History Commons^™

'Were We Hard On Teachers Or What?': The Female Rural Schoolteacher Of Wabaunsee And Pottawatomie Counties, Kansas, 1908-1950, Katie Goerl

Online Journal of Rural Research & Policy

Immortalized in pioneer tales and rural history as an icon of early Kansas, the female one-room schoolteacher represents more than an instructor of readin', 'riting, and 'rithmetic. Sometimes called a "school mother," historians often note that she also served as nurse, janitor, fire builder, ash carrier, snow shoveler, program director, and coat buttoner. Popular media and museum exhibits tend either to reference the longstanding cliché of the strict, prudish, old "schoolmarm" or paint a rosy portrait of a plucky yet feminine youth. Upon careful consideration of the evidence, a more nuanced profile emerges of a young, single woman, who labored …

Frederick Luis Aldama. Latino Comic Book Storytelling: An Odyssey By Interview. San Diego: ¡Hyperbole Books!, 2017., Jessica Rutherford

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Review of Frederick Aldama. Latino Comic Book Storytelling: An Odyssey by Interview. San Diego: ¡Hyperbole Books!, 2017.

Ian Gordon. Kid Comic Strips: A Genre Across Four Countries. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. ---. Superman: The Persistence Of An American Icon. New Jersey: Rutgers Up, 2017., Cathy L. Ryan

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Review of Ian Gordon. Kid Comic Strips: A Genre Across Four Countries. Palgrave Studies in Comics and Graphic Novels, Ed. Roger Saban. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. Review of Ian Gordon. Superman: The Persistence of an American Icon. New Jersey: Rutgers UP, 2017.

Michael A Chaney. Reading Lessons In Seeing: Mirrors, Masks, And Mazes In The Autobiographical Graphic Novel. Jackson: Up Of Mississippi, 2016., Jennifer Caroccio

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Review of Michael A. Chaney. Reading Lessons in Seeing: Mirrors, Masks, and Mazes in the Autobiographical Graphic Novel. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2016.

Tom Spurgeon And Michael Dean. We Told You So: Comics As Art. Seattle: Fantagraphics Books, 2016., Rachel R. Miller

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Review of Tom Spurgeon and Michael Dean. We Told You So: Comics As Art. Seattle: Fantagraphics Books, 2016.

Mark Heimermann And Brittany Tullis, Eds. Picturing Childhood: Youth In Transnational Comics. Austin: U Of Texas P, 2017., Cristina R. Rivera

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Review of Mark Heimermann and Brittany Tullis, eds. Picturing Childhood: Youth in Transnational Comics. Austin: U of Texas P, 2017.

A Discordant Voice From The Trenches: Juan José De Soiza Reilly’S War Chronicles, María Inés Tato

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

The First World War represented a deep crisis of the European civilization that called into question the values and certitudes of the Belle Époque society. Trenches became the symbol of the dehumanization produced by a conflict that marked a watershed in modern history. As a global conflict, its impact was felt beyond the confines of Europe, involving even neutral countries, puzzled by that unexpected spectacle of violence.

In this new scenery, war correspondents were first-hand witnesses of the horrors of the battlefields, transmitted through their journalistic contributions to a public opinion profoundly shaken by this new kind of warfare. Non-European …

“A Few Bars Of The Hymn Of Hate”: The Reception Of Ernst Lissauer’S “Haßgesang Gegen England” In German And English, Richard Millington, Roger Smith

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

“The poem fell like a shell into a munitions depot”: with these words Stefan Zweig recalled the impact made by Ernst Lissauer’s Anglophobic poem “Haßgesang gegen England” (A Chant of Hate Against England) upon first publication in August 1914. The poem’s success derived from the rhetorical power with which it encapsulated a national emotional response to the outbreak of war. In Germany it initiated an outpouring of Anglophobic verse, but lost favor as it became clear that the patriotism it epitomized would not carry the Central Powers to a swift victory. Even after its disappearance from public attention …

Iain Boyd White And David Frisby, Eds. Metropolis Berlin: 1880-1940. Berkeley: University Of California Press, 2012., Tyler Carrington

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Review of Iain Boyd White and David Frisby, eds. Metropolis Berlin: 1880-1940. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012.

Regretful Ruminations: Jacques Rivière’S L’Allemand: Souvenirs Et Réflexions D'Un Prisonnier De Guerre, Arabella L. Hobbs

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

This article examines Jacques Rivière’s post-war work L’Allemand: Souvenirs et réflexions d'un prisonnier de guerre (1918) ‘On German nature: memories and reflections of a prisoner-of-war,’ as a response to the conflicting nexus of Catholicism and French nationalism in the aftermath of the First World War. A damning account of the German race, L’Allemand exposes Rivière’s tussle with his wartime and post-war identities, most strikingly exhibited in his moral distancing from the text he was to eventually publish. In resuscitating Riviere’s now forgotten text, this article engages with the post-war reception of a work whose peculiar context bears witness to …

The Knights Of The Front: Medieval History’S Influence On Great War Propaganda, Haley E. Claxton

Crossing Borders: A Multidisciplinary Journal of Undergraduate Scholarship

Spanning a number of academic areas, “Knights of the Front: Medieval History’s Influence on Great War Propaganda” focuses on the emergence of medieval imagery in the First World War propaganda. Examining several specific uses of medieval symbolism in propaganda posters from both Central and Allied powers, the article provides insight into the narrative of war, both politically and culturally constructed. The paper begins with an overview of the psychology behind visual persuasion and the history behind Europe’s cultural affinity for “chivalry,” then continues into specific case studies of period propaganda posters that hold not only themes of military glory and …

9/11, Hyperreality, And The Global Body Politic: Frédéric Beigbeder’S Windows On The World, Jenn Brandt

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

This essay argues that the success of Frédéric Beigbeder's Windows on the World is due to Beigbeder's use of the seemingly contradictory genres of autofiction and hyperrealism in the depiction of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. By positioning himself in the text alongside his fictionalized American counterpoint, Beigbeder configures 9/11 as a lived-body experience that models the ways in which the post-9/11 subject was formed within specific political, cultural, and national conditions. The effect of the novel’s hyperrealism is such that Beigbeder simultaneously posits and deconstructs the notion of national identity within the greater contexts of postmodernism and …

Robert Zaretsky. A Life Worth Living: Albert Camus And The Quest For Meaning. Cambridge, Mass., And London: The Belknap P Of Harvard Up, 2013. 240 Pp., Melissa M. Ptacek

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Review of Robert Zaretsky. A Life Worth Living: Albert Camus and the Quest for Meaning. Cambridge, Mass., and London: The Belknap P of Harvard UP, 2013. 240 pp.

Abraham Acosta. Thresholds Of Illiteracy: Theory, Latin America, And The Crisis Of Resistance. New York: Fordham Up, 2014. Xiv + 276 Pp., Miguel Gonzalez-Abellas

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Review of Abraham Acosta. Thresholds of Illiteracy: Theory, Latin America, and the Crisis of Resistance. New York: Fordham UP, 2014. xiv + 276 pp.

Eugene Onegin The Cold War Monument: How Edmund Wilson Quarreled With Vladimir Nabokov, Tim Conley

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

The tale of how Edmund Wilson quarreled with Vladimir Nabokov over the latter’s 1964 translation of Eugene Onegin can be instructively read as a politically charged event, specifically a “high culture” allegory of the Cold War. Dissemination of anti-Communist ideals (often in liberal and literary guises) was the mandate of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, whose funding and editorial initiatives included the publication of both pre-Revolution Russian literature and, more notoriously, the journal Encounter (1953-1990), where Nabokov’s fiery “Reply” to Wilson appeared. This essay outlines the propaganda value of the Onegin debate within and to Cold War mythology.

The Empire Bites Back: Sherlock Holmes As An Imperial Immune System, Laura Otis

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Trained as a physician in the bacteriological age, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created a detective-hero who acts both like a masterful bacteriologist and an imperial immune system. Doyle's experiences as a doctor in South Africa taught him that the colonies' microbes were his Empire's worst enemy. In 1890, Doyle visited Berlin, where Robert Koch was testing a "cure" for tuberculosis, and in Doyle's subsequent character sketch of Koch, the scientist sounds remarkably like Sherlock Holmes. Based on Doyle's medical instructor Joe Bell, Holmes shares Koch's relentless drive to hunt down and unmask tiny invaders. Imperialism, by the 1880s, had opened …