History Commons^™

Political And Theoretical Feminisms In American Folkloristics: Definition Debates, Publication Histories, And The Folklore Feminists Communication, Jeana Jorgensen

Jeana Jorgensen

What role does feminist theory play in American folkloristics, and which versions of feminism have become mainstreamed in the nearly forty years since folklorists first became attuned to the promises and premises of feminism? By attending to these issues, I hope to at least partially answer the question Alan Dundes asked in his 2004 Invited Presidential Plenary Address to the American Folklore Society: "What precisely is the 'theory' in feminist theory?" (2005, 388). In lamenting the lack of grand theory in folkloristics, Dundes remarks, ''Despite the existence of books and articles with 'feminist theory' in their titles, one looks in …

Revisiting A Struggle: Port Kembla, 1938, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

A review and discussion of the 2015 documentary film 'Pig Iron Bob' (Producer/Director Sandra Pires). The focus of this film is the dramatic 2-month long boycott by Australian waterside workers in Port Kembla (NSW), 1938/39, of a cargo of Australian pig-iron bound for Japan. The workers took their action in protest against Japanese militarism and the Sino-Japanese War. The boycott enraged the conservative Australian government of the day which pulled out all stops to maintain its policy of appeasement towards Japan.

Monarchist Clubs And The Pamphlet Debate Over Political Legitimacy In The Early Years Of The French Revolution, Paul R, Hanson

Paul R. Hanson

On the morning of 14 December 1790, an angry crowd surrounded the royal prison in Aix en-Provence and forced the release of the marquis de la Roquette and the avocat au parlement Jean Joseph Pascalis. Led by militant members of the Club des anti-politiques, a radical club in Aix composed largely of artisans, the crowd escorted the two men through the streets of Aix to the elegant Cours Mirabeau, where each was hanged by a rope from a street lantern. Later that day the same fate befell Andre-Raymond Guiramand, an elderly chevalier of St. Louis who in recent days had …

The Federalist Revolt: An Affirmation Or Denial Of Popular Sovereignty?, Paul R, Hanson

Paul R. Hanson

After nearly two centuries of relative neglect by historians, the Federalist revolt of 1793 finally is receiving the attention it deserves. Book-length studies now exist for each of the main Federalist cities, and several articles have considered various aspects of either Federalism or the Federalist revolt.1 We are thus in a position to begin a fuller and more informed evaluation of the character and significance of the Federalist revolt...

From Jacobin To Liberal, Paul R, Hanson

Paul R. Hanson

This article focuses on From Jacobin to Liberal: Marc-Antoine Jullien, 1775–1848 and argues that this book, written near the end of Robert R. Palmer’s career, stands as a sort of bookend to his earlier masterpiece, Twelve Who Ruled. The focus of the book, Marc- Antoine Jullien, was a precocious idealist, just sixteen years old when he made his first speech before the Paris Jacobin club. He supported the Jacobin political vision and went on to serve as an emissary in the provinces for the Committee of Public Safety, the focus of Twelve Who Ruled. As such, young Jullien was denounced …

The 'Vie Chère' Riots Of 1911: Traditional Protests In Modern Garb, Paul R, Hanson

Paul R. Hanson

In the early evening hours of a warm September night sorne two thousand women gathered in front of a French dairy farm to the rallying cry, "We must have butter at 30 sous, or it will be revolution!"1 One might well guess that the date of this demonstration was 1789, or perhaps the tumultuous years of social protest and food riots that heralded the coming of the Second Republic and then the Second Empire. But the date is 1911 and the place is the small town of Somain located in the department of the Nord...

Les Clubs Politiques De Caen Pendant La Révolution Française, Paul R, Hanson

Paul R. Hanson

Le 8 juin 1793 la ville de Caen se déclara en insurrection contre la Convention Nationale, protestant contre la proscription de vingt-neuf députés nationaux durant la révolution parisienne du 31 mai. Dans les semaines qui suivirent, Caen devint le centre principal de la révolte provinciale contre la Convention Montagnarde. La ville attira des élus de neuf autres départe ments bretons et normands, qui formèrent ensemble le Comité Central de Résistance à l'Oppression. La ville de Caen fournit plus de quatre cents volontaires à la force armée levée par ces départements pour marcher sur Paris et restaurer l'intégrité de la Convention. …

A Flag Is Flipped And A Nation Flaps: The Politics And Patriotism Of The First International World Series, Todd J. Wiebe

Todd J Wiebe

No abstract provided.

Book Review: David Grant, 'Jagged Seas: The New Zealand Seamen's Union, 1879-2003' (2012), Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

Review of David Grant, 'Jagged Seas: The New Zealand Seamen's Union, 1879-2003' (Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 2012). The reviewer co-authored a history of the Australian Seamen's Union (1872-1972) in 1981, and this review is sympathetic towards Grant's history, and makes a case for the ongoing production of worker/union histories.

History: The Birth Of "America" In 1882, Robert H.I. Dale

Robert H. I. Dale

This article concerns a New York Times story about the birth of the female Asian elephant calf, named America, at the winter headquarters of the "Greatest Show on Earth" in Bridgeport, Connecticut on February 2, 1882. Phineas T. Barnum, one of the owners of the show, and one prone to self-aggrandizing bluster, claimed that America was the second elephant ever born in captivity. America was born only to months before the arrival in New York of the most famous circus elephant of all time, Jumbo, on Easter Sunday, 1882, and only two years before the origin of a small wagon …

"'If I Had It In His Hand-Writing I Would Burn It': Federalists And The Authorship Controversy Over George Washington's Farewell Address, 1808-1859", Jeffrey J. Malanson

Jeffrey J. Malanson

No abstract provided.

“The Congressional Debate Over U.S. Participation In The Congress Of Panama, 1825-1826: Washington’S Farewell Address, Monroe’S Doctrine, And The Fundamental Principles Of U.S. Foreign Policy”, Jeffrey J. Malanson

Jeffrey J. Malanson

No abstract provided.

“‘Entangling Alliances With None’: John Quincy Adams, James K. Polk, And The Impact Of Conflicting Interpretations”, Jeffrey J. Malanson

Jeffrey J. Malanson

No abstract provided.

Journeys To Others And Lessons Of Self: Carlos Castaneda In Camposcape, Ageeth Sluis

Ageeth Sluis

Drawing on Michel Foucault’s concept of heterotopia, this article examines the importance of place and gender within constructions of race politics in Carlos Castaneda’s series on shamanism. Championing a “separate reality” predicated on an indigenous worldview, Castaneda’s lessons invited transnational middle-class youth to "journey" alongside him to camposcape—an anachronistic and idealized countryside—as a means to escape the bourgeois values of their homelands and find spiritual fulfillment in a timeless and "authentic" Mexico. Castaneda’s work proposed new viable spaces of difference in Mexico, yet inscribed these spaces with a masculinist discourse that served to neutralize the gender trouble within the counterculture …

Projecting Pornography And Mapping Modernity In Mexico City, Ageeth Sluis

Ageeth Sluis

Drawing on Elizabeth Grosz’s and Doreen Massey’s insights that place and gender are mutually constitutive, this article examines the articulation among the embodied city, sexual desire, and changing gender norms in the wake of the Mexican Revolution. At this time, a newly governing revolutionary elite sought to reinvigorate and “civilize” Mexico City through a series of urban reforms and public works, partly in response to their concern over women in public as a social problem. By analyzing depictions of female nudity as conversant with urban landscapes in the banned magazine Vea, the author argues that pornography connected Mexico City to …

Bataclanismo! Or, How Deco Bodies Transformed Postrevolutionary Mexico City, Ageeth Sluis

Ageeth Sluis

In the spring of 1925, Santa Anita's Festival of Flowers seemed to follow its tranquil trend of previous years. The large displays of flowers, the selection of indias bonitas (as the contestants of beauty pageants organized in an attempt to stimulate indigenism were known) and the boat-rides on the Viga Canal, all communicated what residents of neighboring Mexico City had come to expect of the small pueblo in the Federal District since the Porfiriato: the respite of a peaceful pastoral, the link to a colorful past, and the promise that mexicanidad was alive and well in the campo. Unfortunately, wrote …

Trolling Spoons & Baseball: The Life, Lures, And Legacy Of Charles H. Morse, William B. Krohn

William B. Krohn

Henry O. Stanley And His Fishing Tackle Business, William Krohn

William B. Krohn

"Never Neutral": On Labour History / Radical History, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

Eric Fry, one of the founders of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History (ASSLH), wrote about radical history in the ‘Introduction’ to his neglected Rebels & Radicals (1983). The book is not listed in Greg Patmore’s comprehensive listing of labour history publications (1991), rates no mention in the 1992 tribute to Fry’s work edited by Jim Hagan and Andrew Wells, and receives only brief mentions in the Labour History tribute issue to Eric Fry and fellow ASSLH pioneer Bob Gollan (2008). Arguably with good reason, since the book was exploring a different way of writing dissident history, …

Review - Michael Tubbs, Asio: The Enemy Within, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

ASIO: The Enemy Within is a combative book. Based on his research and experience, Michael Tubbs argues that the Australian Intelligence Security Organisation (ASIO) has no place in Australia’s democracy. According to Tubbs ASIO has, since its formation in 1949, acted as a partisan political secret police force, ridden roughshod over civil liberties, engaged in illegal activities, all with the aim of creating and managing a docile, tranquil public.

Review: People And Politics In Regional New South Wales, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

Histories of Australian towns and local areas abound, usually the work of enthusiastic local residents distributed through community based museum and historical society networks. Aimed at local audiences, these histories tend to be triumphalist, cataloguing ‘progress’ in terms of population changes and infrastructure growth. There is little in the way of explanation or analysis; local identities appear as a ‘cast of characters’ rather than as flesh and blood historical agents; politics is noticeably absent. For one state, the two volume People & Politics in Regional New South Wales, 1856 to 2006, addresses this political absence. Given the huge size of …

Review - Pete Thomas, And Greg Mallory (Editor), The Coalminers Of Queensland: A Narrative History Of The Queensland Colliery Employees Union, Volume 2: The Pete Thomas Essays, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

In 1986 journalist Pete Thomas published the first volume of his proposed two-volume narrative history of the Queensland Colliery Employees Union, The Coalminers of Queensland. But he died before completing the task. With the support of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU), Mining and Energy Division (Queensland District Branch), labour historian Greg Mallory has edited Volume 2 from Pete’s unpublished manuscripts.

On Winning The 40 Hour Week, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

The 40-hour week was approved by the Commonwealth Arbitration Court on 8 September 1947, to take effect from 1 January 1948. The 40-hour campaign, the 35-hour campaign that followed in the late 1950s, the 44-hour campaign that preceded these, and union attempts between all three to fix the working week at either 30 or 33 hours, were parts of a long movement for the codification and reduction of Australian working hours that began in the mid 1850s with struggles by workers to establish the principle of the 8-hour day. Stonemasons in Sydney and Melbourne gained the first successes during 1855 …

The 1978 Military Occupation Of Bowral, Damian Cahill, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

Early during the morning of Monday, 13 February 1978, a city council garbage truck stopped in Sydney’s George Street, outside the Hilton Hotel, to collect the weekend contents of an overflowing litter bin. Two council workers began to empty the bin, and as they did, a bomb hidden in it exploded, killing them both. A nearby policeman later died in hospital from injuries received, and seven other people were seriously injured. Inside the Hilton Hotel were eleven visiting heads of government—the Commonwealth Heads of Government Regional Meeting (CHOGRM) was due to start in Sydney later that day. On Tuesday 14 …

A 'Foundation In Nature': New Economic Criticism And The Problem Of Money In 1690s England, Courtney Smith

Courtney Weiss Smith

This essay reconsiders new economic criticism’s assumptions about the role of nature in late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century economic thought. I take the debates surrounding the English recoinage crisis as a test case. As I read economic tracts by John Locke, William Lowndes, Nicholas Barbon, and James Hodges alongside an array of anonymous polemical policy pamphlets, I demonstrate that many writers addressed the recoinage problem by turning with urgency to the created natural world. They believed that close attention to the material properties of silver bullion, for example, could access encoded clues about God’s will for human economic institutions. I …

Political Individuals And Providential Nature In Locke And Pope, Courtney Weiss Smith

Courtney Weiss Smith

While John Locke and Alexander Pope are often treated as political opposites, this essay contends that Locke's Two Treatises shares important conceptual ground with Pope's Essay on Man. Both writers give consenting individuals agency and the social contract transformative power, even as both also insist that the created world offers clues about how God wants societies to work. I propose that these unexpected similarities confirm recent work in ecocriticism and the history of science that suggests that eighteenth-century nature could have moral or political content. Indeed, the similarities raise far-reaching questions about the contours of the consent-giving subject in the …

The Birth Of The Sperm Bank, Kara Swanson

Kara W. Swanson

No abstract provided.

Getting A Grip On The Corset: Gender, Sexuality And Patent Law, Kara Swanson

Kara W. Swanson

No abstract provided.

Alfred Russel Wallace, Journalist, Charles H. Smith

Charles Kay Smith

No abstract provided.

Batista-Era Havana On The Bayou, Michael Mizell-Nelson

Michael Mizell-Nelson

Review Essay: Kent B. Germany. New Orleans After the Promises: Poverty, Citizenship, and the Search for the Great Society. Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press, 2007. J. Mark Souther. New Orleans on Parade: Tourism and the Transformation of the Crescent City. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006. Anthony J. Stanonis. Creating the Big Easy: New Orleans and the Emergence of Modern Tourism, 1918–1945. Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press, 2006.