Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Through The Ivory Curtain: African Americans In Cleveland Heights, Ohio, Before The Fair Housing Movement, J. Mark Souther

History Faculty Publications

This article examines the largely neglected history of African American struggles to obtain housing in Cleveland Heights, a first-ring suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, between 1900 and 1960, prior to the fair housing and managed integration campaigns that emerged thereafter. The article explores the experiences of black live-in servants, resident apartment building janitors, independent renters, and homeowners. It offers a rare look at the ways that domestic and custodial arrangements opened opportunities in housing and education, as well as the methods, calculations, risks, and rewards of working through white intermediaries to secure homeownership. It argues that the continued black presence laid …

Book Review: Remaking New Orleans: Beyond Exceptionalism And Authenticity, J. Mark Souther

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

“‘Curating Kisumu’ And ‘Curating East Africa’: Academic Collaboration And Public Engagement In The Digital Age”, J. Mark Souther, Meshack Owino

History Faculty Publications

This essay examines the origin, permutations, potentials, challenges, and implications of two successive, collaborative public history research, teaching, and learning projects undertaken by the Department of History at Cleveland State University, Cleveland, Ohio, and the Department of History and Archeology at Maseno University, Kisumu, Kenya between 2014 and 2018. The two projects explored how opportunities created by the mobile revolution in Africa could be leveraged to generate new ways of acquiring historical information and knowledge between students and faculty in universities separated by enormous distances and by disparate social, economic, and political experiences. Specifically, the projects examined how the cellphone …

Green Spots In The Heart Of Town’: Planning And Contesting The Nation’S Widest Streets In Georgia’S Fall Line Cities, J. Mark Souther

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Making “The Garden City Of The South”: Beautification, Preservation, And Downtown Planning In Augusta, Georgia, J. Mark Souther

History Faculty Publications

This article illuminates how a smaller southern city engaged broader planning approaches. Civic leaders, especially women, pushed and partnered with municipal administrations to beautify Augusta, Georgia, a city with extraordinarily wide streets and a long tradition of urban horticulture. Their efforts in the 1900s to 1950s, often in concert with close by planners, led to a confluence of urban beautification, historic preservation, and downtown revitalization in the 1960s. This coordinated activity reshaped Augusta’s cityscape, exacerbated racial tensions, and enshrined principles of the City Beautiful, Garden City, and parks movements long after they receded in large cities, influencing the work of …

Male Same-Sex Relations In Socialist China, Wenqing Kang

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

German And American Transnational Spaces In Women's And Gender History, Shelley Rose

History Faculty Publications

Books Reviewed:

Michaela Bank. Women of Two Countries: German-American Women, Women’s Rights, and Nativism, 1848–1890. New York: Berghahn Books, 2012. vi.+ 192 pp. ISBN 978-0-85745-512-3 (cl).

Karen Hagemann and Sonya Michel, eds. Gender and the Long Postwar: The United States and the Two Germanys, 1945–1989. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014. vii. +397 pp. ISBN 978-1-4214-1413-3 (pb).

Lynne Tatlock. German Writing, American Reading: Women and the Import of Fiction, 1866, 1917. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2012. ix.+ 347 pp.; ill. ISBN 978-0-8142-1194-6 (cl).

Sex In China (Book Review), Wenqing Kang

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Changing Landscape Of Peace Research: Geographic, Archival, And Digital Spaces, Shelley Rose

History Faculty Publications

This article focuses on the changing nature of the spaces, historical sources, and products of peace research. Specifically, the article explores the future of peace research after the transnational, digital, and biographical turns. It addresses the changing formats of sources generated by activists, as well as the challenges of digitizing and disseminating these sources. Finally, the article calls for increased attention to the use of digital humanities methods, particularly geographic information systems ( GIS) techniques, in peace research.

Teaching Black History After Obama, Karen Sotiropoulos

History Faculty Publications

This article is a reflection on the teaching of black history after the Obama presidency and at the dawn of the Trump era. It is both an analysis of the state of the academic field and a primer on how to integrate the past few decades of scholarship in black history broadly across standard K-12 curriculum. It demonstrates the importance of theorizing black history as American history rather than just including African American content in US History courses and offers specific methods that can shift the narrative in this direction even within the confines of a more traditional telling of …

Place And Politics At The Frankfurt Paulskirche After 1945, Shelley Rose

History Faculty Publications

This article investigates the reconstruction of the Frankfurt Paulskirche as a symbol of German democratic identity after World War II. The place memory of the Paulskirche is deeply rooted in the 1848 Parliament which anticipated the formation of a German democratic state. The church provided postwar Germans with a physical anchor for their sense of history and feelings of Heimat. This place identity pervades post-1945 debates about the reconstruction of the church and the appropriate uses of that space in the context of Frankfurt’s devastated urban and political landscape. Despite this, the place identity of the Paulskirche remains understudied in …

Masculine Compromise: Migration, Family, And Gender In China (Review), Wenqing Kang

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

“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 …

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.

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

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

"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 …

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

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Impact Of Kenya African Soldiers On The Creation And Evolution Of The Pioneer Corps During The Second World War, Meshack Owino

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Men And Masculinities In Contemporary China (Book Review), Wenqing Kang

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Review Of The Comedia Of Virginity: Mary And The Politics Of Seventeenth-Century Spanish Theater, Elizabeth Lehfeldt, Mirzam Perez

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Book Review: The Neoliberal Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, Late Capitalism, And The Remaking Of New Orleans, J. Mark Souther

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Penumbra Of Weimar Political Culture: Pacifism, Feminism, And Social Democracy, Shelley Rose

History Faculty Publications

This article offers a new reading of Germany’s complex political culture, exploring the contributions of pacifists, international feminists, and Social Democrats as proactive, yet marginalized, participants in Weimar-era politics. Through a series of historical events including the No-More-War protests, international education courses, pacifist reading sessions, and a transnational peace exhibit, the author demonstrates dynamic exchanges between party and informal politics on the political Left. This interaction, as well as expanding transnational networks and awareness, opened new political spaces for peace activism in the Weimar Republic, the effects of which still endure today.

Review Of Sensibility And The American Revolution, By S. Knott, Thomas J. Humphrey

History Faculty Publications

Review of Sensibility and the American Revolution, by S. Knott

Acropolis Of The Middle-West: Decay, Renewal, And Boosterism In Cleveland’S University Circle, J. Mark Souther

History Faculty Publications

In the mid-twentieth century, Cleveland, Ohio’s University Circle exemplified an emerging trend in which urban universities and other private institutions engaged in urban renewal. Situating the story of University Circle within the context of contemporary concerns about urban decay, deindustrialization, and suburbanization, the author argues that University Circle institutions were not simply trying to facilitate their own expansion. Rather, they were equally determined to create a setting appropriate to their regional, national, and even international reputations, as well as to advance the idea that an educational, medical, and cultural district could help reposition and rebrand a …

Book Review: Derelict Paradise: Homelessness And Urban Development In Cleveland, Ohio, J. Mark Souther

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Book Review: Authentic New Orleans: Tourism, Culture, And Race In The Big Easy, J. Mark Souther

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Review Of The Rule Of Women In Early Modern Europe, Edited By A.J. Cruz And M. Suzuki, Elizabeth Lehfeldt

History Faculty Publications

Review of the Rule of Women in Early Modern Europe, edited by A.J. Cruz and M. Suzuki

Review Of Convent Times: A Social History In The Foundations Of Modern Spain, By A. Atienza, Elizabeth Lehfeldt

History Faculty Publications

Review of Convent Times: A Social History in the Foundations of Modern Spain, by A. Atienza

Sculpted Landscapes: Art & Place In Cleveland's Cultural Gardens, 1916-2006, Mark T. Tebeau

History Faculty Publications

Perhaps the world's first peace garden, the Cleveland Cultural Gardens embody the history of twentieth-century America and reveal the complex interrelations between art and place. This essay uses the Cleveland Cultural Gardens as a lens through which to explore how art and place have intersected over time. It explores how communities have negotiated questions of national, ethnic, and American identity and embedded those identities into the vernacular landscape. It considers how the particulars of place were embedded into a public garden and asks whether it is possible for public art to transcend its place both in terms of geography and …