bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Peace, Freedom, and Abundance
Authors: Castledine Jacqueline
Published: May 2017

This introductory chapter explains how the master narrative of U.S. history too often reduces the scope of leftist women's Cold War-era activism by containing it within women's, workers', or civil rights movements. Despite progressives' efforts in 1948 and beyond to create a multifaceted movement that broadly defined peace to include not only cessation of physical violence but also evidence of social justice, discussion of leftist peace movements is rarely given the same consideration as single-issue campaigns. The chapter shows how long before late-twentieth-century feminist scholars presented their theories of “intersectionality,” and when “third wave” feminists derided earlier movements for their insensitivity to interrelated oppressions, leftists recognized how understandings of identity interact to produce social inequality.
Progressive Feminisms
Authors: Castledine Jacqueline
Published: May 2017

This chapter talks about how Progressive women faced a number of challenges as they headed out on the campaign trail in 1948. Not only did Women for Wallace activists have to contend with Cold War politics, including debates about the role of Communists in the Progressive Party (PP), they also had to negotiate the competing rationales members claimed for women's political engagement. The feminisms that took root in the PP were most often shaped by debates about the grounds on which Progressive women should demand their right to political participation. Divisions within the Congress of American Women and Women for Wallace organizations were determined by the degree to which members relied upon notions of “difference” between men and women to claim their rights.
From the Popular Front to a New Left
Authors: Castledine Jacqueline
Published: May 2017

This chapter discusses how the slight thawing of Cold War tensions included discussion of a permanent test-ban treaty, raising the hopes of many former Progressive Party activists that the conservative political tide was turning. People increasingly came to believe that the easing of political repression created an opportunity to reconstitute Popular Front organizing and fully realize the potential of such organizations as the Progressive Party, Congress of American Women, and Sojourners for Truth and Justice. Toward that end, small covert leftist networks now made their way into larger national organizations that shared their commitment to “peace, freedom, and abundance.” Although they had not achieved their vision of positive peace, Popular Front organizations had provided a training ground for leftist women who later helped shape the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s.
Labor and the Birth of the Postwar Red Scare, 1945–1950
Authors: Doody Colleen
Published: May 2017

This chapter demonstrates how local politics in Detroit was roiled by a debate over the power of labor and the expansion of the New Deal state. Labor's size and influence grew rapidly during the New Deal and the war. Despite the fact that Detroit was the most heavily unionized city in the nation, anti-CIO candidates won political office in some crucial elections by linking labor to the Communist Party. While such red baiting was fairly conventional behavior, this language resonated with voters during the mid-1940s who feared labor's strength and chafed against wartime government regulations. In response to their defeats, labor leaders battled to determine the role labor would play in the postwar world while also debating the role Communists and their supporters would play in labor's ranks.
Conclusion
Authors: Doody Colleen
Published: May 2017

This chapter summarizes key themes and presents some final thoughts. This study of Cold War Detroit showed the roots of contemporary conservatism, which combined support for free-market capitalism, small domestic government, anti-Communism, and traditionalism. All of these core ideas had been present in American society before the Cold War. The anti-Communism of the early Cold War helped bring together these previously disparate forces. Although the proponents of what became the new conservative movement did not always see eye-to-eye, they perceived that they shared common enemies. It would take many years and a great deal of both elite and grassroots activism before a powerful conservative movement formed nationally. However, the components of that ideology were well developed long before the late 1960s and 1970s.
Do No Evil, See No Evil, and Hear No Evil
Authors: Figone Albert J.
Published: May 2017

This chapter shifts the focus from the players to the coaches. After the basketball scandal broke in January of 1951, colleges, with the aid of many writers, were quick to label the players' misdeeds “criminal” and to attribute them to players' lack of moral values and flawed characters. Yet the blame for the pervasive corruption in college athletics did not rest on the shoulders of the athletes alone. The chapter argues that the college coaches, administrations, and other such authorities were also in part responsible for the gambling issue, although unlike the players, they were largely able to escape the taint of scandal. Thus, this chapter argues that how basketball coaches made their choice to ignore game fixing reveals the essential role their passive complicity played in the size and shape of the scandals.
Disruptive Intersection
Authors: Hazzard-Donald Katrina
Published: May 2017

This chapter explores the movement and recoalescing of eight essential elements into the African Religion Complex (ARC), thus enabling the Hoodoo religion to emerge briefly: counterclockwise sacred circle dancing; spirit possession; the principle of sacrifice; ritual water immersion; divination; ancestor reverence; belief in spiritual cause of malady; and herbal and naturopathic medicine. Something resembling Hoodoo developed among the first generation of culturally diverse Africans born in the North American colonies. Enslaved Africans manifest a range of responses to contact with both slavery and Christian worship. But whenever they worshipped, these children of Africa expressed spiritual emotion in bodily patterns inherited from African traditional religion. The primary African components from which Hoodoo would be constituted were drawn from a range of different African ethnic cultures that stretched from the area now known as Senegal down the West African coast to the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The Syndicate
Authors: Lombardo Robert M.
Published: May 2017

This chapter explores the significance of Prohibition for the evolution of organized crime in Chicago. It shows that Prohibition provided the opportunity for the city's vice entrepreneurs and criminal gangs to extend their activities into bootlegging. Levee district vice mongers such as Johnny Torrio and Al Capone competed with criminal gangs such as the Valley Gang, the O'Banion Gang, the Genna Brothers, and others for control of the illegal alcohol racket. The end result was the infamous “beer wars” of the 1920s, which sparked violence on the streets of Chicago. The Capone syndicate won out in the end, establishing itself as the supreme overlord of vice and crime in Chicago. The chapter examines how, after the end of Prohibition in 1933, the Syndicate, as Capone's organization became known, extended its operations to include control of all illegal gambling in Chicago and embarked on an extensive racketeering campaign to seize control of trade associations and labor unions in the Chicago metropolitan area.
The Early Years
Authors: Mirchandani Sharon
Published: May 2017

This chapter focuses on Marga Richter's early life and education. Florence Marga Richter was born on October 21, 1926, in Reedsburg, Wisconsin. Marga's mother is Inez Chandler Richter (née Davis), an American soprano, and her father is Paul Richter, a captain in the German army during World War I. Marga's paternal grandfather, Richard Richter, was a composer, municipal orchestra conductor, and music teacher in Einbeck, Germany. The strong musical upbringing Marga received, combined with the midwestern values of hard work and independence, was the foundation out of which she grew to compose a large, distinctive body of works over her lifetime. This chapter discusses the influences on Richter's musical and personal life, her early musical experiences, her family's move to New York City in 1943, and her years at Julliard Graduate School where she took up master's studies from 1945 to 1951. It also considers Jabberwocky, Richter's earliest extant work, her marriage to Vernon Hughes, and her studies with William Bergsma, Vincent Persichetti, and Rosalyn Tureck.
Community-Based, “Catch-All” Organizing on New York’s Lower East Side
Authors: Phillips Lisa
Published: May 2017

This chapter looks at how many of the older men who owned the small wholesale and retail shops throughout the Lower East Side either sold merchandise on a cart or as clerks in small shops. Salesmen of preceding generations could realistically expect to eventually own shops. While not all pushcart peddlers retired as millionaires, many—at least prior to the Depression—could work toward owning their own shops. Yet the onset of the Depression wiped out the possibility of future shop ownership. During one of the worst economic crises in U.S. history, 15 million people were out of work, with New York hit harder than any other American city because of its size. By 1932, one-third of the city's manufacturing establishments had closed, leaving 1.6 million people dependent on some form of relief.
Getting beyond Racial, Ethnic, Religious, and Skill-Based Divisions
Authors: Phillips Lisa
Published: May 2017

This chapter illustrates how Local 65, at the time of its Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) affiliation, was predominantly Jewish and had organized people at all skill levels in small wholesale shops on the Lower East Side. In 1937 and 1938, the union began to target people who worked in “dead end” jobs, before branching out to other industries in Midtown, Uptown, Brooklyn, and the Bronx. Their goal is to bring low-wage male and female workers—including blacks, more Jews, and immigrants—into the union. The strategy put the union at odds with others in the city, particularly the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACWA), International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU) and the Teamsters, which all laid claim to the low-wage workers Local 65 organized.
Community Organizing under the AFL-CIO Umbrella
Authors: Phillips Lisa
Published: May 2017

This chapter demonstrates how, after five years of heading up a few of the left-led Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) refugees, the DPO and District 65 were attacked and on the verge of collapse. It had proved almost impossible to continue to organize without the security provided by the CIO, and the union's Executive Board finally decided to accept the CIO's terms for reinstatement. The chapter follows District 65 as it attempted to rebuild and, essentially, prove its worth to the rest of the labor movement and to civil rights organizations like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The chapter explores the consequences of the reaffiliation for the union's “militant” fight for economic equality and offers an analysis of how District 65's organizing strategies were affected by reaffiliation with the CIO.
Fierce Speculation, 1967–75
Authors: Smith Jad
Published: May 2017

This chapter focuses on John Brunner's works from 1967 to 1975. These include Quicksand (1967), which garnered testy and argumentative reviews; Zanzibar (1968), which went on to garner Nebula and Hugo nominations; The Sheep Look Up (1972), his darkest novel set in the United States as it enters its “third century” as a nation; and The Shockwave Rider (1975), which Brunner described as convenient “shorthand” for dealing with the vicissitudes of the human mind. Brunner also contributed five columns on assorted topics to Science Fiction Review between December 1969 and March 1971. By the mid-1970s, Brunner largely dropped out of view and stopped writing science fiction.
Introduction
Authors: Wallace Aurora
Published: May 2017

This introductory chapter argues that architecture can lend legitimacy to the media industry. Using architecture as a delivery mechanism for notions of patriotism, nation building, individual aspiration, education, and moral uplift, the media sought to establish its own authority among its readers and citizens more generally. Beyond their own buildings, the New York media have authored an explicit account of urban space and city living. They established architecture, real estate, and land values as important elements of the news agenda, from which they also stood to gain. Yet this public presence is not without its own set of anxieties. To express the identity of a business graphically or via architecture necessitates the construction of certain fictions about the solidity and single purpose of an entity even when neither is immediately known.
New Buildings and New Spaces
Authors: Wallace Aurora
Published: May 2017

This chapter views the New-York Tribune and the New York Times—the first in the industry to use skyscraper architecture as the medium for corporate image construction—in the context of the growing power of the press. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the city was reimagined with new patterns of circulation, spaces, conduits, and nodes of power. Alongside the growth of the banking and insurance industries, the press colonized lower Manhattan and the value of land rose precipitously. New construction and printing technology required capital investment and new forms of corporate governance. Media architecture transformed from rented space in low buildings to purpose-built signature buildings with lawyers, press agents, and advertising firms as tenants. The shift to taller buildings reveals a preoccupation with both the symbolic and economic value of the skyscraper, as media content became more attentive to the built environment.
Transplanted Cherries
Authors: Regalado Samuel O.
Published: May 2017

This chapter documents the formative years of the Japanese in the United States, as well as the initial pioneers of Nikkei who came to prominence during this time. Though many would travel to the United States with optimism on their minds and baseball in their hearts, all of their optimism could not overshadow the depths of resentment Asians faced upon their arrival to North America. Among the many challenges this first generation (Issei) of immigrants faced, the Immigration Act of 1924 proved to be one of the direst. While depleting the Issei of what little rights they had, the Immigration Act also hastened the need to properly train their offspring, the Nisei, to understand and appreciate the trappings of their generation. Yet the Issei in many ways continued to thrive, and there are many among the first and second generations who continue to love baseball.
Baseball Is It!
Authors: Regalado Samuel O.
Published: May 2017

This chapter describes the proliferation of Nisei baseball in California at the turn of the century. As the second-generation Nisei came of age, their world tugged at them from two ends: their Japanese heritage and American nationality. Gaukueans (Japanese-language schools) were among the institutions employed by the Issei to help maintain the Japanese culture among their children. Athletics, above all, was the enclave's most popular activity, with baseball usually dominating. This chapter tracks the growth of Nikkei baseball within this region as the Nisei sought to forge their identities in this new cultural milieu. Nisei baseball in California throughout the 1930s had thus become a vibrant activity that had developed from the strong roots planted by the earlier generation.
One Step Ahead of the Sheriff
Authors: Welsh Mary Sue
Published: May 2017

This chapter details Edna Phillips' first concert season. On the Friday afternoon of her first concert, Phillips had no choice but to “head down the track without looking left or right, like a racehorse with blinders on.” There was nothing to do but steel herself and go forward. Much to her surprise, she made it through the concert without any gaffes. She didn't come in at a wrong place or get lost or lose count or commit any of the terrible errors she feared she might. While it is never easy for a newcomer in an organization to learn the routine under which it operates, for Phillips it was especially difficult. She did not have the luxury of serving under a first-chair player who might tell her how this or that was done or having any natural allies to mentor her. She had to learn most of the ins and outs of being a Philadelphia Orchestra member on her own.
Cajoling and Seducing Composers
Authors: Welsh Mary Sue
Published: May 2017

This chapter details events following Stokowski's departure from the Philadelphia Orchestra. With Ormandy completely in charge, the Philadelphia players carried on as the professionals they were, still committed to performing at the highest levels and still proud to be members of a great orchestra. In addition to her orchestral duties, Phillips took on another project at this time. Over the years, she had grown frustrated by the scarcity of works written for the harp, especially when she performed as a soloist with the orchestra and found that the number of suitable works she had to choose from was limited. Finally, in 1940, she decided to do something about the problem. With her husband's generous support, she set out to expand the repertoire by commissioning new works for the harp from the best composers she could find. But finding and pinning down those composers turned out to be much harder than she had imagined.
The Discovery of New York
Authors: Rondinone Troy
Published: May 2017

This chapter details events following Gaspar's arrival in New York. In the summer of 1954, Nick Corby gave Gaspar a one-way Greyhound bus ticket and five dollars and told him they would meet up in New York City. After three long days and nights, Gaspar arrived in Manhattan. What a sight it was! He'd never seen anything even remotely like it. Long, wide corridors of concrete and glass extended out in every direction, thickly channeled with noisy, car-choked avenues. At a time when Tijuana had around 100,000 residents, Manhattan contained almost 2 million people. Gaspar got out between Eighth Avenue and Broadway and wandered around the station for thirty minutes, looking for his local contact and new trainer, Hipolito “Happy” Rodriguez. The next day, Happy took his new charge to Stillman's Gym to start his real education. Here Gaspar received the biggest shock yet. He was already scheduled to fight at what boxing fans called the Center of the Universe. He had a match in Madison Square Garden in just three weeks.
Climb
Authors: Rondinone Troy
Published: May 2017

This chapter details Gaspar's first televised Monday Night Fight. His opponent was a man named Hardy “Bazooka” Smallwood. Like Gaspar, Smallwood was familiar with long, hard roads. He had been born in the historically Native American community of Indian Woods, North Carolina, in 1933. He grew up poor. Hardy's rural world allowed him to learn to hunt as a child, and he still recalls tracking down rabbits with a cord on frosty winter mornings. Gaspar Ortega was fight number twenty-four for Bazooka. He beat Gaspar soundly for ten rounds, easily getting the unanimous decision. But Gaspar soon proved himself a dynamic TV presence with a unique, unpredictable style and a definite willingness to get in there and brawl.
The Tournament
Authors: Rondinone Troy
Published: May 2017

This chapter details the rising popularity of Gaspar Ortega. Since his first televised fight in March 1956, Gaspar Ortega had ascended from the mass of the unranked to nearly the top of his class. Coming into 1957, he was the number two-ranked welterweight in the world. He had won five straight matches against top-notch boxers. His odd style had “caught the fancy of fight fans and fistic experts alike,” enthused one sportswriter. He was “lithe and graceful” and possessed “dazzling speed,” which made for great TV. On November 1, 1957, Julius Helfand, chairman of the World Championship Committee and New York State Athletic Commission, announced the six contenders for the upcoming “official” welterweight tournament: George Barnes, Virgil Akins, Isaac Logart, Vince Martinez, Gil Turner, and Gaspar Ortega.
Manning the Barricade
Authors: Mellinger Gwyneth
Published: May 2017

This chapter opens the ASNE story in the mid-1950s, when ASNE members began registering the impact of the U.S. Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education school desegregation ruling and the specter of more sweeping civil rights reforms. During the 1950s, the ASNE leadership was dominated by Southern editors and much of the organization's tension over civil rights was inflected with regionalism. Key moments in the decade examined by this chapter include the ASNE board's initial resistance to integrating the organization and the membership's discourteous reception of prominent civil rights leaders—the first African Americans invited to address the ASNE—at the 1964 convention.
The Gay Nineties
Authors: Mellinger Gwyneth
Published: May 2017

This chapter focuses on the 1990s, when the ASNE's Goal 2000 advocates contended with a shift in the way the broader diversity community envisioned social justice. As the more expansive concept of multiculturalism gained traction in American society, the racial integration model, on which Goal 2000 was premised, became outdated. The need for greater inclusiveness in the ASNE and its hiring initiative crystallized at the 1990 convention when an editor announced that he was gay, becoming the first gay ASNE member to be out within the organization. This chapter examines the contentious identity politics that dominated the ASNE in the 1990s as professional organizations for nonwhite journalists gained and exercised greater power and many white editors grew weary of being continually scolded for not increasing the number of nonwhites working in their newsrooms.
Diversity in Crisis
Authors: Mellinger Gwyneth
Published: May 2017

This chapter examines the crisis following the announcement in 1997 that the Goal 2000 target would not be met and the contentious negotiations to recommit the ASNE to the aims of newsroom diversity and to recalibrate the hiring target for the year 2025. Identity politics continued to complicate efforts to advance the cause of social justice as women were finally added to the hiring initiative, but gay and disabled journalists were not. The ASNE demonstrated that racial assumptions continued to be deeply ingrained when a racist comedy act at the 2001 convention touched off a nationwide controversy. In addition, the chapter examines the devastating impact of the newspaper industry's declining fortunes on the cause of newsroom diversity during the first decade of the new millennium.
South Asians and the Hollywood Party
Authors: Davé Shilpa S.
Published: May 2017

This chapter discusses Peter Sellers' brownface performance as Hrundi Bakshi in the film The Party (1968) to show the historical change of portrayals of South Asians in American films from colonialist narratives to model minority American immigrants and citizens. It focuses on the history of brownface performance in American narratives that includes brown voice as one component of Indian racial impersonations. It argues that the characteristics of brown-voice and brownface performance are rooted in early film narratives that emphasize the history of British imperialism and colonialism in India that are later carried over and rewritten to encompass Indian immigrants in the United States.
The Young Educator
Authors: Doering James M.
Published: May 2017

This chapter discusses how music became an early passion of Judson's, and he showed promise. He studied violin throughout adolescence with a teacher from the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. After completing high school, his musical skills captured the attention of Ebenezer M. Thresher, a Dayton businessman and chairman of the Board of Trustees for Denison University. Judson remained at Denison for the next seven years (1900–1907), rising to the rank of professor in 1902 and becoming dean of its Conservatory of Music in 1904. By all accounts, he injected “new life” into Denison's musical environment. During his tenure, music went from being an extracurricular diversion to a viable academic program.
The War Years and a Shift to a New Era
Authors: Doering James M.
Published: May 2017

This chapter demonstrates how Judson's management empire began to plateau in the 1940s. The Depression had rattled music's funding structures. Technology had spawned greater competition for live musical experiences. Jazz had supplanted classical music on the pages of many newspapers and trade magazines. But particularly relevant for Judson was an emerging concern about the connection between music and big business. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) first raised this issue in 1938, when it launched an investigation into the chain-broadcasting practices of the NBC, CBS, and mutual radio networks. The commission also became concerned about the possibility of monopolistic behavior, specifically in the practice of networks representing artists and also buying artists for their radio programs.
The “Delaware Horror”
Authors: Downey Dennis B.
Published: May 2017

This chapter provides a case study of a lynching at the other end of the northeastern seaboard: the mass mob execution by burning of George White, an African American, in Wilmington, Delaware, in June 1903. Delaware had been a slave state that did not join the Confederacy, and while it implemented a Jim Crow system similar to those in neighboring lower Mid-Atlantic states Maryland and Virginia, the state experienced less lynching. Delaware's evolving economy and social relations were strongly tied to the rapidly urbanizing regions of southeastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The chapter's analysis of the role of white and black Protestant ministers in the Wilmington mob execution and its aftermath offers significant insight into a well-publicized early-twentieth-century lynching that occurred somewhere between the North and South.
Establishing New York State Anti-Suffrage Organizations, 1895–1911
Authors: Goodier Susan
Published: May 2017

This chapter illustrates the nascent attempts of anti-suffragists to prevent their enfranchisement. The most prominent and effective anti-suffrage organizations that developed in New York State between 1895 and 1911 deliberately excluded men. Certainly, anti-suffragists were married to or related to some of the most politically powerful men in state and national government. However, a significant portion of college-educated, professional, and self-supporting women opposed suffrage. Once the antis established their organizations, they became a force powerful enough to help prolong the battle for woman suffrage in the state. The New York State organization provided speakers for lectures at clubs and social events in and outside the state, spreading their influence broadly. By the end of the period, New York antis had established a national organization.
The Great Text in Our Economy Today
Authors: Holmes Sean P.
Published: May 2017

This chapter explores the origins of the organizational impulse that animated the American acting community in the early twentieth century. It begins by examining the transformation of the theatrical economy that was brought about by the rise of the theater trusts at the end of the nineteenth century. It goes on to consider production practices in the metropolitan theater industry, highlighting the growing emphasis on rationalization and standardization and exploring how this dual imperative impacted upon the creative process. It also looks at the experience of work in the early twentieth-century theater, documenting conditions on the theatrical shop floor and highlighting the role of race, ethnicity, and gender in determining the degree of opportunity available to individual performers. The chapter argues that while actors undoubtedly had grievances against their employers, the theater trusts had actually done a great deal to improve their lot by stabilizing a notoriously volatile employment market. The formation of the Actors' Equity Association in 1913 had less to do with conditions of employment than with a perception on the part of an influential section of the acting community that it had relinquished its accustomed autonomy to a group of employers whom they held responsible for declining standards in the theater.
Ain’t No Peace in the Family Now
Authors: Holmes Sean P.
Published: May 2017

This chapter focuses on new technology and its impact on acting as an occupation. It begins by describing how the advent of film transformed patterns of employment in the commercial entertainment industry. Returning to the theme of cultural hierarchy, it goes on to argue that even as the legitimate theater drifted toward the periphery of the nation's cultural life, the old theatrical elite continued to claim the right, through the mechanism of the Actors' Equity Association (AEA), to speak for the entire acting community. After examining working conditions in the motion picture studios, it turns its attention to the Equity campaign to organize the film industry, asserting that its architects were less concerned with negotiating a standard contract than with imposing their authority upon the men and women of the silver screen. The chapter argues that an overwhelming majority of motion picture actors reacted with hostility to what they saw as the AEA's attempt to “Broadwayize” Hollywood, interpreting it as a threat to their collective autonomy and a denial of the specificity of their work. By refusing to obey the strike call in the summer of 1929, they were declaring their independence from the traditions of the legitimate stage.
Ives at Century’s Turn
Authors: Paul David C.
Published: May 2017

This chapter examines how Charles E. Ives has been affected by the transformations in American musicology over the last twenty-five years. It begins with a discussion of Maynard Solomon's accusation that Ives had engaged in a “systematic pattern of falsification” to safeguard his claims at the patent-house of musical modernism. It then considers how Solomon's criticisms served as the catalyst for an explosion of scholarly activity centered on Ives in the 1990s. In particular, it describes the approaches taken by musicologists to rebut Solomon, including those associated with “New Musicology.” It also explores the etiology of the myth that Ives was a patriarch of a lineage of composers known as the American Mavericks, along with the vicissitudes of Ives scholarship at the turn of the twentieth century.
Influence
Authors: Jockers Matthew L.
Published: May 2017

This chapter explores literary influence and the idea that literature can and perhaps even must be read as an evolving system with certain inherent rules. Attempts to demonstrate literary imitation, intertextuality, and influence have relied almost entirely upon close reading. To chart influence empirically, we need to go beyond the individual cases and look to the aggregate. Information cascades theory provides an attractive framework for modeling literary influence and intertextuality at scale. This chapter discusses the results of the author's thematic-stylistic analyses of nineteenth-century novels using Gephi software to identify signs of historical change from one book to the next. The data reveal that the corpus appears to behave in an evolutionary manner. At the macro scale, we see evidence that theme and style are influenced by time and author gender. The findings suggest that a writer's creativity is tempered and influenced by the past and the present, by literary “parents,” and by a larger literary ecosystem.
“Built Mostly of Itself”: Chicago and Clay, 1874–1891
Authors: Leslie Thomas
Published: May 2017

This chapter describes major structures built from 1874–1891, which were dominated by taller masonry buildings that employed improved masonry, foundations, and fireproofing. Early fire-protected iron-framed buildings achieved modest increases in height over all-masonry structures. Wrapping iron columns and girders with terra-cotta jackets saved owners floor space that would otherwise have gone toward larger brick piers, though masonry was still the primary material for exterior walls. The result—jacketed iron structures inside surrounded by bearing masonry walls outside—was called “cage” construction in New York. The skyscrapers built in Chicago's building boom of 1884—1886 all deployed this hybrid strategy of metal frame and masonry wall. Skyscrapers supported, braced, and clad with masonry were also made stronger and more economical by the rise of a pressed-brick industry in Chicago.
Growing Up Concerned
Authors: Lorence James J.
Published: May 2017

This chapter argues that what Jencks learned as a result of exploration was the hard lesson that his region had been the site of sharp labor-management confrontation in the rugged mining districts of frontier Colorado. As his awareness of historical inequities sharpened, the trajectory of what was to be an eventful life as an advocate of social justice was set in motion. Jencks' long life in the human rights movement reflected these early perceptions of the world in which he lived and the culture of which he was a product. It was also this regional growth that in the late nineteenth century had once attracted his forebears to a developing mining community, service center, health resort, and railroad junction.
The World of Work and New Opportunities for Social Action
Authors: Lorence James J.
Published: May 2017

This chapter explores how Clinton Jencks pondered the next step on the road to radicalism. Having jettisoned any thought of a legal career, he looked for an occupational base for social action in the depths of the Great Depression, still searching for an opportunity that would sustain a determined effort to make a difference in the lives of working people and enrich their experiences by spreading God's love. The religious impulse and the peace movement remained the primary driving forces in Jencks' life and were the key motivating factors in his emergence as an ambitious leader in the organizations he headed. As he surveyed the economic landscape, he saw the United States mired in the muck of stagnation and the world steadily marching toward war as fascism rapidly spread its poison.
Mobilizing for Mass Action
Authors: Lorence James J.
Published: May 2017

This chapter examines how an important feature of Jencks' encouragement of rank-and-file engagement in union affairs was an ongoing concern about both worker health issues and workplace safety measures. Under Jencks' leadership the union persistently called upon mining management to meet their obligations to men who had “given their entire working lives” to the corporations. Even more important to Jencks and Local 890 leaders was the issue of safety on the job. He and his comrades were scrupulous about monitoring workplace accidents, which occurred all too frequently. The ultimate result was the creation of a permanent Union Safety Committee, which insisted on the right to have their voices heard and the inclusion of Jencks in all future inspection tours.
From Street Child Care to Drive-Throughs
Authors: Muñoz Lorena
Published: May 2017

This chapter investigates street vending in Garment Town, a Latino immigrant–receiving neighborhood in South Central Los Angeles. More specifically, it examines how street-vending spaces are organized, supported, and created through the daily practices of Mexican and Central American immigrant women vendors. The chapter first provides an overview of the economic context of immigrant vending practices in Los Angeles before discussing how the informal economy is organized at the street level in developed economies and how street-vending landscapes as not only racialized but also gendered. It shows that Latina immigrants as vendors exercise choice and agency among patriarchal structures that reify gendered roles/responsibilities in the streets. Latina street vendors perform, transform, and reorganize public space in ways that facilitate their business strategies and assist them in negotiating the demands of everyday life. Such actions include transforming street corners into drive-throughs, adapting car trunks to serve as markets, and providing child care on the streets.
The Big Divide
Authors: Fuentecilla Jose V.
Published: May 2017

This chapter details challenges faced by political exiles in reaching out to Filipino immigrants to the U.S. Between 1960 and 1970, the Filipino population in the U.S. nearly doubled to 343,000. Two-thirds of that additional population consisted of new immigrants, and that was the segment whose hearts and minds the political exiles struggled mightily to win over. They would soon find out that there was no such thing as a typical Filipino immigrant; as a result, minor and major differences among the newcomers would influence their organizing goals and strategies. The exiles faced an ever-expanding challenge: reaching out to a far more dispersed, and more numerous, group. Add to their numbers the Filipinos who entered as nonimmigrants, estimated by the INS at more than 400,000 visitors each year between 1965 and 1974. They brought with them their own perceptions of martial law back home that they communicated to the immigrants.
Down with Rhetoric!
Authors: Fuentecilla Jose V.
Published: May 2017

This chapter details the growing frustration of political exiles and opposition groups in the Philippines. In 1978, the KBL party had won control of the new legislature, and Imelda Marcos had been appointed to the cabinet. At the end of 1979, Marcos would call for nationwide elections for governors and mayors. His KBL candidates were expected to sweep the field (which they ultimately did). During a meeting of the Movement for a Free Philippines in San Francisco in September 1979, the members were in a combative mood. Was there no stopping the man? Where was the light at the end of this long, dark tunnel, which was already six years in the making? They had received reports that the moderate opposition in the Philippines was likewise frustrated and angry, and even—surprisingly—calling for violence. These were not the radical leftists who had always endorsed aggressive means and followed their convictions by joining the militant National Democratic Front and its military arm, the New People's Army, in the hills. The moderate voices who were now advocating for a shift in tactics reasoned that peaceful means had gotten them nowhere, and that the dictatorship was as entrenched as ever. It was time to take up arms.
Reviewing the Decade
Authors: Fuentecilla Jose V.
Published: May 2017

This chapter focuses on the accomplishments of the Movement for a Free Philippines' (MFP) as it marked its tenth year in 1983. The movement had earned recognition from the various audiences they had targeted—the Filipino community, the U.S. Congress, the media. The Filipino community, by and large, looked to them as a more acceptable organization than the leftist opposition groups. The MFP's many appearances before House and Senate committees and its close ties with several legislators from both U.S. political parties had strengthened its access to Congress and gained it some influential advocates. It had established valuable contacts in the media by providing them with useful information on developing their stories.
A Man for Many Seasons
Authors: Fuentecilla Jose V.
Published: May 2017

This chapter focuses on Raul Manglapus. Manglapus was an involuntary detainee in the United States as a self-exile—thirteen years, five months, and seven days by his count, beginning in 1972, when by sheer luck he found himself in America the day before martial law clamped down on the Philippines. Officially, at least, four court charges had been filed against him during his exile years, including subversion, rebellion, and plotting to kill Marcos and his wife. If he had returned, there is no doubt that he would have been hauled off to jail as soon as he stepped out of the plane. He had left behind an outstanding career that was cut short. Those who speculated about what he might have accomplished in his country without Marcos referred to his impressive record as a legislator and public servant. As head of the main exile opposition group, Manglapus had to deal with the challenges of a new leadership role. As a seasoned politician back home, he possessed the skills to respond to his constituents, both local and national. But in the United States, the tactics needed to win over Congress and the Filipino residents required a different set of skills.
American Brigadoon
Authors: Zang David W.
Published: May 2017

This chapter examines the ways in which Penn State University football “fans draw their sense of community from the shared belief that Happy Valley is not only a mythic place, but a singularly righteous one as well.” It puts legendary coach Joe Paterno at the center of the narrative and sees “Happy Valley as a fantastical American Brigadoon” that may vanish after him. The State College, Pennsylvania, area acquired the “Happy Valley” nickname because of its seeming immunity to the economic misery of the Great Depression. Paterno came to State College as an assistant coach in 1950. Four years later, Brigadoon debuted in American movie theaters. It was the tale of an enchanted village that appeared once every hundred years; by covenant, if anyone left, the village would disappear forever. This chapter discusses Paterno's success with Penn State's football team and argues that he has done far more good for the game and for Penn State than he can possibly undo in his fading years.
Jayhawk Pride
Authors: Ezra Michael
Published: May 2017

In this chapter, the author recounts his journey from antagonism for University of Kansas (KU) basketball to appreciation and pride. Thanks to superb mentoring and his own maturation, the author realizes that some of the values he learned as an American studies graduate student—community building, teamwork, and the pursuit of excellence—explain the locals' commitment to and love for the Kansas Jayhawks. The author recalls the time he matriculated to KU, which is located in Lawrence, after living his first twenty-two years in New York, and how his initial misgivings about the school was replaced by eight years of fondness for the place he proudly called home. He then explains how he came to appreciate the significance of mentorship in his own life, at the same time that his attitude toward the KU basketball program softened and he became grateful for all its accomplishments. According to the author, his case illustrates how sport, community, and identity can be interconnected.
Post-Transsexual Pastoral
Authors: Seymour Nicole
Published: May 2017

This chapter offers a definitive example of ecological thinking in contemporary queer fictions. It reads American author Leslie Feinberg's Stone Butch Blues (1992) alongside two narratives set in the Caribbean: Jamaican American Michelle Cliff's No Telephone to Heaven (1987) and Trinidadian Canadian Shani Mootoo's Cereus Blooms at Night (1998). These novels depict what an “organic transgenderism:” a spontaneous, noncommodified, and self-directed process likened to the life-cycle changes of plants and animals. The chapter claims that they thereby challenge the common view of gender transitioning as an “unnatural” medical intervention. Moreover, through their depictions of organic transgenderism, these novels stage, and thus help facilitate, a shift in the 1990s from the older sexological model of “transsexuality” to the current community-derived umbrella term of “transgenderism.” Finally, this chapter demonstrates how a queer ecocritical lens can help us trace the transnational circulation of queer ecological thinking.
“It’s Just Not Turning Up”
Authors: Seymour Nicole
Published: May 2017

This chapter turns to American suburbia, where we meet a white housewife suffering from an ambiguous illness in the 1995 film, Safe. While many critics read the film as an AIDS allegory, the chapter argues that it also tells a story about environmental injustice: its queer filmic techniques draw our attention away from our privileged protagonist to the film's literally and figuratively marginal figures and the disproportionately large envirohealth risks they face. The film thereby interrogates how we recognize suffering, and how certain types of suffering are framed as “natural” and, therefore, not worthy of public attention. Furthermore, this chapter explains the ideological paradigms prevalent during the time of the film's setting, and illustrates the methods by which Safe works against these ideologies. Finally, this chapter indicates how environmental concerns obtain even, or perhaps especially, in spaces construed as refuges from the environment, such as the suburban home.
From Formality to Comfort
Authors: Julier Alice P.
Published: May 2017

This chapter explores how people's definitions of hospitality—and consequently their social meals—reflect cultural discourses about sociability. It first describes interviews of people about how they learned to cook, where they developed their ideas about parties, and what these events might have looked like in their families of origin. It asks people how they would define “hospitality”—how their definition was similar or different from that of other people or from the kind of sociable activities that went on in their families of origin. It then turns turn to textual sources from which such ideas develop. Concerns about how people construct their social lives emerge in debates about propriety, etiquette, formality, intimacy, comfort, style, and display. Such debates are never trivial, but rather illustrate how struggles for control over symbol and meaning are the real sites of conflict in contemporary society.
Dinner Parties in America
Authors: Julier Alice P.
Published: May 2017

This chapter uses stories from both formal and informal interviews to travel from those who dutifully adhere to the cultural template of dinner parties to those who deliberately alter some important aspects while still insisting that what is occurring can be considered a dinner party. The first stories are about “traditional” dinner parties where women in heterosexual marriages perform interactional and physical labor to ensure the social networks of their family. It then examines a dinner party that is potentially a burlesque of normative ideas about dinner parties and who holds them. Questioning whether the gender of the cook is the most salient factor in the performance of a dinner party, it analyzes the narratives of men who cook on weekends. The chapter ends by raising questions about the boundaries of dinner parties, focusing on the experiences of a lesbian couple who incorporate real and fictive kin into dinner parties and other events.
Anarchists, Freethinkers, and Spiritists
Authors: Shaffer Kirwin R.
Published: May 2017

This chapter explores the links between anarchists and other progressive factions on the island as they attacked and condemned the Church. However, one of these factions—the spiritists—caused a dilemma within anarchist ranks. While rejecting the Catholic Church, espiritistas believed in reincarnation and the teachings of Jesus, which they believed had been bastardized by the Church. Most freethinkers and some anarchists could be counted in the spiritist movement; however, not all leftists were comfortable with this “scientific religion.” Nevertheless, from 1909 to 1912, this alliance often worked together to challenge representatives of Catholic authoritarianism, culminating in the 1912 islandwide speaking tour of international freethinker Belén de Sárraga.