History and Human Rights

2019 ◽  
pp. 225-236
Author(s):  
Katherine M. Marino
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Women's Rights ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The Cold War

The Epilogue demonstrates how the UN Charter’s women’s and human rights promises inspired feminists throughout the Americas, and how the Cold War stifled the movement and largely erased the historical memory of inter-American feminism. Paulina Luisi and Marta Vergara helped organize an inter-American feminist meeting in Guatemala in 1947 that articulated broad meanings of inter-American feminism and global women’s and human rights. However, the Cold War’s pitched battle between communism and capitalism narrowed both “feminism” and “human rights” to mean individual political and civil rights. The Cold War also contributed to historical amnesia about this movement. The epilogue explores how Cold War politics affected each of the six feminists in the book. Each woman sought in different ways to archive the movement and write inter-American feminism into the historical record. The epilogue also provides connections between their movement and the global feminist and human rights movements that emerged in the 1970s through the 90s. It argues that the idea that “women’s rights as human rights” was not invented in the 1990s; rather, it drew on the legacy of early twentieth-century inter-American feminism.

Southern Literature, Cold War Culture, and the Making of Modern America

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jordan J. Dominy
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Southern Literature ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
The United States ◽  
Societal Pressure ◽  
The Cold War

The formalized study of southern literature in the mid-twentieth century is an example of scholars formalizing the study of modernist aesthetics in order to suppress leftist politics and sentiments in literature and art. This formalized, institutional study was initiated in a climate in which intellectuals were under societal pressure, created by the Cold War, to praise literary and artistic production representative of American values. This even in southern literary studies occurred roughly at the same time that the United States sought to extoll the virtues of America’s free, democratic society abroad. In this manner, southern studies and American studies become two sides of the same coin. Intellectuals and writers that promoted American exceptionalism dealt with the rising Civil Rights Movement and the nation’s complicated history with race and poverty by casting the issues as moral rather than political problems that were distinctly southern and could therefore be corrected by drawing on “exceptional” southern values, such as tradition and honor. The result of such maneuvering is that over the course of the twentieth century, “south” becomes more than a geographical identity. Ultimately, “south” becomes a socio-political and cultural identity associated with modern conservatism with no geographical boundaries. Rather than a country divided into south and north, the United States is divided in the twenty-first century into red and blue states. The result of using southern literature to present southern values as appropriate, moderate values for the whole nation during the Cold War is to associate these values with nationalism and conservatism today.

“United, We Build a Free World”

2019 ◽  
pp. 192-218
Author(s):  
Grace V. Leslie
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Black Women ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
African American Women ◽  
Political Development ◽  
American Political Development ◽  
National Council ◽  
Du Bois ◽  
The Cold War

A renowned educator, founder of the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW), and leader of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Black Cabinet, Mary McLeod Bethune is one of the century’s most famous African American women. This essay traces the trajectory of Bethune’s internationalism. In an era dominated by W.E.B. Du Bois and Paul Robeson, Bethune preached a vision of human rights that was deeply informed by her lifelong mission to better the lives of black women. When the Cold War descended, Bethune remade her internationalism to walk the tightrope of Cold War civil rights. Foregrounding Bethune reveals a black internationalist sphere in which women played a central role and where debates over global conceptions of “full and equal freedom” redefined the quest for equality that shaped American political development in the twentieth century.

Revolutionary Mexico in Chicago

2020 ◽  
pp. 39-47
Author(s):  
Justin Akers Chacón
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Mexican Revolution ◽  
Mexican Population ◽  
Migrant Communities ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Immigration Politics ◽  
The Cold War

In The Mexican Revolution in Chicago: Immigration Politics from the Early Twentieth Century to the Cold War, John H. Flores illustrates the growth of the Mexican population in 1920s Chicago and how migrant communities situated and organized themselves politically in an often-hostile social environment. Drawing from political experiences in Mexico, Flores identifies and explores the evolution of a Mexican population whose identities and loyalties were shaped and divided by the Mexican revolutionary and counterrevolutionary processes in la patria (the homeland).

The Soviet Elphinstone

2019 ◽  
pp. 275-298 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Nunan
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Russian Language ◽  
October Revolution ◽  
Soviet Occupation ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter offers a brief history of how the thought of Mountstuart Elphinstone was received among Soviet scholars of Afghanistan. The connection may not be obvious at first, but Russian language scholarship on Afghanistan outpaced that in any other language from the early twentieth century onward owing to the special nature of Soviet-Afghan relations following the October Revolution and Afghan independence. Likewise, close Soviet-Afghan relations during the Cold War – culminating in the decade-long occupation of the country by the Soviet Army – framed the context for later Soviet scholarship on the country. This chapter demonstrates that "Elphinstonian epistemes" very much had an afterlife in Soviet scholarship on the country, because many authors were misled about the identity of the Afghan state in Kabul with Pashtun populations on both sides of the Durand Line. Worse, these readings of Afghanistan had intermingled with crude readings about the "revolutionary" nature of Afghan Communists and their opponents. During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, attentive scholars urged more nuanced concepts to make sense of Afghanistan, but as this chapter demonstrates, Elphinstonian tropes very much framed the Soviet romance with – and disaster in – twentieth century Afghanistan.

Pageantry for Women's Rights: The Career of Hazel Mackaye, 1913–1923

1990 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen J. Blair
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Women's Rights ◽  
American Woman ◽  
Woman Suffrage ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Suffrage Movement ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Charter Member ◽  
National Woman's Party

The early twentieth century found American suffragists experimenting with a diverse array of techniques to argue their cause. Among those who gave their talents to this effort was a skilled theatrical professional, Hazel MacKaye (1888–1944). A radical suffragist, MacKaye was a charter member of the Congressional Union, which in 1914 formally split off from the National American Woman Suffrage Association and evolved into the militant wing of the suffrage movement, the National Woman's Party. Hazel MacKaye created four women's rights pageants to propagandize for the suffragists between the years 1913 and 1923, which this paper will describe and examine.

scholarly journals From Brussels to Bogor: Contacts, Networks and the History of the Bandung Conference 1955

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wildan Sena Utama
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Interwar Period ◽  
African Countries ◽  
Asian Group ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Cold War

This article discusses the roots of the Bandung Conference of 1955 by tracing the alliance of Asian and African worldwide internationalism and anti-imperialism that existed since the early twentieth century. It attempts to show that although the conference emerged during the height of the Cold War, the network behind this alliance had gradually developed since the interwar period. The solidarity of this alliance lay in the common history of the colonized people that struggled to become sovereign. Contacts, meetings and conferences that took place in Europe and Asia juxtaposed the anti-imperialist movement of Asian and African countries. This article argues that the Bandung Conference 1955 was the culmination of relationships and connections of an Afro-Asian group who had been long oppressed by colonialism, racism and class superiority.

Regional Ombudsmen, Human Rights and Women – Gender Aspects of the Social and Legal Transformation in North-West Russia (Based on Ombudsman Reports)

2012 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 84-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yulia Gradskova
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Women's Rights ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Annual Reports ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Russian Society ◽  
North West ◽  
Family Issues ◽  
The Status

In the center of the article is the new regional ombudsman institution in Russia and its activities vis-à-vis the protection of women’s rights. The article seeks to analyze how complaints filed by women are presented and how the status of women’s rights within the context of human rights is described in the ombudsmen’s annual reports. The analysis of the reports proves ambiguities of interpretations of human rights; it also shows that many of those filing complaints do it because of the violations of social and civil rights, and that the majority of those experiencing discrimination are women. However, in most of the cases the ombudspersons do not pay attention to the gender-specific dimensions of the discrimination nor have they identified this as an important problem in contemporary Russian society. This situation is connected with the absence of a legal or political mechanism for gender equality in Russia as well as a displacement of women’s rights issues in favor of a focus on family issues and demography in the Russian public discourse of the late 2000s.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document