Journal of Social History articles from June 2008

Journal of Social History archives from June 2008

Melancholy and modernity: emotions and social life in Russia between the revolutions.(SADNESS AND SOCIETY)(Essay)
June 22, 2008... "The 'modern,' the time of hell." -- Walter Benjamin In the years of uncertainty and drift following the 1905 revolution in Russia, before the country entered the maelstrom of total war and revolution, public life was thick with talk of...

"Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot cure": Northern civilian perspectives on death and eternity during the Civil War.(SADNESS AND SOCIETY)(Essay)
June 22, 2008... Although the death angel severely afflicted the Alfords of Daviess County in southwestern Indiana during the Civil War, it could not have chosen a family as well-grounded in their religious beliefs or as confident in their future reunion beyond...

Subjected to the current: batteries, bodies, and the early history of electrification in the United States.(CONSUMERISM AND COMPARATIVE CONTEXTS)(Essay)
June 22, 2008... Introduction We know nothing of "Miss X" save what her physician, W.A. Hardaway, recorded in 1877. Twenty-two years old when she came under Dr. Hardaway's care, Miss X was "thoroughly feminine" in character and physique, nicely plump, and...

East & West: textiles and fashion in early modern Europe.(CONSUMERISM AND COMPARATIVE CONTEXTS)(Essay)
June 22, 2008... Fashion underpinned the 4ommercial growth and cultural transformation of western society. (1) From at least the sixteenth century, fashion's demotic stimuliunleashed desires across European social ranks. Never just a folly, fashion was integral...

Common skies divided horizons: aviation, class and modernity in early twentieth century Egypt.(CONSUMERISM AND COMPARATIVE CONTEXTS)(Essay)
June 22, 2008... Introduction: One day in 1929, at the age of thirty, a bored employee at Bank Misr named Muhammad Sidqi decided to replace his wooden office chair with a posh leather seat in an airplane cockpit. Resigning his position, he enrolled in a...

Be a patriot, buy a home: re-imagining Home owners and Home ownership in early 20th century atlanta.(CONSUMERISM AND COMPARATIVE CONTEXTS)(Atlanta, Georgia)(Essay)
June 22, 2008... In a 1945 review of John Dean's Homeownership: Is It Sound?, real estate analyst Helen Monchow observed that Dean had set himself an unpopular task in examining "an institution so long established, so deep seated, and so widely accepted as a...

The Columbia coalition: African Americans, new Leftists, and counterculture at the Columbia University protest of 1968.(RACE IN AMERICAN LIFE)(Essay)
June 22, 2008... Tom Hayden was not a student at Columbia University. Still, at two o'clock on the morning of April 26, 1968, he found himself "joining a silhouetted wave of students surging across Columbia's grounds and entering, with a key volunteered by a...

The Legend of Jack Trice and the campaign for Jack Trice stadium, 1973-1984.(RACE IN AMERICAN LIFE)(Essay)
June 22, 2008... Prologue: The Presence of the Past in the Present There was very little fanfare or media attention paid to a ceremony on the afternoon of August 30, 1997, despite the fact that the event was seventy-four years in the making. Hours before...

"A madman's deed--a maniac's hand": gender and justice in three Maryland lynchings.(RACE IN AMERICAN LIFE)(Essay)
June 22, 2008... In August 1893, Joseph Cocking, a farmer in Charles County, Maryland, completed the sale of his agricultural implements and moved his family from their land near Port Tobacco, the county seat, to their new home in Hill Top, a village some five...

The American family and the fear of national decline, 1968-1980.(Book review)
June 22, 2008... No Direction Home: The American Family and the Fear of National Decline, 1968-1980. By Natasha Zaretsky (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007. xi plus 320 pp. $59.95, cloth; $22.50, paper). Richard Rovere, the New Yorker's...

Mysteries of Sex: Tracing Women & Men through American History.(Book review)
June 22, 2008... Mysteries of Sex: Tracing Women & Men through American History. By Mary P. Ryan (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. 448 pp., 19 llus. $37.50). When I started graduate school in the late 1970s, my single shelf of women's...

The secret history of domesticity: public, private, and the division of knowledge.(Book review)
June 22, 2008... The Secret History of Domesticity: Public, Private, and the Division of Knowledge. By Michael McKeon (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005, 873 pp.) Since the 1980s, historians and literary scholars have been inspired by...

Male-male intimacy in early America: beyond romantic friendships.(Book review)
June 22, 2008... Male-Male Intimacy in Early America: Beyond Romantic Friendships. By William Benemann (New York: Harrington Park Press, 2006. xx plus 322 pp.). Male-Male Intimacy in Early America is the first book to undertake the overdue task of...

Brides, Inc.: American weddings and the business of tradition.(Book review)
June 22, 2008... Brides, Inc.: American Weddings and the Business of Tradition. By Vicki Howard (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006. 306 pp. $34.95). Tradition is a powerful idea, particularly when it comes to weddings in America. Many...

Sex among the Rabble: An Intimate History of Gender and Power in the Age of Revolution, Philadelphia 1730-1830.(Book review)
June 22, 2008... Sex among the Rabble: An Intimate History of Gender and Power in the Age of Revolution, Philadelphia 1730-1830. By Clare A. Lyons (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. 432 pp.). This is a book with great strengths,...

Children of a New World: Society, Culture and Globalization.(Book review)
June 22, 2008... Children of a New World: Society, Culture and Globalization. By Paula S. Fass (New York: New York University Press, 2006. ix plus 268 pp.). In her collection of essays written over the span of over twenty five years, Paula Fass explores...

Children of the Father King: youth, authority, and legal minority in colonial lima.(Book review)
June 22, 2008... Children of the Father King: Youth, Authority, and Legal Minority in Colonial Lima. By Bianca Premo (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005. xiii plus 350 pp. $24.95). This path-breaking study provides a social history of...

Colonial Pathologies: American Tropical Medicine, Race, and Hygiene in the Philippines.(Book review)
June 22, 2008... Colonial Pathologies: American Tropical Medicine, Race and Hygiene in the Philippines. By Warwick Anderson (Durham and London, Duke University Press, 2006. ix plus 355 pp. $84.95 hardback/$23.95 paper-back). The principal theme of the...

Hydrotherapy, Climatology, and French Colonial Spas.(Curing the Colonizers: Hydrotherapy, Climatology, and French Colonial Spas)(Book review)
June 22, 2008... Curing the Colonizers: Hydrotherapy, Climatology, and French Colonial Spas. By Eric T. Jennings (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006. xii plus 272 pp. Cloth $74.95, Paper $21.95). The partaking of mineral waters at places such as...

The Demonization of the Foreskin and the Rise of Circumcision in Britain.(Book review)
June 22, 2008... A Surgical Temptation: The Demonization of the Foreskin and the Rise of Circumcision in Britain. By Robert Darby (Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 2005. xi plus 319 pp.). Four years ago, the US Agency for International Development...

Americans and their land: the house built on abundance.(Book review)
June 22, 2008... Americans and Their Land: The House Built on Abundance. By Anne Mackin (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2006. xi plus 251pp. $29.95). I use the following example to explain to my students the emergence of the progressive...

Building environments: perspectives in vernacular architecture, volume X.(Book review)
June 22, 2008... Building Environments: Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture, Volume X. Edited by Kenneth A. Breisch and Alison K. Hoagland (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2005. xiv + 299 pp. $32.00). If ever there was an odd addition to the...

Consuming cultures, global perspectives: historical trajectories, transnational exchanges.(Book review)
June 22, 2008... Consuming Cultures, Global Perspectives: Historical Trajectories, Transnational Exchanges. Edited by John Brewer and Frank Trentmann (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2006. v plus 317 pp.). This collection of eleven essays gathers some of the...

Strength through joy: consumerism and mass tourism in the third reich.(Book review)
June 22, 2008... Strength through Joy: Consumerism and Mass Tourism in the Third Reich. By Shelley Baranowski (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 254 pp. $65.00). For the time being research on the Third Reich mainly means research into the...

Creating the Big Easy: New Orleans and the emergence of modern tourism 1918-1945: New Orleans on Parade: Tourism and the Transformation of the Crescent City.(New Orleans on Parade: Tourism and the Transformation of the Crescent City)(Book review)
June 22, 2008... Creating the Big Easy: New Orleans and the Emergence of Modern Tourism 1918-1945. By Anthony J. Stanonis (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2006. 317 pp. $22.95). New Orleans on Parade: Tourism and the Transformation of the Crescent...

Coolies and Cane: Race, Labor, and Sugar in the Age of Emancipation.(Book review)
June 22, 2008... Coolies and Cane: Race, Labor, and Sugar in the Age of Emancipation. By Moon-Ho Jung (Balitmore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. x plus 275 pp.). Recently, several historians have begun to complicate where and when Asian American...

Slavery in the New Testament: Literary, Social, and Moral Dimensions.(Book review)
June 22, 2008... Slavery in the New Testament: Literary, Social, and Moral Dimensions. By J. Albert Harrill (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2006. xiv + 322 pp.). This is a work of great scholarly width, some depth, and much energy. It is dense (the text...

America Transformed: Sixty Years of Revolutionary Change, 1941-2001.(Century of Difference: How America Changed in the Last One Hundred Years)(Book review)
June 22, 2008... America Transformed: Sixty Years of Revolutionary Change, 1941-2001. By Richard M. Abrams (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006, xix plus 345pp., $ 35). Century of Difference: How America Changed in the Last One Hundred...

Social change in America: from the revolution through the Civil War.(Book review)
June 22, 2008... Social Change in America: From the Revolution Through the Civil War. By Christopher Clark (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2006. xiii plus 349 pp. $27.50). Christopher Clark's Social Change in America is a wide-ranging survey of the social history...

A Pickpocket's Tale: the Underworld of Nineteenth-Century New York.(Book review)
June 22, 2008... A Pickpocket's Tale: The Underworld of Nineteenth-Century New York. By Timothy J. Gilfoyle (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006. xvii plus 460 pp. $27.95). A Pickpocket's Tale provides a remarkably fresh view into New York's underworld,...

La population de Roubaix; Industrialisation, demographie et societe 1750-1880.(Book review)
June 22, 2008... La population de Roubaix; Industrialisation, demographie et societe 1750-1880. By Chantal Petillon (Villeneuve d'Ascq: Septentrion, 2006. pp.400). Successful labor force development and failed class formation are the principal themes of...

Hurricanes and Society in the British Greater Caribbean, 1624-1783.(Book review)
June 22, 2008... Hurricanes and Society in the British Greater Caribbean, 1624-1783. By Matthew Mulcahy (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. 292pp.). Addressing what has long been the province of anthropologists and political scientists,...

Dreyfus Affair and the Crisis in French Masculinity.(Book review)
June 22, 2008... Dreyfus Affair and the Crisis in French Masculinity. By Christopher E. Forth (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. xii plus 300 pp. $46.95). The Dreyfus Affair stands as one of those inaugural events in modern European history....

Riding the New Wave: Youth and the Rejuvenation of France after the Second World War.(Book review)
June 22, 2008... Riding the New Wave: Youth and the Rejuvenation of France after the Second World War. By Richard Ivan Jobs (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007. xi plus 364 pp. $55.00). The fate of "today's youth" has long been a popular and...

Mark D. Steinberg, "Melancholy and Modernity: Emotions and Social Life in Russia between the Revolutions".(Brief article)
June 22, 2008... This article addresses the various manifestations of a new fascination with melancholy, as it. developed in various sectors of Russian society early in the 20th century. The new atmosphere seemed, in part at least, a response to rapid social...

Sean A. Scott, " 'Earth has no sorrow that Heaven Cannot Cure' Northern Civilian Perspectives on Death and Eternity During the Civil War".(Brief article)
June 22, 2008... This article examines how religious Northerners conceived of death and eternity during the Civil War. Letters and diaries reveal that religious civilians coped with their own mortality or the deaths of family members with a steadfast hope that...

Rebecca Herzig, "Subjected to the Current: batteries, bodies, and the early history of Electrification in the United States".(Brief article)
June 22, 2008... "Subjected to the Current" charts the advent of electrolysis in nineteenth century America. Situating this technique of human hair removal within larger histories of electrification, the essay traces operators' debates over the design of...

Beverly Lemire, Giorgio Riello, "East & West: Textiles and Fashion in the Early Modern Europe".(Brief article)
June 22, 2008... What is the origin and essence of fashion? This question has engaged scholars of various disciplines over the past decades, most of whom approach this subject with a Western or European focus. This paper argues instead that Asia was also...

Yoav Di-Capua, "Common Skies Divided Horizons: Aviation, Class and Modernity in Early Twentieth Century Egypt?".(Brief article)
June 22, 2008... How is high-technology consumed by societies that cannot shape technology but could only be shaped by it? As the first study of Egyptian aviation, this article examines the unique process through which Egyptians embraced aviation as an exemplar...

LeeAnn Lands, "be a Patriot, buy a Home: Re-imagining Home Owners and Home Ownership in Early 20th Century Atlanta".(Atlanta, Georgia)(Brief article)
June 22, 2008... The Own Your Own Home campaigns launched by the federal government and private land dealers immediately after World War I lured Atlanta builders and real estate agents into the trajectory toward homeownership ideology. Rhetoric mobilized by...

Blake Slonecker, "The Columbia Coalition: African Americans, New Leftists, and Counterculture at the Columbia University Protest of 1968".(Brief article)
June 22, 2008... The Columbia University protest of 1968 marked the loudest and most widely noted American student protest in a year distinguished by such unrest. This article reframes the protest through the lens of movement culture and analyzes the ties...

Jaime Schultz, "The Legend of Jack Trice and the Campaign for Jack Trice Stadium, 1973-1984".(Brief article)
June 22, 2008... This article focuses on historical memory as conditioned by changing attitudes toward race. The death of an African American football player was long ignored, but it served to ignite new discussion at Iowa State University as part, of the...

Christine Arnold-Lourie, "'A Madman's Deed-A Maniac's Hand': Gender and Justice in Three Maryland Lynchings".(Brief article)
June 22, 2008... Because the majority of lynchings in the United States claimed African American victims, historians have generally constructed lynching as a phenomenon primarily based on divisions of race and caste. White-on-white mob violence, however,...