Introduction

Author(s):  
Stephanie Vander Wel

The introduction presents an overview of the relationship between the larger cultural factors of place, class, and gender and the sonic and theatrical elements of women in country music. Locating musical and cultural meaning in the intersections of individual expression and musical conventions, this chapter focuses on the ways female vocalists drew on the practices of the popular stage (including barn-dance radio and its predecessors) and singing styles linked to southern vernacular and popular music idioms. Female country artists offered creative and varied versions of white working-class womanhood in their performances that articulated the cultural tensions arising from displacement and the shifts in gender roles and class during the Great Depression and during and after World War II.

Author(s):  
Stephanie Vander Wel

Chapter 6 traces the musical and lyrical developments of honky-tonk in the late 1930s and 1940s with Al Dexter, Ernest Tubb, and Hank Williams and remained a predominant mode of country music after World War II, right when Kitty Wells, Goldie Hill, and Jean Shepard contributed to the musical discourse. These female artists, taking over male-defined and often parodic representations of women, developed narratives that articulated class-specific voices couched in the metaphors of sexual and material desire, heartache, and loss juxtaposed with 1950s ideals of domesticity. Examining the particulars of musical style and vocal expression, this chapter argues that female artists in their various enactments of the honky-tonk angel, the angry, jilted housewife, the single mother, and the forsaken lover disclosed the paradoxes of class and gender and helped to lift the cloak of invisibility shrouding working-class women.


Brown Beauty ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 225-260
Author(s):  
Laila Haidarali

This chapter daws on three published sociological works: Franklin E. Frazier’s, Negro Youth at the Crossways (1940), Charles S. Johnson’s, Growing Up in the Black Belt (1941), and Charles H. Parrish’s, Color Names and Color Notions (1946). These sociological views on color showed brown identity as an emergent social ideal and image of African America, and in varying degrees drew crucial connections of brownness to values associated with an ascendant middle-class status. These sociologists are presented as racial liberals who offered concrete and critical assessments of the rising idealization of brown complexions among African American youth coming of age between the Great Depression and World War II.


2014 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 453-496 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Brooke

AbstractThis article examines pictures taken by the British photographer Roger Mayne of Southam Street, London, in the 1950s and 1960s. It explores these photographs as a way of thinking about the representation of urban, working-class life in Britain after the Second World War. The article uses this focused perspective as a line of sight on a broader landscape: the relationship among class, identity, and social change in the English city after the Second World War. Mayne's photographs of Southam Street afford an examination of the representation of economic and social change in the postwar city and, not least, the intersections among class, race, generation, and gender that reshaped that city.


2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (01-02) ◽  
pp. 91-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Siri Gerrard

This article addresses the relationship between gender contracts and mobility practices in fishery communities of Norway’s High North, mainly Skarsvåg, Finnmark. By combining perspectives from gender research, anthropology and geography, the aim of this article is to contribute to a greater understanding of the interrelations between structural, material, and cultural changes in the context of a small-scale coastal fishing environment. My main question is whether changes in mobility practices, related to restructuring of the fisheries by means of a quota-system, Norway’s agreement with the European Union (EEA) and other changes in the Norwegian context, have had impacts on gender contracts and in what way. Emphasis lies on the period after World War II and until today. The data collection are based on a lifelong engagement on gender questions in fishery villages, reading newspapers and using registers as well as interviews and participant observation through several research projects.


2004 ◽  
Vol 73 (4) ◽  
pp. 581-618 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARTA GUTMAN

In the absence of surviving casework, this article draws on the recollections of women who lived in a racially segregated orphanage in Oakland, California, during the Great Depression and World War II. The women, who were not orphans, came from white working-class families in need of emergency child care. After explaining the place of woman-run institutions in California's mixed economy of social welfare, the article draws on memories of the Children's Home to argue that physical settings made clear the intentions of orphanage founders but were invested with other meanings by children. Spatial evidence is used to direct attention to the ability of children to act on their own behalf. This evidence shows that, with Progressive reforms driving social changes, U.S. cities lost institutions that represented the needs of dependent children to a larger urban public when orphanages were closed down.


Author(s):  
Andrew Morris

Although many American communities had erected an impressive array of charitable institutions by the 1920s, they crumbled under the unemployment and poverty generated by the Great Depression. President Franklin Roosevelt, elected in 1932, set aside the concerns of his predecessor, Herbert Hoover, about the dangers of federally provided relief, and presided over the creation of emergency public relief and employment programs as part of the New Deal. With the passage of the Social Security Act in 1935, Roosevelt and his Congressional allies established a permanent basis for a federal role in social welfare provision. The benefits of these programs were substantial, but they were sharply influenced by the race and gender of their recipients. Hopes for more robust federal programs were dispelled by the economic recovery associated with World War Two. Instead, the war saw the expansion of private, workplace-based benefits destined to be major elements of postwar social provision.


2015 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Henrietta Bannerman

John Cranko's dramatic and theatrically powerful Antigone (1959) disappeared from the ballet repertory in 1966 and this essay calls for a reappraisal and restaging of the work for 21st century audiences. Created in a post-World War II environment, and in the wake of appearances in London by the Martha Graham Company and Jerome Robbins’ Ballets USA, I point to American influences in Cranko's choreography. However, the discussion of the Greek-themed Antigone involves detailed consideration of the relationship between the ballet and the ancient dramas which inspired it, especially as the programme notes accompanying performances emphasised its Sophoclean source but failed to recognise that Cranko mainly based his ballet on an early play by Jean Racine. As Antigone derives from tragic drama, the essay investigates catharsis, one of the many principles that Aristotle delineated in the Poetics. This well-known effect is produced by Greek tragedies but the critics of the era complained about its lack in Cranko's ballet – views which I challenge. There is also an investigation of the role of Antigone, both in the play and in the ballet, and since Cranko created the role for Svetlana Beriosova, I reflect on memories of Beriosova's interpretation supported by more recent viewings of Edmée Wood's 1959 film.


2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-254
Author(s):  
Andreu Espasa

De forma un tanto paradójica, a finales de los años treinta, las relaciones entre México y Estados Unidos sufrieron uno de los momentos de máxima tensión, para pasar, a continuación, a experimentar una notable mejoría, alcanzando el cénit en la alianza política y militar sellada durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial. El episodio catalizador de la tensión y posterior reconciliación fue, sin duda, el conflicto diplomático planteado tras la nacionalización petrolera de 1938. De entre los factores que propiciaron la solución pacífica y negociada al conflicto petrolero, el presente artículo se centra en analizar dos fenómenos del momento. En primer lugar, siguiendo un orden de relevancia, se examina el papel que tuvo la Guerra Civil Española. Aunque las posturas de ambos gobiernos ante el conflicto español fueron sustancialmente distintas, las interpretaciones y las lecciones sobre sus posibles consecuencias permitieron un mayor entendimiento entre los dos países vecinos. En segundo lugar, también se analizarán las afinidades ideológicas entre el New Deal y el cardenismo en el contexto de la crisis mundial económica y política de los años treinta, con el fin de entender su papel lubricante en las relaciones bilaterales de la época. Somewhat paradoxically, at the end of the 1930s, the relationship between Mexico and the United States experienced one of its tensest moments, after which it dramatically improved, reaching its zenith in the political and military alliance cemented during World War II. The catalyst for this tension and subsequent reconciliation was, without doubt, the diplomatic conflict that arose after the oil nationalization of 1938. Of the various factors that led to a peaceful negotiated solution to the oil conflict, this article focuses on analyzing two phenomena. Firstly—in order of importance—this article examines the role that the Spanish Civil War played. Although the positions of both governments in relation to the Spanish war were significantly different, the interpretations and lessons concerning potential consequences enabled a greater understanding between the two neighboring countries. Secondly, this article also analyzes the ideological affinities between the New Deal and Cardenismo in the context of the global economic and political crisis of the thirties, seeking to understand their role in facilitating bilateral relations during that period.


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