Journal of Social History articles from September 2008

Journal of Social History archives from September 2008

Perils of degeneration: reform, the savage immigrant, and the survival of the unfit.(Essay)
September 22, 2008... "If the Settlements did nothing else they would have a scientific value as ingenious instruments for deep-sea dredging in the ocean of humanity. Anyone who thinks that they can bring up nothing but slime is pitifully mistaken. Many...

Rewriting patriarchal scripts: women, labor, and popular culture in South African clothing industry beauty contests, 1970s-2005.(SECTION I RACE, GENDER AND CONSUMERISM)(Essay)
September 22, 2008... "Few countries take beauty pageants quite as seriously as South Africa," noted The New York Times on the eve of the country's first democratic elections. (1) This national passion for beauty contests traces its roots back to the 1920s and 1930s...

The political work of leisure: class, recreation, and African American Commemoration at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, 1881-1931.(SECTION I RACE, GENDER AND CONSUMERISM)(Brief article)
September 22, 2008... In 1896, J. R. Clifford launched a public campaign against Storer College in response to its recent decision to exclude African Americans from its summer boarding accommodations. To this African American lawyer and Storer graduate, the...

Eating, dancing, and courting in New York black and Latino relations, 1930-1970.(SECTION I RACE, GENDER AND CONSUMERISM)(Essay)
September 22, 2008... In the summer of 2005, while combing through the 1930 census records for Westchester County, New York, to locate southern black migrants for research I was doing on the Great Migration and the Great Depression, 1 noticed that African Americans...

"Criers and shouters". The discourse on radical urban rebels in late medieval Flanders.(SECTION II PROTEST AND DEVIANCE)(Essay)
September 22, 2008... In this contribution I want to consider elite discourses on late medieval Flemish urban rebels who tried to speak out politically. Following theoretical perspectives like John L. Austin's 'speech act theory', Pierre Bourdieu's insights in...

The long and short of Salem witchcraft: chronology and collective violence in 1692.(SECTION II PROTEST AND DEVIANCE)(Salem, Massachusetts)(Essay)
September 22, 2008... As the only example of a mass witch hunt in American history, Salem witchcraft exerts a continuing fascination to both scholarly and professional audiences. Its yearlong pursuit of the devil across the New England landscape resulted in twenty...

"The marriage of choice and the marriage of convenance": a new England Puritan views risorgimento Italy.(SECTION III COMPARATIVE ISSUES)(Essay)
September 22, 2008... American and European social differences are perennial topics of discourse on both sides of the Atlantic. Fascination with views from the other shore peaked in the early and mid nineteenth century, as the United States, avowedly demo-cratic and...

The marginalization of the Black Campus Movement.(Essay)
September 22, 2008... In contrast to the Civil Rights Movement, few historians have examined the Black Power Movement, which brought ideas of Black self-determination, cultural pride, and Pan-Africanism to the forefront. The Black Power Movement, which lasted from...

Further into the right: the ever-expanding historiography of the U.S. new right.(Book review)
September 22, 2008... Republican Women: Feminism and Conservatism from Suffrage through the Rise of the New Right. By Catherine Rymph (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. xi plus 338 pp. $24.95). Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism: A...

Selling Beauty to African American Women, 1920-1975.(Book review)
September 22, 2008... Style & Status: Selling Beauty to African American Women, 1920-1975. By Susannah Walker (Lexington, Kentucky: University of Kentucky Press, 2007. xiii plus 250 pp. $40.00). Susannah Walker's book is a solid social history that explores the...

A History of Flight Attendants.(Femininity in Flight: A History of Flight Attendants)(Book review)
September 22, 2008... Femininity in Flight: A History of Flight Attendants. By Kathleen M. Barry (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007. 304 pp.). Kathleen M. Barry's monograph on flight attendants explores the history of unionization and the cultural contexts of...

Women in the Middle East, Past and Present.(Book review)
September 22, 2008... Women in the Middle East, Past and Present, By Nikki R. Keddie (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007. xvi plus 389 pp.). The study of Middle Eastern women, both past and present, has emerged as a major field of scholarship in recent...

Women, Work and Domestic Virtue in Uganda, 1900-2003.(Book review)
September 22, 2008... Women, Work and Domestic Virtue in Uganda, 1900-2003. By Grace Bantebya Kyomuhendo and Marjorie Keniston Mcintosh (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2006. xii plus 308 pp. HB $55.00, PB $26.95). Since the 1980s, women have been critically...

Women and Guns in America.(Her Best Shot: Women and Guns in America)(Book review)
September 22, 2008... Her Best Shot: Women and Guns in America. By Laura Browder (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. xii plus 287 pp. $29.95 [cloth]). Cultural texts--including advertisements, novels, wartime posters, and publicity...

Venomous Tongues: Speech and Gender in Late Medieval England.(Book review)
September 22, 2008... Venemous Tongues: Speech and Gender in Late Medieval England. By Sandy Bardsley (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006. 214pp.). In this well-researched study, Sandy Bardsley aims to describe and explain the increased...

Gender and Community under British Colonialism. Emotion, Struggle, and Politics in a Chinese Village.(Book review)
September 22, 2008... Gender and Community under British Colonialism: Emotion, Struggle, and Politics in a Chinese Village. By Siu Keung Cheung (New York and London: Routledge, 2007. xvi plus 199 pp. $95.00). Anniversaries, by definition, invite historical...

Cleaning Up. The Transformation of Domestic Service in Twentieth Century New York City.(Book review)
September 22, 2008... Cleaning Up: The Transformation of Domestic Service in Twentieth Century New York City. By Alana Erickson Coble (New York & London: Rout-ledge, 2006. xvii plus 258 pp.). Alana Erickson Coble proposes a "transformation" of domestic service...

The Needles Eye: Women and Work in the Age of Revolution.(Book review)
September 22, 2008... The Needles Eye: Women and Work in the Age of Revolution. By Maria R. Miller (Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2006. xiv plus 302 pp. $24.95). This is a hook that does justice to its subject. The Needle's Eye is a...

Gender, Taste, and Material Culture in Britain and North America 1700-1830.(Book review)
September 22, 2008... Gender, Taste, and Material Culture in Britain and North America, 1700-1830. Edited by John Styles and Amanda Vickery (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007. viii plus 358 pp. $65.00). This is an extremely important book for providing a...

Civic Engagement: Social Science and Progressive-Era Reform in New York City.(Book review)
September 22, 2008... Civic Engagement: Social Science and Progressive-Era Reform in New York City. By John Louis Recchiuti (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007. 311 pp. $59.95). Some history books are pathbreaking. Revising conventional wisdom,...

The Boundaries of the Republic: Migrant Rights and the Limits of Universalism in France, 1918-1940; Policing Paris: The Origins of Modern Immigration Control between the Wars.(Book review)
September 22, 2008... The Boundaries of the Republic: Migrant Rights and the Limits of Universalism in France, 1918-1940. By Mary Dewhurst Lewis (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007. xv plus 361 pp.). Policing Paris: The Origins of Modern Immigration...

Imagined Orphans: Poor Families, Child Welfare, and Contested Citizenship in London.(Book review)
September 22, 2008... Imagined Orphans: Poor Families, Child Welfare, and Contested Citizenship in London. By Lydia Murdoch (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2006. xii plus 252 pp.). This superb study is based on dense and creative archival research and...

The Social Origins of the Welfare State: Quebec Families, Compulsory Education, and Family Allowances, 1940-1955.(Book review)
September 22, 2008... The Social Origins of the Welfare State: Quebec Families, Compulsory Education, and Family Allowances, 1940-1955. By Dominique Marshall, translated by Nicola Doone Danby (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2006. xvii plus 277 pp....

Burning and Building: Schooling and State Formation in Japan, 1750-1890.(Book review)
September 22, 2008... Burning and Building: Schooling and State Formation in Japan, 1750-1890. By Brian Piatt (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2001. viii plus 325 pp. $45.00). The Shinano region, in present day Nagano prefecture, has provided...

Response to Abigail Schweber's review of Burning and Building.(Letter to the editor)
September 22, 2008... "Professor Schweber's review raises two main criticisms of my book, Burning and Building: Schooling and State Formation in Japan, 1750--1890. The first relates to the question of how to draw broader significance from a set of data culled from a...

Response to Brian Platt's comments.(Letter to the editor)
September 22, 2008... Platt is correct that two of the issues raised in my review are addressed in his introduction. His discussions of both the meaning of hegemony and the virtues of exceptionalism for historical study are both highly thought-provoking. Neither,...

Turizm: The Russian and East European Tourist under Capitalism and Socialism.(Book review)
September 22, 2008... Turizm: The Russian and East European Tourist under Capitalism and Socialism. Edited by Anne E. Gorsuch and Diane Koenker (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2006. viii plus 313 pp.). This first-rate and highly original collection of essays...

A Culture of Everyday Credit: Housekeeping, Pawnbroking, and Governance in Mexico City.(Book review)
September 22, 2008... A Culture of Everyday Credit: Housekeeping, Pawnbroking, and Governance in Mexico City, 1750-1920. By Marie Eileen Francois (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006. xiii plus 415 pp. $29.95). Marie Francois uses pawnshops to tell us a...

Madness, Religion and the State in Early Moden Europe: A Bavarian Beacon.(Book review)
September 22, 2008... Madness, Religion and the State in Early Modem Europe: A Bavarian Beacon. By David Lederer (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. xix plus 361 pp. $90.00). In Madness, Religion, and the State, David Lederer examines the role of...

Plague Ports: The Global Urban Impact of Bubonic Plague 1894-1901.(Book review)
September 22, 2008... Plague Ports: The Global Urban Impact of Bubonic Plague 1894-1901. By Myron Echenberg (New York and London, New York University Press, 2C07. xvi plus 347 pp. $24.00 PB). This is a nicely written example of old-style medical history...

Making the Irish American: History and Heritage of the Irish in the United States.(Book review)
September 22, 2008... Making the Irish American: History and Heritage of the Irish in the United States. Edited by J. J. Lee and Marion R. Casey (New York: New York University Press, 2006. xvii plus 733 pp. $50). Many of the scholars represented in Making the...

The Sounds of Silence: Nineteenth-century Portugal and the Abolition of the Slave Trade.(Book review)
September 22, 2008... The Sounds of Silence: Nineteenth-century Portugal and the Abolition of the Slave Trade. By Joao Pedro Marques. Translated by Richard Wall (New York: Bergham Books, 2006. xxi plus 282 pp. $80.00). The trans-Atlantic slave trade continues to...

The End of Peasantry? The Disintegration of Rural Russia.(Book review)
September 22, 2008... The End of Peasantry? The Disintegration of Rural Russia. By Grigory Ioffe, Tatyana Nefedova, and Ilya Zaslavsky (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006. xi plus 258 pp. $27.95). The key word in this book's title is...

Suicide and the Body Politic in Imperial Russia.(Book review)
September 22, 2008... Suicide and the Body Politic in Imperial Russia. By Susan K. Morrissey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. xv plus 384 pp. $99.00 Hardback). Susan Morrissey's study of the Russian encounter with suicide from the seventeenth to...

Agrarian Elites: American Slaveholders and Southern Italian Landowners, 1815-1861.(Book review)
September 22, 2008... Agrarian Elites: American Slaveholders and Southern kalian Landowners, 1815-1861. By Enrico Dal Lago (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005. xviii plus 372 pp. $62.95). In 1861 Georgian Robert Toombs cited Italian precedent...

Germany as a Culture of Remembrance: Promises and Limits of Writing History.(Book review)
September 22, 2008... Germany as a Culture of Remembrance: Promises and Limits of Writing History. By Alon Confino (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2006. xvii plus 306 pp. $24.95 PB). In this stimulating collection of essays, Alon Confino...

Strange Future: Pessimism and the 1992 Los Angeles Riots.(Book review)
September 22, 2008... Strange Future: Pessimism and the 1992 Los Angeles Riots. By Min Hyoung Song (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005. xii plus 285 pp.). Strange Future is, I think, a strange book. But, likely Min Hyoung Song would take this for high praise....

Happiness: a History.(Book review)
September 22, 2008... Happiness: A History. By Darrin M. McMahon (New York: Grove Press, 2006. xvi plus 544 pp. $15.00). To judge from the array of supportive quotations from previous reviewers that occupies the first three pages of Darrin McMahon's substantial...