History Commons^™

Breaking Point: The Ironic Evolution Of Psychiatry In World War Ii - Appendix A, Rebecca Schwartz Greene

History

This book informs the public for the first time about the impact of American psychiatry on soldiers during World War II.

Breaking Point is the first in-depth history of American psychiatry in World War II. Drawn from unpublished primary documents, oral histories, and the author’s personal interviews and correspondence over years with key psychiatric and military policymakers, it begins with Franklin Roosevelt’s endorsement of a universal Selective Service psychiatric examination followed by Army and Navy pre- and post-induction examinations. Ultimately, 2.5 million men and women were rejected or discharged from military service on neuropsychiatric grounds. Never before or since has …

Breaking Point: The Ironic Evolution Of Psychiatry In World War Ii - Appendix B, Rebecca Schwartz Greene

History

This book informs the public for the first time about the impact of American psychiatry on soldiers during World War II.

Breaking Point is the first in-depth history of American psychiatry in World War II. Drawn from unpublished primary documents, oral histories, and the author’s personal interviews and correspondence over years with key psychiatric and military policymakers, it begins with Franklin Roosevelt’s endorsement of a universal Selective Service psychiatric examination followed by Army and Navy pre- and post-induction examinations. Ultimately, 2.5 million men and women were rejected or discharged from military service on neuropsychiatric grounds. Never before or since has …

Inventing America's First Immigration Crisis: Political Nativism In The Antebellum West, Luke Ritter

History

Why have Americans expressed concern about immigration at some times but not at others? In pursuit of an answer, this book examines America’s first nativist movement, which responded to the rapid influx of 4.2 million immigrants between 1840 and 1860 and culminated in the dramatic rise of the National American Party. As previous studies have focused on the coasts, historians have not yet completely explained why westerners joined the ranks of the National American, or “Know Nothing,” Party or why the nation’s bloodiest anti-immigrant riots erupted in western cities—namely Chicago, Cincinnati, Louisville, and St. Louis. In focusing on the antebellum …

Womanpriest: Tradition And Transgression In The Contemporary Roman Catholic Church, Jill Peterfeso

History

This book is openly available in digital formats thanks to a generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

While some Catholics and even non-Catholics today are asking if priests are necessary, especially given the ongoing sex-abuse scandal, The Roman Catholic Womanpriests (RCWP) looks to reframe and reform Roman Catholic priesthood, starting with ordained women. Womanpriest is the first academic study of the RCWP movement. As an ethnography, Womanpriest analyzes the womenpriests’ actions and lived theologies in order to explore ongoing tensions in Roman Catholicism around gender and sexuality, priestly authority, and religious change.

In order to understand how womenpriests …

Uniquely Okinawan: Determining Identity During The U.S. Wartime Occupation, Courtney A. Short

History

When the U.S. military landed on the shores of Okinawa in 1945, they faced not only a fierce and battle-tested Japanese force, but also 463,000 Okinawan inhabitants. Larger than any other civilian population encountered by the Americans during previous campaigns throughout the Pacific islands, the people of Okinawa also had a unique and complex historical and political relationship with Japan. Okinawa never experienced subjugation as a colony, yet its acceptance as a prefecture did not yield equal treatment for the people because of their Ryukyuan heritage. As the U.S. military prepared for the Battle of Okinawa, they faced dangerous uncertainty …

Modern Intolerance And The Medieval Crusades [Excerpted From Whose Middle Ages?], Nicholas L. Paul

History

Whose Middle Ages? is an interdisciplinary collection of short, accessible essays intended for the non-specialist reader and ideal for teaching at an undergraduate level. Each of twenty-two essays takes up an area where humans have dug for meaning into the medieval past and brought something distorted back into the present: in our popular entertainment; in our news, our politics, and our propaganda; and in subtler ways that inform how we think about our histories, our countries, and ourselves. Each author teases out the stakes of a history that has refused to remain past and uses the tools of the academy …

Whose Middle Ages?: Teachable Moments For An Ill-Used Past [Table Of Contents], Andrew Albin, Mary C. Erler, Thomas O'Donnell, Nicholas L. Paul, Nina Rowe

History

Whose Middle Ages? is an interdisciplinary collection of short, accessible essays intended for the nonspecialist reader and ideal for teaching at an undergraduate level. Each of twenty-two essays takes up an area where digging for meaning in the medieval past has brought something distorted back into the present: in our popular entertainment; in our news, our politics, and our propaganda; and in subtler ways that inform how we think about our histories, our countries, and ourselves. Each author looks to a history that has refused to remain past and uses the tools of the academy to read and re-read familiar …

Belle La Follette’S Fight For Women’S Suffrage: Losing The Battle For Wisconsin, Winning The War For The Nation, Nancy C. Unger

History

A century ago, on May 21, 1919, the US House of Representatives voted difinitively (304 to 89) in support of women’s suffrage. Two weeks later, Wisconsinite Belle La Follette sat in the visitors’ gallery of the US Senate chamber. She “shed a few tears” when it was announced that, by a vote of 56 to 25, the US Senate also approved the Nineteenth Amendment, sending it on to the states for ratification.¹ For Belle La Follette, this thrilling victory was the culmination of a decades-long fight. Six days later, her happiness turned to elation when Wisconsin became the first …

Legacies Of Belle La Follette’S Big Tent Campaigns For Women’S Suffrage, Nancy Unger

History

In countless speeches and articles in La Follette’s Magazine, Belle Case La Follette urged that women needed the vote to secure “standards of cleanliness and healthfulness in the municipal home,” and because “home, society, and government are best when men and women keep together intellectually and spiritually.” This range of often mutually exclusive arguments created an inclusive big tent. However, arguing that women were qualified to vote by their roles as wives and mothers while maintaining that gender was superfluous to suffrage also contributed to an uneasy combination that would continue the conflict over women’s true nature and hinder their …

Barren Lands And Barren Bodies In Navajo Nation: Indian Women Warn About Uranium, Genetics, And Sterilization, Marie Bolton, Nancy C. Unger

History

Founded by Native American women in 1974, "Women of All Red Nations (WARN) insisted that the ongoing Indian public health crisis could not be properly understood exclusively within the context of the exploitation and pollution of the physical environment. It required as well an understanding of the larger context of Indian health issues evolving out of past and present cultural and political changes. This article focuses on selected health, threats affecting the Dine, or "the People," as Navajo Indians call themselves, living in Dine Bikeyah (Navajo Nation) during the mid to late 20^th century. Navajo history is marked by …

Our Country: Northern Evangelicals And The Union During The Civil War Era [Bibliography], Grant Brodrecht

History

On March 4, 1865, the day Abraham Lincoln delivered his second inaugural address, Reverend Doctor George Peck put the finishing touches on a collection of his sermons that he intended to send to the president. Although the politically moderate Peck had long opposed slavery, he, along with many other northern evangelicals, was not an abolitionist. During the Civil War he had come to support emancipation, but, like Lincoln, the conflict remained first and foremost about preserving the Union. Believing their devotion to the Union was an act of faithfulness to God first and the Founding Fathers second, Our Country explores …

Left Bank Of The Hudson: Jersey City And The Artists Of 111 1st Street [Table Of Contents & Introduction], David Goodwin

History

In the late 1980s, a handful of artists priced out of Manhattan and desperately needing affordable studio space discovered 111 1st Street, a former P. Lorillard Tobacco Company warehouse. Over the next two decades, an eclectic collection of painters, sculptors, musicians, photographers, filmmakers, and writers dreamt and toiled within the building’s labyrinthine halls. The local arts scene flourished, igniting hope that Jersey City would emerge as the next grassroots center of the art world. However, a rising real estate market coupled with a provincial political establishment threatened the community at 111 1st Street. The artists found themselves entangled in a …

Adda F. Howie: "America’S Outstanding Woman Farmer", Nancy Unger

History

In 1894, forty-two-year-old Milwaukee socialite Adda F. Howie seemed a very unlikely candidate to become one of the most famous women in America. And yet by 1925, Howie, the first woman to serve on the Wisconsin State Board of Agriculture, had long been “recognized universally as the most successful woman farmer in America.”¹ Howie’s rise to fame came at a time when the widely accepted ideas about gender were divided into the “man’s world” of business, power, and money, and the “woman’s world” devoted to family and home. Yet Howie, rather than being vilified for succeeding in the male …

That The Worst Shooting In Us History Took Place In A Gay Bar Is Unsurprising, Nancy Unger

History

The selection of Pulse, a gay Orlando nightclub, as the site for a murderous homophobic rampage makes the killer’s crime a special outrage in view of the role that nightclubs have played in this nation’s LGBTQ history. Like many popular LGTBQ clubs, Pulse serves not only as a welcoming place to party, but also as a community partner, hosting a variety of social and educational events including, for example, Breast Cancer Awareness and HIV/AIDS prevention. According to its website, Pulse Orlando serves as “a driving force within the GLBT community” and strives to “to make strides towards equality awareness, and …

The Unexpected Belle La Follette, Nancy Unger

History

Although the New York Times eulogized Belle Case La Follette in 1931 as perhaps "the most influential of all American women who have had to do with public affairs in this country," she faded quickly from popular memory.1 And when she is recalled, it's usually in relation to her husband and sons. This minimization of her own accomplishments began with progressive reform giant Robert M. La Follette famously calling her "my wisest and best counselor." He openly deferred to his wife's judgment throughout his storied professional life: as a district attorney, three-term congressman (1885-1891), lawyer (1891—1900), three-term governor of Wisconsin …

Even Judging Woodrow Wilson By The Standards Of His Own Time, He Was Deplorably Racist, Nancy Unger

History

The news that Princeton acquiesced to student demands that the university confront the racism of Woodrow Wilson set off a series of responses. Some protest that it is unfair to judge the 28th president by present day standards. These pundits, almost all white, proclaim that Wilson must be understood within the context of his own time. The inference of such an assertion is that in times of pervasive racism it is reasonable for a leader to perpetuate it. Setting aside the assumption that morals are relative rather than absolute, let’s examine Wilson’s actions within his times.

From Slave Ship To Harvard: Yarrow Mamout And The History Of An African American Family [Table Of Contents And Introduction], James H. Johnston

History

From Slave Ship to Harvard is the true story of an African American family in Maryland over six generations. The author has reconstructed a unique narrative of black struggle and achievement from paintings, photographs, books, diaries, court records, legal documents, and oral histories. From Slave Ship to Harvard traces the family from the colonial period and the American Revolution through the Civil War to Harvard and finally today.

Yarrow Mamout, the first of the family in America, was an educated Muslim from Guinea. He was brought to Maryland on the slave ship Elijah and gained his freedom forty-four years later. …

Women And Gender: Useful Categories Of Analysis In Environmental History, Nancy Unger

History

In 1990, Carolyn Merchant proposed, in a roundtable discussion published in The Journal of American History, that gender perspective be added to the conceptual frameworks in environmental history. 1 Her proposal was expanded by Melissa Leach and Cathy Green in the British journal Environment and History in 1997. 2 The ongoing need for broader and more thoughtful and analytic investigations into the powerful relationship between gender and the environment throughout history was confirmed in 2001 by Richard White and Vera Norwood in "Environmental History, Retrospect and Prospect," a forum in the Pacific Historical Review. Both Norwood, in her provocative contribution …

Hetch Hetchy Redux: An Effort To Turn Back The Environmental Clock, Nancy Unger

History

If San Francisco voters pass Measure F on November 6, the city will conduct an $8 million study on the feasibility, costs, and benefits of draining the 300-foot deep reservoir created by the O’Shaughnessy Dam in 1923. The measure’s proponents see it as a first step in restoring Hetch Hetchy Valley, sister valley to Yosemite, to its natural state. That the measure is even on the ballot is a significant indication of the shift in attitudes towards the ongoing conflict between nature preservation and traditional notions of progress.

Introduction: Sex, Sexuality, And Gender As Useful Categories In Environmental History, Nancy Unger

History

This book is an effort to explain these kinds of extreme gendered divisions and to offer an enriched understanding of the powerful interplay between environment and sex, sexuality, and gender. The synergy produced by that interplay has been significant throughout American history, but it cannot be adequately understood and appreciated as long as those fields are discussed as discrete entities. The fields of gender and environment are growing, but scholars have seldom joined them together in analysis or heeded historian Carolyn Merchant's call that a gendered perspective be added to conceptual frameworks in environmental history.5 They have not offered a …

Wisconsin's League Against Nuclear Dangers: The Power Of Informed Citizenship, Nancy Unger

History

Wisconsin's League Against Nuclear Dangers (LAND), a loose organization active in the 1970s and 1980s, was predominantly made up of white middle-aged and middle-class homemakers with minimal formal education in the sciences. The story of LAND is a powerful lesson in what people can accomplish when they take their rights as citizens seriously and commit themselves to learning a complex subject in depth in order to be knowledgeable and persuasive.

La Follette’S Autobiography: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly, And The Glorious, Nancy Unger

History

La Follette's Autobiography: A Personal Narrative of Political Experiences is a remarkable primary document of the Progressive Era. Originally published in 1913, it remains in print today and has the dubious honor of being one of Richard Nixon's three favorite books. It illuminates the crucial role that La Follette's home state of Wisconsin played in molding La Follette as a man and as a politician, thereby influencing his national progressive agenda; but it also reveals much more.

100 Years Of Men's Basketball, Iwu Athletics, Illinois Wesleyan University

History

This slideshow was presented during an event celebrating this milestone.

From Jook Joints To Sisterspace: The Role Of Nature In Lesbian Alternative Environments In The United States, Nancy Unger

History

Despite the depth and breadth of Catriona Sandilands's groundbreaking "Lesbian Separatist Communities and the Experience of Nature," with its emphasis on communities in southern Oregon, Sandilands does not consider her article, published in 2002, to be "the last one on the topic." Instead she hopes "fervently that other researchers will enter into the ongoing conversation [about queer landscapes)" (136). This essay is an answer to her invitation to draw further "insight from queer cultures to form alternative, even transformative, cultures of nature" (135). It examines the role of place in the history of American lesbians, particularly the role of nonhuman …

Women For A Peaceful Christmas: Wisconsin Homemakers Seek To Remake American Culture, Nancy Unger

History

In the autumn of 1971, sixteen Madison homemakers, including Nan Cheney and Sharon Stein, began "Women for a Peaceful Christmas" (WPC), a unique attempt to do nothing less than remake American culture. Under the slogan "No More Shopping Days 'Til Peace," WPC organized ostensibly powerless homemakers into a "quiet revolt against 'an economy which thrives on war and the destruction of our earth's resources.'' WPC urged the public (especially women, the sex that did the vast bulk of holiday shopping) to take economic, political, and environmental matters into their own hands. "If you don't want your Christmas celebrations to be …

The Role Of Gender In Environmental Justice, Nancy Unger

History

Environmental Justice incorporates an inclusive definition of its subject matter, exploring the environmental burdens impacting all marginalized populations and communities. This expansive definition allows for the possibility that populations conventionally viewed as privileged can nevertheless be marginalized and suffer uniquely from environmental injustices. Employing such a definition can also reveal how an ostensibly powerless group can fight for environmental justice on its own terms—and win. Gender has played an important role in environmental justice (and injustice) throughout the history of the United States. Excerpts from my current book project, Beyond “Nature’s Housekeepers”: Gendered Turning Points for American Women in Environmental …

Teaching “Straight” Gay And Lesbian History, Nancy Unger

History

The importance of offering a lesbian and gay American history course was initially impressed upon me in 1986. A newly minted Ph.D., I was teaching my very first class: a U.S. history survey at San Francisco State University (sfsu). The course required each student to review a book of his or her choice on any topic in U.S. history. One student chose John D’Emilio’s Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States, 1940–1970 from my list of suggested titles and wrote a thoughtful, enthusiastic review.1 At the bottom of the review was a handwritten …

The ‘We Say What We Think’ Club: Rural Wisconsin Women And The Development Of Environmental Ethics, Nancy Unger

History

The “We Say What We Think” Club: This article discusses the radio program “We Say What We Think Club” which aired on WIBA radio from 1937 to 1957. Though aimed at a female audience, it did not focus on homemaking tips or relationship advice but rather featured a topic-of-the-day. These included a wide range of subjects, such as "Better Clubs for Women" or "Feeding the Family in War Time,” about which the women held a folksy discussion. The author contends that the program reflected an increasing separation of gender spheres that emerged on farms during that era. The five Dane …

Introduction To Socialism's Muse, Naomi J. Andrews

History

The disappointment of feminist aspirations in 1848 nevertheless demands more thoroughgoing explanation than its impracticality in politically charged times. We must not lose track of the fact that during the July Monarchy a truly remarkable intellectual revolution took place. For the shy twenty years of Louis Philippe’s reign the formerly unthinkable became relatively commonplace: women’s equality came to be a central tenet of the most avant-garde intellectual and political movement of the day, romantic socialism. Given its integral importance to the earliest pronouncements of socialist philosophy, the totality of feminism’s neglect during the moment of political opportunity afforded to socialism …

Gendered Approaches To Environmental Justice: An Historical Sampling, Nancy Unger

History

While race and class are regularly addressed in environmental justice studies, scant attention has been paid to gender. The environmental justice movement formally recognized in the 1980s in no way, however, marks the beginning of the central role played by women in the long history of its concerns.' Abuses based in gender as well as race and class have subjected women to a variety of environmental injustices. However, women's responses to the ever-shifting responsibilities prescribed to their gender, as well as to their particular race and class, have consistently shaped their abilities to affect the environment in positive ways. Especially …