Of ◽  
American Society ◽  
The One ◽  
Tv Show

The popular American television series How to Get Away with Murder (2014) seems to challenge the long history of stereotypical roles assigned to racial minorities in American media by choosing a multiracial cast to impersonate characters that, while having different racial backgrounds, share a similar socio-economic status and have multidimensional personalities that distance them from the common stereotypes. However, although it has been praised for its portrayal of racial diversity, the series operates within a problematic logic of racial colour-blindness, disconnecting the main characters from any sign of racial specificity and creating a fictional world in which racism is no longer part of American society. This case study aims to demonstrate to which extent the “colour-blind approach” of the TV show reinforces the postracial illusion in the United States, i.e. the idea that the country has overcome its past of racial segregation and now offers the same opportunities for everyone, regardless of colour and race. Through a narrative analysis of the first season of the series, this chapter will argue that the depiction of race in How to Get Away with Murder is highly ambivalent. On the one hand, the show does not completely ignore race by inserting topics such as racism in the plot, giving these issues at least some visibility. On the other hand, its more general panorama reveals an intent to deracialise its main characters in a colour-blind manner. This is problematic since it overshadows racial issues that still have a big impact on the lives of racial minorities.

The Legal and Political History of Italian Immigrants in the United States before 1941

2017 ◽  
pp. 12-40
Author(s):  
Mary Elizabeth ◽  
Basile Chopas
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Public Perception ◽  
Economic Status ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Public ◽  
War Department ◽  
History Of ◽  
American Society

Chapter 1 traces the evolution in Italians’ social, political, and economic status in the United States, beginning with the effects of early twentieth-century immigration law, and conveys how their integration into American society influenced wartime policies. This chapter argues that Italians’ progression in the labor market coincided with their changing racial identity and white consciousness, but that political involvement was more instrumental in raising the public perception of Italians. This chapter also explains how the FBI built a domestic intelligence program through the collection of information about subversive individuals or organizations several years before U.S. involvement in World War II. A joint agreement in July 1941 between the War Department and the Justice Department established policy for handling suspicious persons of enemy nations residing in the United States.

I

1986 ◽  
Vol 80 (4) ◽  
pp. 896-901 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manfred Lachs
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
International Court Of Justice ◽  
International Court ◽  
History Of ◽  
American Society ◽  
Second World ◽  
Shed Light

To write of Philip Jessup means to survey the history of the teaching of international law in the United States throughout the last half century; to cover all important events concerning the birth of international organizations on the morrow of the Second World War; to visit the halls of the General Assembly and the Security Council; to attend meetings of the American Society of International Law and the Institute of International Law, where he so frequently took the floor to shed light on their debates; to attend sittings of the International Court of Justice in the years 1960-1969. I could hardly undertake this task; there are others much more qualified to do so. What I wish to do is to recall him as a great jurist I knew and a delightful human being; in short, a judge and a great friend whom I learned to admire.

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.

The ‘Brazilian Connection’ in the History of American Linguistics

1999 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 355-382
Author(s):  
Cristina Altman
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
The United States ◽  
South American ◽  
Columbia University ◽  
Structural Linguistics ◽  
History Of ◽  
Roman Jakobson ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The One

Summary When mention is made of Brazil in connection with American linguistics, it usually amounts to a reference to the Linguistic Circle of New York, where Roman Jakobson (1896–1982) and Claude Lévi-Strauss (b.1908), who had come from Brazil where he had done ethnological work, met and exchanged ideas. This singular event has cast a shadow on other contacts between Brazil and American linguistics, of which, the one between Jakobson and the Brazilian linguist Joaquim Mattoso Câmara (1904–1970) was much more consequential, at least as far as the implementation of structural linguistics in Brazil and in South America generally during the 1950s and the 1960s is concerned. Mattoso Câmara came to the United States and spent most of his time in New York City (September 1943 till April 1944), where he got exposure to Praguean type structuralism, notably through Jakobson’s lectures he attended at Columbia University and at the École Libre of New York, which had been established by European refugees at the time. He also participated in the first meetings of the Linguistic Circle of New York in 1943 as one of its co-founders. Following his return to Rio de Janeiro, Mattoso Câmara proposed, in 1949, as his doctoral thesis a phonemic description of Brazilian Portuguese. The work was published a few years later, in 1953. His most influential work, Princípios de Lingüística Gerai, first published in 1954, had two more revised and updated editions (1958, 1967) and served to introduce several generations of Brazilian as well as other South American students to structural linguistics during the 1950s and 1960s.

Broadway Goes to War

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert L. McLaughlin ◽  
Sally E. Parry
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
The United States ◽  
Popular Media ◽  
Home Front ◽  
World War ◽  
American Theater ◽  
History Of ◽  
Battle Fatigue ◽  
The Rich ◽  
American Society

The American theater was not ignorant of the developments brought on by World War II, and actively addressed and debated timely, controversial topics for the duration of the war, including neutrality and isolationism, racism and genocide, and heroism and battle fatigue. Productions such as Watch on the Rhine (1941), The Moon is Down (1942), Tomorrow the World (1943), and A Bell for Adano (1944) encouraged public discussion of the war's impact on daily life and raised critical questions about the conflict well before other forms of popular media. American drama of the 1940s is frequently overlooked, but the plays performed during this eventful decade provide a picture of the rich and complex experience of living in the United States during the war years. McLaughlin and Parry's work fills a significant gap in the history of theater and popular culture, showing that American society was more divided and less idealistic than the received histories of the WWII home front and the entertainment industry recognize.

Censuses in the USA and statistics of immigration from Poland – methodological-historical perspective

2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (6) ◽  
pp. 27-49
Author(s):  
Włodzimierz Okrasa
Keyword(s):  
Census Data ◽  
The United States ◽  
Federal Funds ◽  
The Us ◽  
Lower Chamber ◽  
The Usa ◽  
History Of ◽  
Us Constitution ◽  
American Society ◽  
Dynamic Population

Censuses of population and housing in the United States are of particular interest to experts in many disciplines – in addition to statisticians, also to demographers, political scientists, sociologists, historians, and even psychologists and anthropologists. This is so not only because of the long history of US censuses (the first census in the US was carried out in 1790) or methodological innovations, but due to immigration responsible for the dynamic population growth, and to the specific purpose of the census, which is ensuring the proportional (according to the numer of inhabitants) distribution of seats in the lower chamber of Congress and federal funds (apportionment), guaranteed by the US Constitution. The heterogeneity of the American society, both in the racial-ethnic and religious-cultural sense, in addition to the above considerations, raise questions about the purposes of those changes and directions for improvement in subsequent censuses. The aim of the article is to present the problems and challenges related to censuses in the USA. The paper focuses on methodological and operational solutions that can be implemented thanks to several improvements, including the progress in the fields of statistics and technology. The paper also discusses the issues of credibility of the census data, based on the example of immigration from Poland and the Polish diaspora in the USA.

Political and Technological Changes That Created Jon Stewart and Bill O’Reilly

2019 ◽  
pp. 32-47
Author(s):  
Dannagal Goldthwaite Young
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Television News ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Polarization ◽  
Media Industry ◽  
Technological Changes ◽  
Television Industry ◽  
American Media ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cable Television Industry

This chapter describes the regulatory, political, and technological changes in the United States during the 1980s and 1990s that set the stage for the television satire and outrage programming of the early 2000s. It summarizes the story of the deregulation of the American media industry and argues that the resulting increased demand for profits from television news eroded the journalistic mission. It also explains the roots of political polarization in the United States, from social and cultural shifts to changes in the party nominating processes and to the increased role of soft (and dark) money in elections. The chapter chronicles the history of the cable television industry and how the proliferation of channels in the 1980s upended the economics of media, erasing the concept of the “mass audience” in favor of smaller niche audiences defined by psychographics and sociodemographics.

Carnaps Autobiographie als Autobiographie

2019 ◽  
Vol 67 (2) ◽  
pp. 236-250
Author(s):  
Anne Siegetsleitner
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Self Presentation ◽  
Autobiographical Writing ◽  
General Attitude ◽  
Conversion Experience ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
Intellectual Autobiography

Abstract Rudolf Carnap’s intellectual autobiography was published in 1963. The specific characteristics of this kind of text and its reception shape his self-testimony. This article examines how these characteristics – typical narrative position and structure, problems of truth and veracity, well-rounded self-presentation – are manifest in the story Carnap tells of his life. In Carnap’s case, the subjective narrative position is the one of the successful philosopher, and Carnap meets the expectation of presenting one’s life as a unity, framed by considerations of his general attitude towards life. In line with the history of autobiographical writing in pietism, Carnap’s autobiography also includes a kind of self-justification in addition to a conversion experience, although the latter is secularized as a conversion from religion to logic-centred philosophy. In this regard, the United States are presented as a blessed country, where Carnap has reached his New Zion which he helped flourish

Digital Resources: Chile’s Centro de Investigación y Documentación (CIDOC) and Anti-Communism in the 1964 Elections

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Botto Stuven
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Contemporary History ◽  
Christian Democracy ◽  
Salvador Allende ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Media ◽  
The One ◽  
The Right

The Documentation Center of the Contemporary History of Chile (CIDOC), which belongs to the Universidad Finis Terrae (Santiago), has a digital archive that contains the posters and newspapers inserts of the anti-communist campaign against Salvador Allende’s presidential candidacy in 1964. These appeared in the main right-wing newspapers of Santiago, between January and September of 1964. Although the collection of posters in CIDOC is not complete, it is a resource of great value for those who want to research this historical juncture, considering that those elections were by far the most contested and conflicting in the history of Chile during the 20th Century, as it implicted the confrontation between two candidates defending two different conceptions about society, politics, and economics. On the one hand, Salvador Allende, the candidate of the Chilean left; on the other, Eduardo Frei, the candidate of the Christian Democracy, coupled with the traditional parties of the Right. While the technical elements of the programs of both candidates did not differ much from each other, the political campaign became the scenario for an authentic war between the “media” that stood up for one or the other candidate. Frei’s anticommunist campaign had the financial aid of the United States, and these funds were used to gather all possible resources to create a real “terror” in the population at the perspective of the Left coming to power. The Chilean Left labeled this strategy of using fear as the “Terror Campaign.”

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.

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