bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Extracellular calcium protects against verapamil‐induced metaphase‐II arrest and initiation of apoptosis in aged rat eggs
Authors: Chaube S.K. , Tripathi Anima , Khatun Sabana , Mishra S.K. , Prasad P.V. , Shrivastav T.G.
Published: January 2009

Non‐specific L‐type calcium channel blockers, such as verapamil (≥50 μM), induce metaphase‐II (M‐II) arrest and apoptosis in aged rat eggs cultured in Ca2+‐deficient medium. However, the effects of extracellular Ca2+ on verapamil‐induced M‐II arrest and apoptosis have not yet been reported. We have demonstrated that postovulatory aging induced exit from M‐II arrest by extruding a second polar body, a morphological sign of spontaneous egg activation (SEA). Verapamil inhibited SEA and induced egg apoptosis in a dose‐dependent manner in Ca2+‐deficient medium. The initiation of apoptotic features was observed at 50 μM of verapamil. Extracellular Ca2+ (1.80 mM) reduced intracellular H2O2 level, bax protein expression, caspase‐3 activity, DNA fragmentation and protected against 50 μM, but not higher concentrations of ≥100 μM in verapamil‐induced egg apoptosis. These results suggest that extracellular Ca2+ ions have a role during SEA and protect against verapamil‐induced apoptosis in aged rat eggs.
JNK‐binding protein 1 regulates NF‐κB activation through TRAF2 and TAK1
Authors: Yamaguchi Tadayuki , Miyashita Chiaki , Koyano Satoru , Kanda Hiromi , Yoshioka Katsuji , Shiba Tadayoshi , Takamatsu Nobuhiko , Ito Michihiko
Published: January 2009

The mitogen‐activated protein kinase (MAPK) cascades, including c‐Jun N‐terminal kinase (JNK), are composed of a MAPK, MAPK kinase (MAPKK), and MAPKK kinase (MAPKKK). Previously, we reported that JNK‐binding protein 1 (JNKBP1) enhances JNK activation induced by the TGF‐β‐activated kinase1 (TAK1) MAPKKK in transfected cells. We have investigated whether JNKBP1 functions as an adaptor protein for nuclear factor (NF)‐κB activation mediated by TAK1 in COS‐7 cells. Co‐expression experiments showed that JNKBP1 interacted with not only TAK1, but also with its upstream regulators, TNF‐receptor associated factors 2 and 6 (TRAF2 and TRAF6). An endogenous interaction between JNKBP1 and TRAF2 or TAK1 was confirmed by immunoprecipitation analysis. We also found that JNKBP1 could enhance the NF‐κB activation induced by TAK1 and TRAF2, and could promote TRAF2 polyubiquitination. These results suggest a scaffolding role for JNKBP1 in the TRAF2–TAK1–NF‐κB signaling pathway.
Altered expression of inflammatory cytokine receptors in response to LPS challenge through interaction between intestinal epithelial cells and lymphocytes of Peyer's patch
Authors: Chen Jie , Ng Chuen Pei , Tsang Lai Ling , Ho Lok Sze , Xu Peng Hui , Rowlands Dewi Kenneth , Gao Jie Ying , Chung Yiu Wa , Li Ting Yu , Chan Hsiao Chang
Published: January 2009

The intense innate immunological activities occurring at the enteric mucosal surface involve interactions between intestinal epithelial cells and immune cells. Our previous studies have indicated that Peyer's patch lymphocytes may modulate intestinal epithelial barrier and ion transport function in homeostasis and host defense via cell–cell contact as well as cytokine signaling. The present study was undertaken using the established co‐culture system of Caco‐2 epithelial cells with lymphocytes of Peyer's patch to investigate the expression of IL‐8 and IL‐6 cytokines and cytokine receptors in the co‐culture system after challenge with Shigella F2a‐12 lipopolysaccharide (LPS). The human colonic epithelial cell line Caco‐2 was co‐cultured with freshly isolated lymphocytes from the murine Peyer's patch either in the mixed or separated (isolated but permeable compartments) co‐culture configuration, and was challenged with Shigella F2a‐12 LPS for 8 h. The level of mRNA expressions of human interleukin‐8 (hIL‐8), human interleukin‐8 receptor (hIL‐8R), mouse interleukin‐8 receptor (mIL‐8R), mouse interleukin‐6 (mIL‐6), mouse interleukin‐6 receptor (mIL‐6R) and human interleukin‐6 receptor (hIL‐6R) was examined by semi‐quantitative PCR. In both co‐culture groups, hIL‐8 expression of Caco‐2 cells was decreased, and hIL‐8R expression was increased compared to the Caco‐2 alone group. Upon LPS challenge, hIL‐8 expression from the Caco‐2 cells of both co‐culture groups was higher than in the Caco‐2 control group. The increased hIL‐8 expression of Caco‐2 cells in the separated co‐culture group is correlated with a decreased hIL‐8R expression and an increased mIL‐8R expression. In the mixed co‐culture group, the increased expression of hIL‐8 was associated with the upregulated hIL‐8R expression on Caco‐2 cells and downregulated mIL‐8R on murine Peyer's patch lymphocytes (PPL). mIL‐6 expression from mouse PPL was also upregulated by LPS in mixed co‐culture. However, upon the treatment with LPS, hIL‐6R expression of Caco‐2 cells was decreased in the mixed co‐culture, but increased in separated co‐culture. The data suggest that release of hIL‐8 from epithelial cells may act on lymphocytes through a paracrine pathway, but it may also act on the epithelial cells themselves via an autocrine pathway. The data also suggest that the release of mIL‐6 from Peyer's patch lymphocytes affects epithelial cells in a paracrine fashion.
Nutrient‐mediated teratogenesis and fuel‐mediated teratogenesis: Two pathways of intrauterine programming of diabetes
Authors: Yajnik Chittaranjan S.
Published: January 2009

The epidemic of diabetes is spreading quickly to the poor and the deprived. Nutrition during fetal life influences the future risk for diabetes; and both under‐ and overnutrition contribute and coexist in rapid‐transition countries. Nutrient imbalance seems particularly important; for example, low maternal vitamin B12status coupled with high folate predicted higher adiposity and insulin resistance in Indian children, suggesting a role for 1‐C (methyl) group donors in fetal programming. Maternal hyperglycemia worsens the situation. Improving the early‐life environment may be more cost‐effective for preventing diabetes than controlling lifestyle factors alone in later life.
Surgical Management of Blocked Cats: Which Approach and When?
Authors: Williams John
Published: January 2009

Practical relevance Feline lower urinary tract disease (FLUTD) accounts for up to 8% of cats presenting to veterinary clinics, with urethral obstruction occurring in 18–58% of those case. Though the requirement for surgery has declined with better understanding and management of the underlying causes of FLUTD, surgery does have an important role in intractable cases.

Patient group Male (mostly castrated) mature cats.

Clinical challenges The decision to take a cat to surgery has to be based on the severity and frequency of the clinical signs. The decisionmaking process is relatively straightforward where cystic calculi are present; the challenge is deciding when and which urethrostomy to carry out. This article seeks to give guidance for the practitioner grappling with these issues.

Global importance FLUTD and urethral obstruction Is a well documented problem throughout Europe, and North and South America.

Equipment The basic surgical equipment is readily available; fine-tipped instruments are preferred to allow for atraumatic tissue handling.

Evidence base There is an abundance of literature on FLUTD and urethral obstruction and its surgical management, with surgery for this condition first having been reported back in 1967. Recent studies have investigated both the long and short term outcome following surgical management of the blocked cat. Still, there are no hard and fast rules as to when surgery should be carried out, with the guidelines varying in the literature.
Treatment of Feline Herpesvirus-1 Associated Disease in Cats with Famciclovir and Related Drugs
Authors: Malik Richard , Lessels Naomi S , Webb Sarah , Meek Miriam , Graham Paul Gotis , Vitale Carlo , Norris Jacqueline M , Power Helen
Published: January 2009

Background Feline herpesvirus 1 (FHV-1) is a common cause of ocular and upper respiratory disease in cats and kittens, and a potential cause of eosinophilic dermatitis.

Hypothesis The systemic anti-herpes drug, famciclovir (Famvir; Novartis), would be effective in the clinical management of disease attributable to FHV-1, including conjunctivitis, keratitis, corneal sequestra, rhinosinusitis and FHV-1 associated dermatitis.

Clinical outcome Oral famciclovir was used to treat signs considered referable to FHV-1 in 10 cats: four had primary ocular disease, two had rhinosinusitis and four had FHV-1 associated dermatitis. Patients treated in Australia (five cats) and Europe (one cat) were given 62.5 mg of famciclovir once or twice daily. Four cats treated in the USA were given 125 mg three times daily. Famciclovir was uniformly well tolerated and, in all cases, had a positive impact on the patient's condition. The apparent improvement in lesions was superior to what had been achieved previously using other therapeutic strategies. One cat with severe destructive rhinosinusitis was significantly improved by a 4-month course of famciclovir in combination with antibacterials. Corneal sequestra detached in two out of three cats treated; cats with ocular signs were qualitatively more comfortable, with reduced clinical signs and an improved appearance of the eyes. Critically, oral famciclovir therapy was considered more convenient than topical ocular therapy. All four cats with FHV-1 associated dermatitis improved substantially, although relapse occurred subsequently in three patients. A further cat with presumptive FHV-1 associated dermatitis responded to topical aciclovir cream before famciclovir could be sourced.

Conclusions Famciclovir appears to be a promising systemic drug for treating diseases associated with FHV-1 infection. More rigorous clinical trials are required to optimise the dosing regimen for safe and effective specific anti-herpes treatment in feline clinical medicine.
Regeneration in Rural Catalonia
Authors: Robertson Alexander F.
Published: January 2009

The efforts of rural communities around the world to survive in the face of economic and demographic decline dramatise the bio-cultural processes on which human regeneration routinely depends. This paper explores the very conspicuous symbolic aspects of regeneration in a village in Catalonia, Spain, and traces the long term physical and material processes that underlie them. Scrutiny of two different festivals reveals a passionate concern to renegotiate deeply fractured generational relationships. Having exported its fertility to the towns and cities, the community is now working to incorporate newcomers and devise new livelihoods. Public rituals have done much to sustain these efforts at regeneration, but how they may resist the “sterile growth” of Mieres as a village of mostly empty second homes is a provocative new issue.
Weber’s Theory of Radical Movements: A Reappraisal
Authors: Pettenkofer Andreas
Published: January 2009

The ongoing wave of radical religious protest confirms the need for an alternative to the rationalist approach that has come to dominate social movement research. At this moment, it seems promising to take another look at Weber’s sociology of religion: it offers a theory which (1) proposes an unfamiliar account of the relation between personal identity and political activism, (2) builds on this to explain the functioning of a specific type of social movements organization, and (3) thereby identifies mechanisms causing a dynamic of protest that cannot be reduced to a “rational” adaptation to an opportunity structure. These concepts can also elucidate the working of movements that are not explicitly religious in character.
Une enquête au début du xe siècle : le questionnaire synodal de Réginon de Prüm
Authors: Grémy Jean-Paul
Published: January 2009

In 906, the Abbot Reginon von Prüm issued a questionnaire concerning the sins perpetrated during the past year within a given parish. Two important improvements can be found in the questionnaire as compared to the already existing handbooks of penance: instead of being used for the private confession of sins, it was designed for a public investigation, and it demonstrates an effort toward some objectivity, by avoiding reproofs or value judgements. For these reasons, it appears as a significant advance in survey questionnaires. A French translation of the questionnaire is provided in the appendix.
The α-glucosidase inhibitor miglitol suppresses postprandial hyperglycaemia and interleukin-1β and tumour necrosis factor-α gene expression in rat peripheral leucocytes induced by intermittent sucrose loading
Authors: Tanaka Yutaro , Mochizuki Kazuki , Fukaya Nanae , Shimada Masaya , Goda Toshinao
Published: January 2009

Postprandial hyperglycaemia is thought to increase inflammation in leucocytes. In the present study, we examined whether sucrose loading in rats with moderate postprandial hyperglycaemia induces the expression of cytokines in peripheral leucocytes and whether these inductions are suppressed by inhibiting postprandial hyperglycaemia with the α-glucosidase inhibitor miglitol. One group of streptozotocin-treated rats and age-matched saline-treated rats were orally administered sucrose only, and another group of streptozotocin-treated rats was administered sucrose with miglitol, at a single daily dose for 4 d, under 4 h fasting conditions. Blood glucose levels at 0, 0·25, 0·5, 1, 2 and 3 h and cytokine mRNA in peripheral leucocytes at 0 and 3 h after sucrose loading on days 1 and 4 from the start of sucrose loading were determined. Streptozotocin-treated rats showed moderate postprandial hyperglycaemia (>2000 mg/l) at 0·25–1 h after sucrose loading on days 1 and 4. Postprandial hyperglycaemia was not observed in the miglitol-treated rats loaded with sucrose. Gene expression levels of IL-1β and TNF-α were higher in the streptozotocin-treated rats at fasting on day 1 than in saline-treated rats. Fasting IL-1β and TNF-α gene expression on day 1 were not only increased at 3 h on the same day of sucrose loading, but was also increased at the fasting period on day 4. These inductions on day 4 by intermittent sucrose administration were inhibited by miglitol. The present results suggest that miglitol decreases postprandial hyperglycaemia and intermittent sucrose-induced expression of the IL-1β and TNF-α genes in rat peripheral leucocytes.
Some Notes on Faulkner's Reading
Authors: Gidley M.
Published: January 2009

Carvel Collins's collection of Faulkner's Early Prose and Poetry, containing mainly material written between 1919 and 1922, with one or two items from 1925, introduces the reader to a young author who is not only concerned with questions of his craft but also engaged by several of the dominant aesthetic, intellectual and critical arguments of his day. Let me briefly list some of those engagements: Faulkner's review of Conrad Aiken's Turns and Movies and his renderings of Symbolist poetry demonstrate his interest in the proper language of poetry; the essay ‘On Criticism’ presents him sparring with notions of what good criticism could and should achieve; in his piece on Eugene O'Neill he expresses surprise that O'Neill had chosen to write first about the sea rather than about the more familiar land, and of W. A. Percy he says ‘like every man who…ever lived, he is the victim of his age’ (p. 72)—comments which hint at thoughts on the disparity between life and art (a recurrent subject in his poems), which was a chief critical point in the feverish debates of the time between the emerging ‘literary radicals’ like Randolph Bourne and Van Wyck Brooks and the ‘new humanists’, such as Paul Elmer More and Irving Babbitt. Also, in ‘American Drama: Inhibitions’, Faulkner stresses the importance of native subject-matter for the American writer, taking ‘the old Mississippi river days’ and ‘the romantic growth of the railroads’ (44) as examples. In the same essay, like Brooks and H. L. Mencken before him, he points out the comparative richness of the American tongue: thus it is no surprise to learn that Mencken's The American Language (1919) is listed in the Appendix to William Faulkner's Library—A Catalogue as one of the books Phil Stone ordered with his younger friend ‘in mind’.
Portents of War: English Opinion on Secession
Authors: Crook D. P.
Published: January 2009

One would expect from the relatively sophisticated industrial society into which Britain had developed by the 1860s a complex reaction to the immense crisis which struck the United States in that decade, euphemistically described in the British press as ‘the American Difficulty’. The enormous heterogeneity of economic, ideological, political and group interests involved in the English response – together with the spectrum of issues raised by the break-down of the Union – should enforce caution upon the historian who wishes to paint his Civil War scene in bold and simple strokes. During the war itself it was natural that Americans of both sections should make the simple demand of European opinion ‘is it pro-North or pro-South ?’ But the continuation of this tradition by later historians lasted too long, and has ended by befuddling rather than clarifying the situation. The search for partisan alignments too often provides a kind of distorting mirror through which events are viewed, or becomes a Procrustean device by which the data is chopped or stretched into the required form.
The South and Congress's Reconstruction Policy, 1866–67
Authors: Perman Michael
Published: January 2009

If the Civil War had erupted in 1861 because the two sections had failed to produce a formula capable of reconciling their many differences, then it would not be inaccurate to assert that in 1865, four years later, that long-sought basis of settlement was even more remote and unlikely. Yet the search for mutually acceptable terms of agreement continued. As practitioners of the art of negotiation and reconciling differences, Reconstruction politicians on both sides aimed at reunion and talked of compromise. One hundred years later, many revisionist historians also assumed that compromise solutions were available after the war. Somehow both politicians and historians manifested a conventional response in presuming that bargain and negotiation leading to settlement were applicable and meaningful approaches to the problem of reconstruction. Yet perhaps the underlying reality was such that this traditional political approach was likely to be ineffective and quite inappropriate. Perhaps the interests and attitudes of the groups in power within each section were irreconcilable short of the capitulation or extinction of one of them. In that case political realism would have required that attempts to conciliate, moderate or compromise should be rejected, and other methods of achieving political goals tried and experimented with.
Henry Cabot Lodge and the League of Nations
Authors: Mervin David
Published: January 2009

The first Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts was a congressional leader of the highest calibre. W. Stull Holt has written: ‘no one can read in the Congressional Record during [Lodge's] career without being impressed by his mastery of parliamentary technique, by his adroit maneuvers to extract his party from a tight situation or to entangle his opponents, and by his knowledge of what to do under all circumstances’. Similarly, Denna Frank Fleming has said: ‘in skill of parliamentary maneuver, in ability to manipulate factions against each other and to his own purpose Lodge may never be excelled’. The picture conveyed by these two authorities is one of an extraordinarily talented congressional leader dedicated to the greater glory of the Republican Party. But as Holt and Fleming also recognized, it is not enough to dismiss Lodge as a mere partisan; he was also a devoted son of the Senate, keenly aware of the importance of the separation of powers and particularly sensitive to encroachment on the legislature by the executive. Most of the earlier assessments of Lodge's part in defeating Woodrow Wilson's League of Nations policy were made before the Senator's papers became available, but a re-examination of his role, in the light of his correspondence and other documents, clearly demonstrates his overwhelming concern for the two institutions that he served so long and so well, the Republican Party and the Senate.
The Image of the Negro in the Pre-Civil-War Novels of John Pendleton Kennedy and William Gilmore Simms
Authors: Rose Alan Henry
Published: January 2009

The crucial issue facing the novelists of the pre-Civil War South was the expression of the Negro in their writings. A fine balance had to be struck between the deliberate attempt to present, as William Taylor suggests in Cavalier and Yankee (Garden City, New York, 1961), a favourable image of the slave-holding society, and the subjective impulse to express the powerful forces of racial destruction that were covert in the ante-bellum South. Such a balance rarely occurred. Rather, as social tensions increased with the approach of the Civil War, the writers retreated from their confrontation with the image of the Negro. Kenneth Lynn, in Mark Twain and Southwestern Humor (Boston, 1959), shows a progression which finds the authors using increasingly younger narrators, which Lynn feels absolves them of the responsibility of maturely facing the issues. But the novels of John Pendleton Kennedy and William Gilmore Simms reveal rather different forms of evasion. Kennedy, the more didactic writer, as the war approached, increasingly removed his novels from the present. This simply relieved him of the obligation of expressing concretely documented reality, and allowed a shift into fantasy. The image of the Negro could be safely excluded from such a context. However, fantasy is, if anything, a more congenial environment for the expression of covert social forces. Thus, a curious irony occurs in Kennedy's later novels. The image of the Negro disappears from works such as Rob of the Bowl (1838), but the forces of demonic malevolence with which he is associated are transferred to the figure which replaces him, the indentured Indian. A racial equation emerges, and in this chiaroscuric world of night and fire the Indian offers a glimpse of the malevolence suppressed in the image of the Negro.
British Historians and the American Revolution
Authors: Middleton Richard
Published: January 2009

In the year of Lexington, the irascible Dr Johnson wrote to a correspondent: ‘The Americans, sir, are a race of convicts and ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging.’ Extreme in his Tory views, Johnson nevertheless reflected popular sentiment concerning the American colonies and their pretensions to independence, and his bias was to be reflected in many of the writings of the first historians who attempted to account for the late destruction of the first British empire.
Ethnocultural Political Analysis: A New Approach to American Ethnic Studies
Authors: Swierenga Robert P.
Published: January 2009

At the seventy-ninth annual meeting of the American Historical Association in 1964, a panel of scholars enlivened one of the sessions with a heated debate over the effects of ethnic assimilation in American culture. The topic of debate, ‘Beyond the Melting Pot: Irish and Jewish Separateness in American Society’, focused on a recent controversial study of ethnic mixture in New York City by Nathan Glazer and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, both sociologists. Glazer and Moynihan in their bookBeyond the Melting Pottraced the ‘role of ethnicity’ in the seaboard city. The melting pot ‘did not happen’, they concluded, ‘at least not in New York and,mutatis mutandis, in those parts of America which resemble New York’. This frontal assault on the concept of Americanization, long a cherished ideal in the United States, drew a sharp reaction from several panellists, especially William V. Shannon, editorial writer for dieNew York Timesand author ofThe American Irish, and Irving Greenberg, professor of history at Yeshiva University. Both Shannon and Greenberg insisted that Irishmen and Jews had indeed been assimilated in American society, either for better or for worse. At this point, the discussion degenerated into the traditional moralistic debate on the merits and demerits of assimilation. Reflecting the divergent views of their colleagues in the history profession, Shannon praised assimilation and Greenberg condemned it.
The Nation Past and Present: A Study of Robert Lowell's ‘For the Union Dead’
Authors: Kavanagh Paul
Published: January 2009

In ‘For the Union Dead’ Robert Lowell evokes a landscape which is symbolic in both a social and an historical sense. His aim in doing so seems to be to test the relevance of the traditional ideals of freedom and racial equality in contemporary American society. The landscape is arid and undermined by a garage which stands for the destructive and unreasoned actions of a city enslaved by the motives of affluence. Two major symbols stand together over the abyss of the underground garage, the Statehouse and a bas-relief of Colonel Shaw. The first stands for the actual administration of the ideals of democracy as expressed in the constitution, while the second represents the deepest convictions of American liberalism which motivated the North during the Civil War. This article explores the historical relevance of the death of Colonel Shaw, who was ‘a martyr’ for the cause of die Negro soldiers he led into battle. This is done through historical documents, and through an examination of James Russell Lowell's ‘Memoriae Positum’ which is a celebration of the death of Shaw. The conclusions drawn indicate that Robert Lowell's poem is ambiguous in its treatment of die material relating to Shaw, that he is far less certain as to the relevance of liberalism either to die historical development of American society, or to the disintegrating contemporary scene. Robert Lowell is forced to accept the unreality of claims made for the racial equality, either supposedly realized or hoped for. His vision extends into the future and contemplates social disintegration in the image of atomic destruction which illustrated the destructive power of American idealism in die last war.
The Efficiency Side of Separated Powers
Authors: Fisher Louis
Published: January 2009

Considered the cornerstone of the American governmental system and an article of political faith for the Founding Fathers, the concept ‘separation of powers’ nevertheless has few rivals for ambiguity. There are wide differences of opinion as to what the Framers intended by the expression. We are told that they embraced the doctrine of Montesquieu, but there is a good deal of doubt as to what he meant and whether they borrowed from him in the first place. Moreover, the question remains: how should one apply a principle from 1787 to the issues of today?.
An Imperialist and the First World War: the Case of Albert J. Beveridge
Authors: Thompson J. A.
Published: January 2009

A difficulty which faces students of American thought about foreign affairs is the relation between general principles and views of the world on the one hand and attitudes to specific issues of policy on the other. Since the pioneering work of Robert E. Osgood, historians have emphasized the important distinction between those whose primary concern is the protection of American national interests within the existing system of power politics, and those who seek above all to reform the international order in accordance with American liberal ideals. In recent years much attention has been paid to the influence of economic considerations, particularly the desire to promote American foreign trade. However, the relative weight attached to national security, liberal idealism and American economic interests overseas by individual Americans does not entirely account for their differing attitudes to particular questions. For in crucial debates, such as those over the Philippines and the League of Nations, each of these considerations was invoked by some on both sides of the argument. To some extent, the older and more superficial distinction between ‘isolationism’ and ‘anti-isolationism’, while concealing the variety of premises upon which either position could be founded, provides a better basis for predicting the readiness of Americans to favour particular foreign enterprises or commitments. Yet adherence even to these broad traditions has been far from consistent. Thus, while it would be natural to assume that the imperialists of 1898–1900 were more likely than their opponents to favour American intervention in the First World War, it is not clear that this was the case.
The Third American Conservation Movement: New Implications for Public Policy
Authors: O'Riordan Timothy
Published: January 2009

The American nation is presently caught in the throes of its third conservation movement. It is generally considered that the first American conservation movement in the United States took place during the period 1890–1920, with particular emphasis upon the first decade of the twentieth century, and the second was associated with the New Deal and subsequent policies of Franklin Roosevelt in the period 1933–43. The aim of this paper is to compare the development and the underlying philosophies of the present conservation movement in the United States with the growth and guiding principles of its two predecessors, and to follow this analysis through with a somewhat more normative examination of various implications for public policy which come to light.
Kate Chopin's The Awakening: Ambiguity as Art
Authors: Rosen Kenneth M.
Published: January 2009

Fifty-three years before Ernest Hemingway wrote The Old Man and the Sea, Kate Chopin went beyond simple allegory to create something which critics, until only very recently, have been unable to define. In 1936 Arthur Hobson Quinn wrote that the basic fault of The Awakening ‘lies in Edna's utter selfishness, which deprives her of sympathy. The standards are Continental rather than Creole, and the novel belongs rather among studies of morbid psychology than local color’. Quinn's superficial view of the heroine leads him to the limiting moral position from which any clear view of the work as a whole is obscured. Edmund Wilson's evaluation, as it is taken from Patriotic Gore and quoted in Kenneth Eble's introduction, seems to me to reveal both Wilson's apparent frustration at being unable to categorize the novel and his almost intuitive grasp of what may be the most important factor in explaining the work's effectiveness.
The Image of England and American Nationalism
Authors: Brock William
Published: January 2009

In 1828 and 1832 James Fenimore Cooper visited England. He expected hostility because he had just writtenNotions of the Americanswhich was intended to correct the erroneous statements of British travellers about the United States, but during his visits he was well received and managed to meet many leading literary and political figures. Yet everything was wrong. In 1837 he published a book based on these visits and expressed his dismay at ‘the extent of the malignancy, or the nature of the falsehood, that are industriously circulated here at the expense of America’. It was, he wrote, a country that I could fain like, but whose prejudices and national antipathies throw a chill over all my affections; a country that unquestionably stands at the head of civilization in a thousand things, but which singularly exemplifies a truth we all acknowledge, – how much easier it is to possess great and useful, and even noble qualities, than to display those that are attractive and winning; – a country that all respect, but few love.
La Roy Sunderland: The Alienation of an Abolitionist
Authors: Jacob J. R.
Published: January 2009

In November 1842, La Roy Sunderland, Orange Scott and Jotham Horton, leading abolitionists and ministers, withdrew from the Methodist Episcopal Church. The first issue of the True Wesleyan, Scott's anti-slavery newspaper, published an announcement of their withdrawal and their reasons for deciding to do so. They could no longer serve a church that condoned slavery and that scarcely permitted delegates to its conferences to raise the issue there. The three dissenters saw what they regarded as the high-handed tactics of the bishops in preventing conferences from considering anti-slavery resolutions as resting upon ‘the assumptions of Rome’! This act of withdrawal and the formation of the wesleyan Methodist Church die following May came after a six years' struggle between the radical abolitionists within the Church and their more conservative brethren, principally the bishops, who had stifled discussion of the slavery issue in order to preserve the Church as a national entity. This Wesleyan schism is a token of the change that is the subject of this essay.
The Roots of Isolationism: a Case Study
Authors: Boyle Peter G.
Published: January 2009

Senator Arthur Vandenberg wrote of Pearl Harbor that ‘Isolationism for any realist ended on that day’. For two decades after Pearl Harbor this judgement was generally accepted both by statesmen and by scholars in America. Pre-World War II isolationism, it was felt, had been a policy of blindness which culminated in disaster. In the post-war period, it was generally agreed, America learned from the mistakes of her pre-war isolationism and helped to keep peace and defend her interests by pursuing an internationalist policy of the containment of Communism.
Population Growth and Environment: Some Aspects of the Problem in the United States and the Response
Authors: Estall R. C.
Published: January 2009

Population growth has been traditionally regarded with some satisfaction in the United States, being associated with economic and social benefits and rising standards of living. Population expansion has,inter alia, provided an increasing labour force, larger and more varied markets and a widening range of opportunity for individuals. By 1967, however, as the U.S. population officially passed the 200 million mark, reactions were becoming decidedly ambivalent. Expressions of pride and pleasure, and the anticipation of further economic growth were somewhat soured by the widely publicized views of conservationists and ‘environmentalists’ (a rather newer breed). The old attitude of mind in fact paid little heed to the problems accompanying large population expansion and rapid changes both in patterns of living and in geographical distribution. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, however, concern about these matters began to grow, and the assumed arrival of the 200 millionth American heralded a sizeable campaign concerned with the threat, so called, of ‘over-population’. Stewart Udall, then Secretary of the Interior, writing a Foreword to his Department's report ‘The Population Challenge’, stated flatly ‘The greatest threat to quality of living in this country is overpopulation’. He spoke of the challenge of a soaring population; the shrinking amount of space per head; the gathering storm of conflict on space allocation, on resource utilization and on the preservation of the quality of environment. The headings of various sections of that report – ‘A Rationed Tomorrow’; ‘So Much and No More’; ‘Planning for the Pinch’ – all reflect urgent concern about the size and rate of growth of U.S. population with its growing pressure on land and other resources.
The Western and the Contemporary
Authors: Fender Stephen
Published: January 2009

It is a commonplace that American western fiction is ‘mythic’ and archetypal. It is also increasingly taken for granted that westerns reflect contemporary political and social issues and that one can learn much about American attitudes from a study of westerns as historical documents. Are these ideas reconcilable? One answer would be that though the book or film may communicate certain contemporary messages to its local audience, it also conveys ‘universal truths’ to a wider public. To see how wrong this happy compromise is, one has only to consider the following typical cases, taken from various stages in the history of American western fiction. Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking stories seem to be set in an impossible never-never land, yet the author occasionally provides ’scholarly‘ footnotes relating the stories’ locales to real places in America. The dime novel Seth Jones, by Edward Ellis (1860), contains elaborate anthropological notes on Indians, but on the page following one of them the hero says, ‘“Howsumever, that don't make no difference, whether it's the Mohawks, Oneidas, or any of them blasted Five Nation niggers, they are all a set of skunks …”’ Emerson Hough pauses in the middle of North of 36 (1923) to provide a bibliography of sources for the facts about cowboy life on which he draws. The film producers D. W. Griffith and James Cruze (The Covered Wagon, 1923, is based on a romance by Hough) spent enormous amounts of money and energy to get costumes, settings and technical details historically accurate, when their plots moved to the old romance rhythms of love affairs and escapes from fates worse than death.
The Symbolism of Subversion: Notes on Some Cold War Icons
Authors: Weinstein Allen
Published: January 2009

‘Ours is an era of “cases”,’ Diana Trilling wrote several years ago, ‘starting with the Sacco-Vanzetti case in the 1920s, proceeding through the Hiss and Oppenheimer cases to the Rosenberg case, the Chessman case, the Eichmann case, and [the subject of Mrs Trilling's essay]…culminating…in the Profumo case.’ We could add several since then, of course, and her chronology is misleading – the Rosenbergs having followed Hiss but preceded Oppenheimer – but Mrs Trilling's point, that such cases and others provoked within their society basic ‘confrontation(s) between opposing social principles’, remains valid. The Hiss, Rosenberg and Oppenheimer episodes were American society's most controversial post-World War II security cases. Each in turn dramatized the political and cultural impact of the Cold War for large numbers of Americans. They serve as useful paradigms, when examined together, for studying the process by which complex problems of evidence are reduced to compelling images of an event. Almost from the moment the ‘facts’ emerged in each case they congealed, first into partisan accounts and then into minor mythologies, in which each case became the subject-matter for a simple morality tale. Alger Hiss and Whittaker Chambers, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Robert Oppenheimer, and the supporting caste in each drama achieved, in their own time, the status of icons in the demonologies and hagiographies of the opposing camps. Looking recently through the dreary record of trials and hearings connected with security problems during the Truman-Eisenhower era, I found certain continuities in the appraisal by intellectuals and politicians of these three otherwise singular episodes.
Robin Molineux and the Young Ben Franklin: a Reconsideration
Authors: England A. B.
Published: January 2009

Although one feels reluctant to increase the volume of commentary on ‘My Kinsman, Major Molineux’, the work is so rich that it insists on being continuously re-interpreted. And there is one aspect of it in particular which seems to me not to have received adequate attention – namely, its relationship to Franklin's account in the Autobiography of his first arrival in Philadelphia. A few years ago Julian Smith pointed out several of the resemblances, and he convincingly demonstrated the likelihood that the one work had an influence on the other. But he did not go any further than this, and really only began to describe the nature of the relationship. For the most important thing about all of the similarities is that they are accompanied by very suggestive differences. And what I want to argue in this essay is that in writing ‘My Kinsman’ Hawthorne not only remembered Franklin's account of his arrival in Philadelphia, but also sought implicitly to criticize the vision of reality which is embodied in the Autobiography.
The Imagery of Dedication in Robert Lowell's ‘For the Union Dead’
Authors: Hirsh John C.
Published: January 2009

Paul Kavanagh's recent article on Robert Lowell's ‘For the Union Dead’ clearly shows the relevance of Colonel Shaw's sacrifice to the poem and usefully emphasizes its Civil War associations. What is perhaps less clear in his investigation is Lowell's debt to the present, and the extent to which that debt ultimately defines the direction of the poem. Early in his study, for example, Kavanagh remarks ‘Two major symbols stand together over the abyss of the underground garage, the Statehouse and a bas-relief of Colonel Shaw’: it may be added that the two structures are physically present on Beacon Hill above Boston Common where the garage was built, and, although contrary to the implication in the poem they were not propped up because of the excavation, they do face each other across Beacon Street in dramatic – or ironic – contrast. Yet there are many such contrasts in the poem, expressed or implied. From the ‘Sahara of snow’ and the boarded windows of the second line, to the ‘savage servility’ of the next to last, the whole city seems locked in an aura of unresolved opposites and stifling contradictions. Chief among these is the opposition between Colonel Shaw and the narrator, neither of whom emerges as either heroic or objectively ‘right’.
From European to American History: A Comparative View
Authors: Gerhard Dietrich
Published: January 2009

To become an historian was already my aim in the last forms of the gymnasium, prior to 1914, though I hardly knew anything about the profession. My father, an attorney, had been thinking of me as of his successor, yet tolerance was one of his outstanding traits. He was willing to wait until the full development of my capacities, the more so since history had always been one of his major interests. My gymnasium — perhaps even more than other Berlin gymnasia — stressed German and especially Prussian history. Even teachers with a wider horizon, such as Wilhelm Pfeifer who had been one of the last amanuenses of Ranke, were obliged to emphasise Prussian history. I remember that one whole semester was given over to the campaigns of Frederick the Great. Pfeifer was a thoughtful and independent teacher, well above the level of his colleagues. I stayed in contact with him until I left Germany in 1935. Later my American students thought that, by way of Pfeifer, Ranke's blessing had been bestowed on me — a kind of successio apostolorum.

In the year prior to my graduation from the gymnasium I learnt that recently a book of a new type of history had appeared in the form of Friedrich Meinecke's Weltbuergertum und Nationalstaat. I read it, and it was this book which led to my decision to study history. By showing the influence of cosmopolitan concepts on the emergence of the German national idea Meinecke's book opened up a new historical dimension, the history of ideas — not without objection from other historians that he neglected “real” history.
How I Became a Historian
Authors: Bolkhovitinov N. N.
Published: January 2009

One rainy day in the autumn of 1978, when I returned to Moscow from my leave, the Institute's executive secretary for international ties called me to her office and handed me a letter with the invitation for me to write an autobiographical article for the silver jubilee issue of the Journal of American Studies and to tell how I came to be a historian and a specialist on the United States.

At first the invitation puzzled me. To be honest, I have never written anything personal and, certainly, nothing autobiographical (except for the formal “autobiography” required in the USSR for official documents). Secondly, my official status and my place in the academic hierarchy could hardly justify my taking up the genre of autobiography. True, addressing their letters to the Institute, foreign correspondents often called me “professor” and even “academician,” but I naturally saw diis just as a polite form of address or as ignorance of our scientific hierarchy. The fact of the matter is that I have never been a professor (there is no such official post at the research institutes in the Soviet Union). As far as the title of “academician” is concerned, the difference between a senior research member of an academic institute and an actual member of the USSr Academy of Sciences (Academician) is the same as between the English “Dear Sir” and the French “Sire.”
The Jacksonian as Leveller
Authors: Ashworth John
Published: January 2009

Over the past two decades Jacksonian historiography has been enriched by the publication of a large number of scholarly articles and monographs. Legislative voting in the states and in Congress has been analysed, the social composition of the two major parties has been studied, the mechanics of the political system have been scrutinized and political ideas have been reexamined. The present article will be concerned with ideology, the belief system of the Jacksonian Democratic party. It will deal specifically with the Jacksonian conception of equality. Surprisingly, this is a facet of Democratic ideology to which relatively little attention has been paid.

In The American Political Tradition, published in 1948, Richard Hofstadter presented what is perhaps the standard view of Jacksonian equality. He cited Andrew Jackson's Bank Veto Message of 1832. Jackson here affirmed that

Distinctions in society will always exist under every just government. Equality of talents, of education, or of wealth cannot be produced by human institutions. In the full enjoyment of the gifts of Heaven and the fruits of superior industry, economy, and virtue, every man is equally entitled to protection by law.

Hofstadter concluded that this was “certainly … not the philosophy of a radical leveling movement that proposes to uproot property or to reconstruct society along drastically different lines.”
Stirring Things Up: Dashiell Hammett's Continental Op
Authors: Whitley John S.
Published: January 2009

Following the example of Steven Marcus, we may point to a number of features or incidents in Dashiell Hammett's novels which seem to break sharply with previous conventions of the detective story. I do not refer to the important changes of direction brought about by the “hard-boiled” school and instanced by such matters as the professional detective, organized crime, dark urban streets and a spare, colloquial, “tough” style. Rather, I wish to concentrate on features which are unexpected even in the context of “toughguy” writing and which occur unexpectedly in order deliberately and provocatively to remind the reader, in the midst of an easily-identifiable style, of other styles and methods of enquiry into human behaviour and, ultimately, of another and very different world-view which must be placed against the world-view of the rest of the novel. By adopting this technique, Hammett succeeds in drawing attention not only to the limitations of his particular kind of popular fiction but also to ways in which these very limitations can be used. The aspects of Hammett's novels to which I began by referring are not separated stylistically from the rest of the novel. But they nonetheless suggest to the reader that the first-person narrator might have to be viewed in a context other than that in which he normally presents himself for the reader's judgement (and, frequently, approval).
United States Senate Norms and the Majority Whip Election of 1969
Authors: Mervin David
Published: January 2009

In two influential books written some years ago William S. White and Donald R. Matthews suggested that the distribution of power within the United States Senate was, to a large extent, governed by certain informal rules of behaviour. Conformity to these norms or ‘ folkways ’, it was argued, was the key to success and influence in the Senate.