Regional Sociology Commons^™

Spring/Summer 2016, Full Issue

The Confluence (2009-2020)

No abstract provided.

The Roma And Sinti In Germany: Orientalism And Exclusion From German Historical Narratives (Romantisiert, Kriminalisiert, Und Abgewertet: Orientalismus Und Narrative Der Roma Und Sinti In Deutschland), Kimberly A. Longfellow

Celebration

The Roma and Sinti represent presence and absence in German culture. Although there has been a population of Roma and Sinti in Germany for centuries, they are often perceived by the German majority population as distinctly "eastern" and, as such, non-German. The perceptions of Roma by the German majority population mimic Orientalist assumptions, where the Roma are romanticized, criminalized, and generally devalued in comparison to Eurocentric narratives. Through an analysis of the Roma presence in German history, literature, and current events, one can see that the experience of the Roma in Germany is largely structured by the perceptions and assumptions …

Vietnamese Contract Workers In The East German Republic, Sean W. Hough

Celebration

This paper will analyze the historical and cultural conditions that affected how the German Democratic Republic treated one of its largest minority groups, the Vietnamese. During the height of the Cold War and as Decolonization reached its peak phase in the 1960s and 70s, these two factors pushed the GDR and Vietnam closer, which resulted in an exchange in workers. Contract Workers were brought to the GDR to work in an environment "united in socialist solidarity." However, despite this rhetoric, age-old racism, xenophobia, and Orientalism still infiltrated the so called "Socialist Paradise," as the GDR was often called by its …

Contents

The Bridge

No abstract provided.

My Grandfather: Soren Lorentz Lassen, Karen Lassen

The Bridge

Fifty-five years aft er my grandfather’s death in 1934, my two brothers and I gathered at his gravesite in Sault Ste. Marie near the Great Lakes. For the fi rst time, Soren Lassen was being honored by a family that he never knew. Although he had died long ago, his gravestone had only recently been put in place. I pulled the scissors I had brought out of my purse and carefully cut back the crabgrass that was already creeping across the new stone. Stepping back, I read it aloud:

Svend Lawrence

(Soren Lassen)

1864-1934

My Father, The Christmas Doctor, And The Danish Nurse Who Saved His Life, Tom Weber

The Bridge

My father, Dr. John Peter Weber, was born to German immigrants in Creston, Iowa in 1888. At the age of eleven he realized he wanted to become a doctor. After finishing the eighth grade in 1904, sixteen-year-old John rode the rails to Montana to help lay railroad tracks, intending to save his wages in order to continue his education. Treated brutally by his foreman, he left the railroad construction job and traveled to Portland, Oregon, searching for work in the lumber industry. The young man from Iowa fell victim to a pickpocket on the streets of Portland. All his savings …

Danish Midsummer: My Bodtker Grant From Dahs, Kelsi Vanada

The Bridge

Though many Americans can trace their family history back to their European ancestors, I have met very few people outside of my own family who have maintained relationships with the branches of their families still living in Europe. I have always been proud of the fact that I know many of my family members living in Denmark today. These ties between the Danish and American sides of my family are strengthened every time one of us travels to visit relatives in the other country, so I am extremely grateful that the Danish American Heritage Society (DAHS) awarded me an Edith …

A Danish Lad In America, Fred Delcomyn

The Bridge

“The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” So said L.P. Hartley in The Go-Between (1953). Looking back on myself as a young immigrant child in Detroit at mid-century, the phrase seems especially apt. In my past I was quite literally in a foreign country.

Inside Cover

The Bridge

No abstract provided.

Contributors

The Bridge

No abstract provided.

Prohibition Among Danish American Lutherans, Nick Kofod Mogensen

The Bridge

On January 17, 1920, a major change took place in American society. The Eighteenth Amendment went into effect and started the Prohibition Era, banning the sale of alcohol in the United States from 1920 to 1933. Prohibition was not a uniquely American idea. Under pressure from temperance movements, most Nordic countries banned or severely restricted the sale of alcohol around the same time as the United States did. The Faroe Islands, Iceland, Norway, and Finland all banned alcohol during the first few decades of the twentieth century. Although a narrow majority of the Swedish people refused an outright ban in …

Social Narrative And Sustainability Of A Danish Diaspora Community In The American Midwest, Craig A. Molgaard, Amanda L. Golbeck

The Bridge

This longitudinal study (1972-2015) focuses on the largest Danish American speech community in the United States of America, which is in Audubon, Cass, Pottawattamie, and Shelby Counties in western Iowa (the towns of Elk Horn, Kimballton, Audubon, Harlan, Exira, and Atlantic). The sociolinguistic mechanisms (code switching, speech acts, storytelling) of Danish social and cultural narrative are identified and examples are provided. We examine the social aspects of sustaining identity and heritage in a now globally linked community, and note lessons learned for other communities seeking to sustain their heritage in a healthy and productive fashion.

Full Issue

The Bridge

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

The Bridge

No abstract provided.

Memories From Rudbøl, 1923-1927: My Teaching At Rudbøl Danish School, M.R. Mikkelsen

The Bridge

All four of my grandparents emigrated from Denmark in the 1890s. The first time any member of my immediate family visited Denmark was almost a century later, when my wife Marge and I, together with our two sons David and Philip, went over to spend an eight-month sabbatical leave from Iowa State University in Denmark in 1981.

Contents

The Bridge

No abstract provided.

Front Cover

The Bridge

No abstract provided.

Inside Cover

The Bridge

No abstract provided.

Editorial Statement

The Bridge

No abstract provided.

Contributors

The Bridge

No abstract provided.

Growing Up In Junction City, Oregon. A Memoir., Lois Christiansen Eagleton

The Bridge

I grew up in a Danish world in America. It seemed that all of my relatives and most of our family friends were Danes. Though my parents did not speak much Danish at home, mainly because their families had come from different parts of Denmark and they could not agree on pronunciation, I learned when I went to college that I had a few Danish words in my vocabulary that I had no idea were not English.

Back Cover

The Bridge

No abstract provided.

Front Cover

The Bridge

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

The Bridge

No abstract provided.

Editorial Statement

The Bridge

No abstract provided.

Saving The American Farmer: The Impact Of Danish Agricultural Practices On American Policy Direction, Byron Rom-Jensen

The Bridge

“We are not Denmark.” This assertion by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during a national debate in early 2016 as a retort to Senator Bernie Sanders’ calls to learn from Denmark evoked little surprise. The greater surprise was, in fact, that the discussions of Denmark had gone this far. It certainly seemed remarkable when Sanders, shortly aft er announcing his presidential candidacy, praised Scandinavian social programs in areas such as childcare and education, and encouraged Americans to learn from these policies. Such a pronouncement ran counter to traditional path-dependent explanations for American domestic policy, according to which government programs …

Selected Poems By Emil Aarestrup

The Bridge

The name of the Danish physician and poet Emil Aarestrup is associated with sensual, erotic poetry in which a sharp, anatomical eye for the beauty of the human body is joined with a profound narrative about love in a single embrace. In Aarestrup’s works the body comes alive. His erotic gaze is ever-present as a layer of desire in his work, just as his sense of the all-inclusive joy of the embrace conceptualizes pleasure of an explosive and outrageous kind. This was incompatible with the puritanical petit-bourgeois self-restraint and human isolation of the period in which he wrote. This celebration …

Book Reviews

The Bridge

No abstract provided.

End Matter

The Bridge

No abstract provided.

From The Editor, Jeffrey Smith

The Confluence (2009-2020)

No abstract provided.