From Lawn Tennis to Eugenics: A History of Women and Sneakers

Costume ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 92-109
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Semmelhack

Since the invention of sneakers in the middle of the nineteenth century, women have been significant in both their production and consumption. 1 Despite this long history, women's relationship with sneakers has been complicated by larger issues ranging from dissonance between female athleticism and ideals of female desirability to issues of exclusion related to the overt hyper-masculinity embedded in modern sneaker culture. This article will focus on the sociological forces at play in the relationship between women and sneakers, predominantly in the United States and Britain, from the popularization of lawn tennis in the 1870s through to the start of the Second World War, a period in which exercise, morality and ideal femininity became redefined through the lens of ‘fitness’, by which was often meant preparedness for motherhood or attractiveness to men.

2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 461-482 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ines Prodöhl

AbstractThis article traces the complex and shifting organization of soy's production and consumption from Northeast China to Europe and the United States. It focuses on a set of national and transnational actors with differing interests in the global and national spread of soybeans. The combination of these actors in certain spatiotemporal contexts enabled a fundamental change in soy from an Asian to an American cash crop. At the beginning of the twentieth century, soy rapidly became Northeast China's cash crop, owing to steadily increasing Western demand. However, the versatility of soy – and soy oil in particular – offered a highly successful response to the agricultural and industrial challenges that the United States faced during the Great Depression and the Second World War. By the end of the war, American farmers in the Midwest cultivated more soybeans than their Chinese counterparts.


2016 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 126-138
Author(s):  
Elżbieta Mańczak-Wohlfeld

Although contrastive studies do not enjoy great prestige among linguists, they have a very long tradition dating back to ca. 1000 A.D. when Ælfric wrote his Grammatica, a grammar of Latin and English. Even then he must have been aware of the fact that the knowledge of one language may be helpful in the process of learning another language (Krzeszowski 1990). Similarly, it seems that throughout the history of mankind teachers of a foreign language must have realized that a native and foreign tongue can be contrasted. However, contrastive linguistics only came into being as a science at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. The first works were almost purely theoretical, and it is worth emphasizing that among the first scholars working in the field was Baudouin de Courtenay, a Polish linguist, who published his contrastive grammar of Polish, Russian and Old Church Slavonic in 1912. The outbreak of the Second World War was a milestone in the development of applied contrastive studies since a need to teach foreign languages in the United States arose as a result. The 1960’s is considered a further step in the development of contrastive grammar since a number of projects were initiated both in Europe and in the U.S.A. (Willim, Mańczak-Wohlfeld 1997), which resulted in the introduction of courses in English-Polish contrastive grammar at Polish universities. The aim of the present paper is to characterize and evaluate the courses offered in the English departments of selected Polish universities and to suggest an “ideal” syllabus.


2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie Cohn ◽  
Matthew Evenden ◽  
Marc Landry

AbstractComparing three of the major hydroelectric power-producing countries during the war – Canada, the United States, and Germany – this article considers the implications of expanding hydroelectricity for war production and strategy, and how wartime decisions structured the longer-term evolution of large technological systems. Despite different starting points, all three countries pursued similar strategies in attempting to mobilize hydroelectricity for the war effort. The different access to and use of hydro in these states produced a vital economic and ultimately military advantage or disadvantage. The global dimensions of hydroelectric development during the war, moreover, demonstrate that this conflict was a turning point in the history of electrification.


2016 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-59
Author(s):  
Kenneth Weisbrode

Lewis Einstein (1877–1967) was a little-known diplomat who became one of Theodore Roosevelt's closest advisers on European affairs. Roosevelt's attraction to Einstein derived not only from a keen writing style and considerable fluency in European history, literature and politics, but also from his instinct for anticipating the future of European rivalries and for the important role the United States could play there in preserving peace. The two men shared a perspective on the twentieth century that saw the United States as a central arbiter and enforcer of international order—a position the majority of Americans would accept and promote only after the Second World War. The relationship between Roosevelt and Einstein sheds light on the rising status of American diplomacy and diplomats and their self-image vis-à-vis Europe at the turn of the twentieth century.


1995 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-10
Author(s):  
Edward A. Alpers

Is there an African Studies establishment in the United States? Of course there is. The academic study of Africa has mushroomed since the end of the Second World War as federal dollars were invested in graduate training programs so that the United States would be able to cope with the challenges posed by the coming to independence of former colonial territories in Africa from 1956 onward. Most of this money went to major research universities. Accordingly, the training in African Studies that evolved at these centers was rooted in the historical development of western academic disciplines, the history of race and power in America, and hegemonic control over the discourse on Africa in America.


Armed Guests ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 84-105
Author(s):  
Sebastian Schmidt

This chapter begins the exploration of the origins of contemporary basing practices with a close look at the 1941 Leased Bases Agreement between the United States and Britain and the developments from which it emerged. Concerned only with colonial territory, the agreement can now be seen, in hindsight, as a stepping stone to contemporary practices. The focus is on how policymakers wrestled with the issue of territorial sovereignty in the context of a rapidly evolving and deteriorating security situation immediately prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. Negotiators on both sides worked within the traditional understandings of the relationship between military presence and territorial authority, which made it extremely difficult to come to terms with a foreign military presence. American policymakers expected to retain broad authority in the territories hosting US bases—authority that had significant continuities with colonial governance—while British policymakers feared the loss of British sovereignty.


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