“All That Glitters …”: Problematizing Golden-Age Narratives in Vergil’s Aeneid and the Western Film Genre

2018 ◽  
pp. 157-174
Author(s):  
Kirsten Day
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
Latin Literature ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
World War ◽  
Film Genre ◽  
Trojan War ◽  
Western Film

In the first of two chapters that treat promises of an imperial golden age in Aeneid Book 6 in relation to American expansionism as portrayed in the Western film genre, Kirsten Day compares the production contexts of Vergil’s epic, during the “golden age of Latin literature” in the wake of epochal civil wars, to the Westerns produced after World War II during the “golden age” of Hollywood. So too the dramatic settings of the Aeneid, after the Trojan War, and of Westerns, after the American Civil War, enshrine these trailblazing pioneers in the pantheon of founding heroes whose struggles (re)built the nation of the narrative’s audience. Through a wide-ranging survey of many of the genre’s most famous films, such as Red River and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Day examines several key themes, including nation-building as divinely driven labor; the laconic characterization of the Western male hero and his troubling resemblance to the villain; and the sacrificial role assigned to female characters. Day concludes that these ancient and modern texts also share an undercurrent of anxiety about the moral ambiguities of these projects, which belies their superficial optimism.

Canada at Peace and Soldiers at War: Canadian U.N. Soldiers in Korea, Egypt, and Vietnam

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bronwyn Jaques
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Home Front ◽  
World War ◽  
Military Conflicts ◽  
High Regard ◽  
Canadian Military ◽  
The Cold War

In recent years, Canadian peacekeeping and UN involvement has assumed a place of high regard, reverence, and veneration, often at the expense of Canada’s military past. While its glorification is in many ways justified, the mythology surrounding Canada’s peacekeeping role has compelled many Canadians to view Canada solely as a peacekeeping nation. As a result, peacekeeping has become the “touchstone of our identity.” This mythology distorts the reality of Canadian military action to the point where Canadian veterans of NATO conflicts are often forgotten and it ignores the fact that many of the first peacekeepers left Canada “virtually unnoticed,” without the recognition and support of their nation. The mythology of peacekeeping misrepresents Canadian military conflicts and ignores that, in spite of the characterization of peacekeepers as nonviolent and unbiased actors, the majority of them were first and foremost Canadian soldiers, many of whom veterans of World War II. For the soldiers who came of age on the battlefields of Europe, the role of peacekeeping was a frustrating and politically charged experience, whereby they held no power and they felt they made very little positive impact. Despite the virtually universal glorification and celebration of peacekeepers in recent years, investigation of the “Cold War Home Front” demonstrates the difficulties faced by Canadian NATO soldiers, U.N. peacekeepers and their families in a society that wanted to move beyond the years of struggle, pain and sacrifice in war time and had little sympathy for the men and women who ‘chose’ to leave their families to serve in wars their nation was not fighting.

scholarly journals Towards a Poetics of Strangeness: Experiments in Classifying Language of Technological Novelty

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Simeone ◽  
Advaith Gundavajhala Venkata Koundinya ◽  
Anandh Ravi Kumar ◽  
Ed Finn
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
Margaret Atwood ◽  
Special Relationship ◽  
William Gibson ◽  
World War ◽  
The Future ◽  
Bruce Sterling

The trajectory of science fiction since World War II has been defined by its relationship with technoscientific imaginaries. In the Golden Age of the 1930s and 1940s, writers like Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein dreamed of the robots and rocket ships that would preoccupy thousands of engineers a few decades later. In 1980s cyberpunk, Vernor Vinge, William Gibson, and Bruce Sterling imagined virtual worlds that informed generations of technology entrepreneurs. When Margaret Atwood was asked what draws her to dystopian visions of the future, she responded, "I read the newspaper." This is not just a reiteration of the truism that science fiction is always about the present as well as the future. In fact, we will argue, science fiction is a genre defined by its special relationship with what we might term "scientific reality," or the set of paradigms, aspirations, and discourses associated with technoscientific research.

The Myth of the Innocent Nation

2018 ◽  
pp. 198-238
Author(s):  
Richard T. Hughes
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
James Baldwin ◽  
American People ◽  
World War ◽  
Black Soldiers ◽  
American Myths ◽  
To Come

While the myth of the Innocent Nation weaves a tale that is objectively false with no redemptive qualities, it is one of the strongest of the American myths in terms of its hold over the American people. That myth, like the nation itself, hangs suspended between the golden age of an innocent past (Nature’s Nation) and a golden age of innocence yet to come (Millennial Nation). Suspended in that vacuous state, Americans imagine that history is irrelevant. How could it be otherwise? Nothing destroys a sense of innocence like the terrors of history taken seriously. Anchored by the pillars that stand at the beginning and end of time, the myth of the Innocent Nation flourished during every modern conflict beginning with World War I, but especially when the nation faced enemies like Nazi Germany in World War II or Isis during the War on Terror. The irony was obvious, for even as the nation proclaimed its innocence, black soldiers, for example, returned from World War II only to face brutality and segregation in their own nation. Countless blacks from Muhammed Ali to Toni Morrison to James Baldwin to Ta-Nehisi Coates have protested that irony in the American myth of Innocence.

scholarly journals International Peacebuilding: A Theoretical and Quantitative Analysis

2000 ◽  
Vol 94 (4) ◽  
pp. 779-801 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael W. Doyle ◽  
Nicholas Sambanis
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Effective Capacity ◽  
Peace Operations ◽  
World War ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Un Peacekeeping ◽  
International Peacebuilding

International peacebuilding can improve the prospects that a civil war will be resolved. Although peacebuilding strategies must be designed to address particular conflicts, broad parameters that fit most conflicts can be identified. Strategies should address the local roots of hostility, the local capacities for change, and the (net) specific degree of international commitment available to assist sustainable peace. One can conceive of these as the three dimensions of a triangle whose area is the “political space”—or effective capacity—for building peace. We test these propositions with an extensive data set of 124 post–World War II civil wars and find that multilateral, United Nations peace operations make a positive difference. UN peacekeeping is positively correlated with democratization processes after civil war, and multilateral enforcement operations are usually successful in ending the violence. Our study provides broad guidelines for designing the appropriate peacebuilding strategy, given the mix of hostility, local capacities, and international capacities.

Terrorism in the Context of Conflicts in the Modern World

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-132
Author(s):  
Waldemar Zubrzycki
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Armed Conflicts ◽  
Modern World ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
Islamic Fundamentalism ◽  
Regional Specificity ◽  
Global Threat ◽  
Frequent Reason

Contrary to popular expectations, armed conflicts persisted after the end of World War II. Some countries are fighting for independence, others for influence, and others are experiencing civil wars. This is determined by cultural, ethnic and religious differences. The modern world is tormented by many conflicts which, despite their regional scope, have an impact on the political and military situation on the entire globe. The functioning of formal borders that do not coincide with national borders, the low sense of nationality compared to ethnicity, poverty and political instability are also conducive to the use of terrorist methods. Terrorism is almost as old as civilisation. However, unlike in the past, today’s terrorists use violence on an unprecedented scale. Terrorism in many cases shows its regional specificity, varying according to the cultural and civilisation area in which it occurs. Reasons for resorting to terrorist methods may be a need for freedom, protection of one’s heritage, sense of harm done by the occupier, a need to express dissatisfaction with the political system or changes being made, or, finally, a mere desire to draw attention to the problems of countries and societies that have not yet been noticed or have been ignored by public opinion. Religion is also a frequent reason for resorting to terrorism. Contemporary terrorism is represented mainly by extremist Islamic fundamentalism and is based on the clash of two cultures. It is a global threat, and anyone can become its potential victim today. Numerous signals of the emergence of new, hitherto unknown organisations prove that in the future, unfortunately, the escalation of the phenomenon will have to be taken into account.

JAPAN’S EFFORTS TO DILUTE ITS DARK HISTORY THROUGH ANIME “HETALIA AXIS POWERS”

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Citra Rindu Prameswari
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Representation Theory ◽  
Image Representation ◽  
World War ◽  
Positive Image

“Hetalia” is one of many animes with history, specifically World War II, as its theme, but what makes it different from other animes is the fact that it gained many controversies even before it was broadcasted. The characters in “Hetalia” are world countries‟ personifications with stereotypes as their characteristics. Because of that, it can be seen easily that these characters automatically have ties with each respective country. Japan is Japan‟s character in it, but his scenes mainly only contain cultural related things rather than war-related activities. This article aims to find out the agenda behind Japan‟s image representation via “Hetalia’s” narrative plots and the characterization of Japan. Using cinema concept and representation theory to analyze the characterization through dialogues and narrations, I argue that there is a certain agenda to feminize to soften Japan‟s image and to dilute Japan‟s dark history so that Japan will have more positive image via “Hetalia”. It automatically highlights Japan‟s position as not one of the „main villains‟ in World War II by making one party look positively good (Japan) and another party look not so good in relation with geopolitics strategy.

scholarly journals Minnesota wild hemp: a crucial botanical source in early cannabinoid discovery

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Crist N. Filer
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Total Synthesis ◽  
World War ◽  
University Of Illinois ◽  
Successful Model ◽  
Time Investment ◽  
Natural Products Chemistry ◽  
The University ◽  
Treasury Department

Abstract Renewed and sustained Cannabis chemistry exploration was initiated by Roger Adams at the University of Illinois Chemistry Department with cooperation from the Treasury Department Narcotics Laboratory in the early 1940’s. This partnership and time investment by both parties made practical sense. Adams was able to explore natural products chemistry and the Narcotics Laboratory began to clarify the chemistry mysteries of Cannabis. Minnesota wild hemp, often viewed as just a roadside weed, was employed as the critical botanical source. Based on its widespread cultivation during World War II, this was also a very pragmatic decision. Although the unique Illinois – Washington D. C. collaboration lasted only a few short years (1939–1942), the stunning results included the isolation and extensive characterization of cannabidiol, the structure elucidation and total synthesis of cannabinol as well as the identification of the tetrahydrocannabinol structure as an intoxicating pharmacophore. Furthermore, this research well prepared many junior chemists for prolific careers in both academia as well as industry, inspired the discoveries of later Cannabis investigators and also provided a successful model of a productive academic-government partnership.

scholarly journals The decline in volatility in the US economy. A historical perspective

2019 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-123
Author(s):  
María Dolores Gadea ◽  
Ana Gómez-Loscos ◽  
Gabriel Pérez-Quirós
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Business Cycle ◽  
Structural Breaks ◽  
Great Moderation ◽  
World War ◽  
Long Period ◽  
Us Economy ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Business Cycle

Abstract In this paper, we analyse the volatility of US GDP growth using quarterly series starting in 1875. We find structural breaks in volatility at the end of World War II and at the beginning of the Great Moderation period. We show that the Great Moderation volatility reduction is only linked to changes in expansions, whereas that after World War II is due to changes in both expansions and recessions. We also propose several methodologies to date the US business cycle in this long period. We find that taking volatility into account improves the characterization of the business cycle.

Tenets of Public Management and the World War II Mot ion Picture Genre

Public Voices ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 41
Author(s):  
Richard W. Schwester
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Motion Picture ◽  
Public Management ◽  
Motion Pictures ◽  
World War ◽  
Film Genre ◽  
Combat Soldier ◽  
The World ◽  
Artistic Medium

The motion picture as an artistic medium amplifies emotions through the combination of imagery and sound. This medium has proven ideal for chronicling the American World War II experience. The World War II film genre has portrayed the American combat soldier as heroic and resourceful (Suid 2002). These portrayals of actions and leadership on the battlefield are, to some measure, applicable to contemporary public management. This paper examines select World War II motion pictures in the context of the following questions: (1) what tenets do these motion pictures convey and (2) to what extent do these tenets apply topublic management? Patton (1970), Saving Private Ryan (1998), and The Great Escape (1963) are examined

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