History Commons^™

“The Best Things In Life Are Here” In “The Mistake On The Lake”: Narratives Of Decline And Renewal In Cleveland, J. Souther

History Faculty Publications

Historians have devoted ample attention to the urban crisis, but few have explored symbolic actions to manage attitudes toward metropolitan change. In the 1980s, Cleveland, Ohio, experienced what many politicians and business and civic leaders called a “comeback.” To understand the images and narratives constructed during this intended renaissance, it is necessary to examine earlier campaigns to revivify Cleveland and its reputation. This article traces three such campaigns in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as the better-known 1980s renaissance, and examines the tension between acceptance and rejection of these images and narratives. This interplay paralleled a tension between decline …

Breaking Away From Reverence And Rape: The Afi Directing Workshop For Women, Feminism, And The Politics Of The Accidental Archive, Philis M. Barragán Goetz

History Faculty Publications

In 1974, the American Film Institute opened the Directing Workshop for Women (DWW). Trying to normalize the idea of a woman director, the program admitted nineteen women, providing each one with the materials to direct two films. Focusing on the DWW's first cycle, this article argues that the DWW's history is a vehicle for understanding the complex ways in which moderate and radical feminists interpreted the role of the women's rights movement in the commercial film industry by examining the controversy and media attention that surrounded it, as well as the ways in which race, class, and fame operated to …

Banishment In The Later Roman Empire, 284-476 Ce, By Daniel Washburn (Book Review), Eric Fournier

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Russia And Britain In Persia: Imperial Ambitions In Qajar Iran. By Firuz Kazemzadeh. (New York, Ny: I. B. Tauris, 2013. Pp. Xvii, 711. $85.00.), James D. Clark

History Faculty Publications

This is a reprint of the author's classic study of British and Russian policies and intervention in Iran from the 1860s to 1914. For this edition, Firuz Kazemzadeh has consulted Russian archive materials and books that became accessible after the fall of the Soviet Union. Yet he maintains that those sources confirmed his earlier conclusions, and he has made no changes to this edition. The book is basically “a case study in imperialism,” tracing the steady increase in penetration that occurred, and it largely relies upon British and Russian primary sources (vii). The few Persian sources that are cited are …

Review: 'Atlantic Automobilism: Emergence And Persistence Of The Car, 1895-1940', John Alfred Heitmann

History Faculty Publications

Gijs Mom particularly wants to answer the question of Why? Why the car (and not, say, the bicycle) Why in the North-Atlantic realm, and not elsewhere initially? During the course of seven intense and lengthy chapters that are further divided into two parts (1895-1918 and 1918-1940) Mom goes deep into motives as to why the internal combustion engine car has come to dominate our lives. These include masculinity and adventure; tourism; male violence and aggression; pleasure and consumption; encapsulation in closed vehicles and the cyborg relationship between driver and the machine; thrills and risks; gender and family structures; tinkering and …

A Us$35 Million 'Hole In The Ground': Metropolitan Fragmentation And Cleveland's Unbuilt Downtown Subway, J. Souther

History Faculty Publications

In the 1940s–1950s, Cleveland, Ohio, transit officials and a varied coalition of allies sought to construct a subway to distribute riders throughout downtown. Through two unsuccessful campaigns in the 1950s, the subway planning debate highlights the gradual erosion of downtown’s preeminence and corresponding rise of suburbia. It also sheds light on interest-based rifts within the downtown business establishment and across the social landscape of metropolitan Cleveland. More than transit history, the author argues, the mid-century Cleveland subway battles afford a close look at friction between influential leaders and ordinary citizens as well as competing place-based visions of the metropolitan future.

Review: 'Ethnic Historians And The Mainstream: Shaping America's Immigration Story', Caroline Waldron Merithew

History Faculty Publications

Ethnic Historians and the Mainstream links two different strands of academic writing that have become a part of late twentieth-century and early twenty-first-century discourse: the memoir as a genre of seeking historical ‘‘truths’’ and, in turn, the historiographical essay that traces legacies and the transformation of scholarly production. The latter is, of course, less new than the former. The methodological framework for this volume revolves around the question: ‘‘How do historians come by their calling as scholars and decide on the projects that eventuate in the books by which they become known?’’ (p. 3). In the published work of their …

A Select List Of Books In Mexican-American History, John R. Chávez

History Faculty Publications

This list of secondary sources includes surveys and monographs, but few collections or biographies; while some works may overlap disciplines, their content is historical on the whole and focused significantly on ethnic Mexicans in the United States.

Review: 'Death And Changing Rituals: Function And Meaning In Ancient Funerary Practices', Dorian Borbonus

History Faculty Publications

The fourteen conference papers in this collection explore chronological changes in funerary rituals and advance theoretical approaches that help explain such changes. The case studies range from the Mesolithic to the Early Modern periods and concentrate on European contexts. They are arranged chronologically, with four contributions on prehistory, one Etruscan, three Roman imperial, two late antique, three medieval and one early modern. The opening chapter briefly sets out five themes that characterize, to varying degrees, all subsequent contributions: change versus continuity, the relationship between practice and belief, the treatment and deposition of bodies, burial location and grave goods, and ritual …

Governing New Jersey: Reflections On The Publication Of A Revised And Expanded Edition Of 'The Governors Of New Jersey', Michael J. Birkner

History Faculty Publications

New Jersey’s chief executive enjoys more authority than any but a handful of governors in the United States. Historically speaking, however, New Jersey’s governors exercised less influence than met the eye. In the colonial period few proprietary or royal governors were able to make policy in the face of combative assemblies. The Revolutionary generation’s hostility to executive power contributed to a weak governor system that carried over into the 19th and 20th centuries, until the Constitution was thoroughly revised in 1947. Before that date a handful of governors, by dint of their ideas and personalities, affected the polity in meaningful …

Paving The Way To Scandal: History Repeats Itself, Michael J. Birkner

History Faculty Publications

Presidential candidate Marco Rubio of Florida enjoyed an assist this week managing the fallout from New York Times stories about his personal finances by an unlikely ally: Comedy Central host Jon Stewart, who dismissed the information as an example of “gotcha” politics, unworthy of current discussion. “How is this front page news?” Stewart said, calling the Times reports “inconsequential gossip.” [excerpt]

Maybe Irish Voters Actually Were Swayed By Their Church, Una M. Cadegan

History Faculty Publications

It’s almost always more incorrect than correct to say “Church” when you mean “hierarchy.” It’s especially misleading in the case of same-sex marriage, and Catholic support thereof.

The vocal public insistence of much of the hierarchy (Vatican, Irish, US) on the impossibility and the danger of same-sex marriage represents a dead end in Catholic moral theology. This is not to undercut the entirety of the moral theology — far from it. The notion that humans are created for relationships, that the power of procreation is deeply and sacredly connected to the love between men and women, that stable, loving families …

What American Students Can Learn From Immersing Themselves In Africa, Julius A. Amin

History Faculty Publications

More than one million people travelled from around the world to study at American universities in the 2013-2014 academic year. By contrast, just under 300,000 Americans enrolled to study abroad.

In this era of globalisation, it’s no surprise that so many young people are keen to study abroad. But as the Institute of International Education’s research reveals, the majority of US students are sticking close to home - not geographically, but culturally.

Africa remains on the margins when it comes to American universities' curricula and initiatives like study-abroad programmes. American university students also display profoundly ill-informed views about Africa.

Go Nation: Chinese Masculinities And The Game Of Weiqi In China (Book Review), Wenqing Kang

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Burnishing Buchanan's Brand On His Birthday, Michael J. Birkner

History Faculty Publications

James Buchanan’s brand needs refreshing.

Outside his hometown, his name does not much register with Americans today. When it does, the reaction is usually negative. What a comedown from the high hopes associated with Old Buck’s election to the presidency in 1856. [excerpt]

Colonels, Hillbillies And Fightin’: Twentieth-Century Kentucky In The National Imagination, Anthony Harkins

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Mirrored Images: The Passion And The First Crusade In A Fourteenth-Century Parisian Illuminated Manuscript (Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale De France, Ms Fr. 352), Susanna A. Throop

History Faculty Publications

This lavish mid-fourteenth-century Parisian illuminated manuscript (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 352) combines a description of the Holy Land with an abridged version of the history and continuations of William of Tyre in Old French known as the Eracles. It is both visually familiar to scholars and under-studied. Several of its Gothic panel miniatures, especially folio 62r, the conquest of Jerusalem, have been published more than once, yet the manuscript's illumination programme as a whole has not been assessed since Jaroslav Folda's 1968 doctoral dissertation. Analysis of folio 62r in the context of both the full illumination …

Lancastrians Marched With Dr. King In Selma, Michael J. Birkner

History Faculty Publications

Fifty years after he addressed a crowd in Lancaster’s Penn Square about “the idea that all men are one,” Wayne Glick remembers that moment as if it happened yesterday. Glick’s speech, inviting Lancastrians to participate in the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, on behalf of African-American voting rights, is a footnote to Lancaster County history. But the march itself, featured in the popular film “Selma,” helped to change America. [excerpt]

"Town Of God": Ota Benga, The Batetela Boys, And The Promise Of Black America, Karen Sotiropoulos

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Down South In/Of Dixie: Rethinking The Tourist South, J. Souther

History Faculty Publications

Karen L. Cox, ed. Destination Dixie: Tourism and Southern History. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2012. ix + 315 pp. Illustrations, notes, and index. $74.95 (cloth); $26.95 (paper). Harvey H. Jackson III. The Rise and Decline of the Redneck Riviera: An Insider’s History of the Florida–Alabama Coast. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2012. 334pp. Illustrations, maps, essay on sources, and index. $28.95 (cloth); $19.95 (paper). Henry Knight. Tropic of Hopes: California, Florida, and the Selling of American Paradise, 1869–1929. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2013. xii + 266 pp. Illustrations, tables, notes, bibliography, and index. $74.95. Catherine …

Mexico’S Real Wages In The Age Of The Great Divergence, 1730-1930, Amilcar Challú

History Faculty Publications

This study builds the first internationally comparable index of real wages for Mexico City bridging the eighteenth and the early twentieth century. Real wages started out in relatively high international levels in the mid eighteenth century, but declined from the late 1770s on, with some partial and temporal rebounds after the 1810s. After the 1860s real wages recovered and eventually reached eighteenth-century levels in the early twentieth century. Real wages of Mexico City’s workers slid behind those of high-wage economies to converge with the lower fringes of middle-wage economies. The age of the global great divergence was Mexico’s own age …

Biology Textbooks And The Decentering Of The Scopes Trial, William Vance Trollinger

History Faculty Publications

I was reminded of this while reading Adam Shapiro’s fine book, Trying Biology: The Scopes Trial, Textbooks, and the Antievolution Movement in American Schools. Central to Trying Biology is the argument that the Scopes Trial was not the inevitable result of an eternal conflict between science and religion, but instead grew out of "debates over American education that had little to do with either science or religion" (12). As Shapiro nicely articulates, the school antievolution movement that emerged in the early 1920s was a backlash against schools teaching evolution "in a politically charged way" and "to a new population of …

William Cecil, Lord Burghley, And Managing With The Men-Of-Business, Norman L. Jones

History Faculty Publications

Michael Graves taught us to think of parliamentary management done through the parliamentary ‘men-of-business’, gentlemen with close ties to powerful men in the privy council. This article asks how ‘men-of-business’ were managed by Elizabeth's head manager, Lord Burghley. Choosing justices of the peace was a complex, fraught activity, and one which Lord Burghley did with a great deal of care. However, despite his best efforts to have only men of probity and proper religious inclinations, he was hampered by local concerns. Managing the men-of-business meant careful awareness of their places, their connections, and their independence. Burghley was managing shared governance, …

Рождение Mногонациональной Бюрократии. Прибалтика В Эпоху Александра Iii [The Genesis Of A Multiethnic Bureaucracy. The Baltic Region In The Era Of Alexander Iii], Bradley D. Woodworth

History Faculty Publications

This article examines the changes in the ethnic composition of the tsarist bureaucracy in the last two decades of the nineteenth century, focusing on Reval (Est. Tallinn) and Riga.

Book Review: Vacationland: Tourism And Environment In The Colorado High Country, J. Mark Souther

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Ebony And Ivy: Race, Slavery, And The Troubled History Of America's Universities (Book Review), Edward L. Ayers

History Faculty Publications

This book surprises. It focuses, for one thing, on the northeastern United States, not on the southern states where slavery was anchored. The chronological focus, with half its space devoted to the colonial period and to implications of colleges for American Indians, is also not what a reader might expect, given that most American colleges were founded in the antebellum era.

Most surprising, perhaps, the story is less about individual universities than it is about the networks that created and sustained them. Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America’s Universities is a powerful bill of indictment, …

Stealing Freedom: Auto Theft And Autonomous Individualism In American Film, James Todd Uhlman, John Alfred Heitmann

History Faculty Publications

In the real world today auto theft is usually about gangs, drugs, and money (Heitmann and Morales 5). However, since 1945, the cinematic representation of auto theft has had more to do with the symbolic meaning cars and driving hold in American culture. In the early twentieth century, the automobile and driving became associated with many of the classic qualities of American identity (March and Collette 107). The roots of that expectation stretch back even further to the role that movement played in the colonization of the continent. The unrestrained capacity to move became equated early in the American cultural …

Beyond Domestic Empire: Internal- And Post-Colonial New Mexico, John R. Chávez

History Faculty Publications

The purpose of this paper is to outline the connections between internal colonialism and post-colonialism, two dimensions of an evolving colonial paradigm. To test these theories against historical reality, they are applied to ethnic Mexicans and Indians, especially Navajos, in New Mexico in order to ground them and colonialism in general at the regional level. This paper claims that internal colonialism continues effectively to explain the historic subordination of indigenous and mixed peoples within larger states dominated by other groups. This condition understood, the paper sees postcolonial theory as providing ideas to end internally colonized societies since the theory critiques …

Father Of The Nation: Ghanaian Nationalism, Internationalism And The Political Iconography Of Kwame Nkrumah, 1957 – 2010, Harcourt Fuller

History Faculty Publications

This article addresses the ways in which Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s prime minister and president, sought visually to propagandize the complementary, yet competing demands of nation-building, Pan-Africanism, and internationalism (most notably Cold War politics and Third World non-alignment) from 1957 to 1966. In order to illustrate the complexities inherent in juggling these three main pillars of his presidency, this article examines the iconography and symbolism of the postage stamps, and to a lesser extent, the national currencies produced during the Nkrumah era. It also notes how every regime that has succeeded Nkrumah, from the National Liberation Council that ousted him from …

Ethnic Historians And The Mainstream: Shaping America's Immigration Story, Elizabeth Zanoni

History Faculty Publications

Historians rarely reflect publicly on how lived experiences in families and communities influence academic trajectories. For this reason, Ethnic Historians and the Mainstream: Shaping America’s Immigration Story is a welcome and invaluable collection for scholars and students of immigration and US history. Editors Alan Kraut and David Gerber recognize that “historians often seem to write their autobiographies with the subjects they address in their books and articles” (189). This speaks especially to immigration historians writing about their own ethnic communities; for them, concerns about navigating the rich, but oftentimes difficult, terrain of family life and identity politics are particularly pronounced.