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1929: Mapping the Jewish World

Hasia Diner and Gennady Estraikh (eds)

The year 1929 represents a major turning point for interwar Jewish society, proving to be a year when Jews, regardless of where they lived, saw themselves affected by developments that took place ... More

The year 1929 represents a major turning point for interwar Jewish society, proving to be a year when Jews, regardless of where they lived, saw themselves affected by developments that took place around the world, as the crises endured by other Jews became part of the transnational Jewish consciousness. In the United States, the stock market crash brought lasting economic, social, and ideological changes to the Jewish community and limited its ability to support humanitarian and nationalist projects in other countries. In Palestine, the anti-Jewish riots in Hebron and other towns underscored the vulnerability of the Zionist enterprise and ignited heated discussions among various Jewish political groups about the wisdom of establishing a Jewish state on its historical site. At the same time, in the Soviet Union, the consolidation of power in the hands of Joseph Stalin created a much more dogmatic climate in the international Communist movement, including its Jewish branches. This book surveys the Jewish world in one year offering clear examples of the transnational connections which linked Jews to each other—from politics, diplomacy, and philanthropy to literature, culture, and the fate of Yiddish—regardless of where they lived. The book argues that, whether American, Soviet, German, Polish, or Palestinian, Jews throughout the world lived in a global context.Less

Across the Divide: Union Soldiers View the Northern Home Front

Steven J. Ramold

Union soldiers left home in 1861 with expectations that the conflict would be short, the purpose of the war was clear, and public support back home was universal. As the war continued, however, Union ... More

Union soldiers left home in 1861 with expectations that the conflict would be short, the purpose of the war was clear, and public support back home was universal. As the war continued, however, Union soldiers began to perceive a great difference between what they expected and what was actually occurring. Their family relationships were evolving, the purpose of the war was changing, and civilians were questioning the leadership of the government and Army to the point of debating whether the war should continue at all. Separated from Northern civilians by a series of literal and figurative divides, Union soldiers viewed the growing disparities between their own expectations and those of their families at home with growing concern and alarm. Instead of support for the war, an extensive and oft-violent anti-war movement emerged. Often at odds with those at home and with limited means of communication to their homes at their disposal, soldiers used letters, newspaper editorials, and political statements to influence the actions and beliefs of their home communities. When communication failed, soldiers sometimes took extremist positions on the war, its conduct, and how civilian attitudes about the conflict should be shaped. This book reveals the wide array of factors that prevented the Union Army and the civilians on whose behalf they were fighting from becoming a united front during the Civil War. It illustrates how the divided spheres of Civil War experience created social and political conflict far removed from the better-known battlefields of the war.Less

African & American: West Africans in Post-Civil Rights America

Marilyn Halter and Violet Showers Johnson

This book tells the story of the much overlooked experience of first and second generation West African immigrants and refugees in the United States during the last forty years. Interrogating the ... More

This book tells the story of the much overlooked experience of first and second generation West African immigrants and refugees in the United States during the last forty years. Interrogating the complex role of post-colonialism in the recent history of black America, the book highlights the intricate patterns of emigrant work and family adaptation, the evolving global ties with Africa and Europe, and the translocal connections among the West African enclaves in the United States. The book explores issues of cultural identity formation and socioeconomic incorporation among this new West African diaspora. Bringing the experiences of those of recent African ancestry from the periphery to the center of current debates in the fields of immigration, ethnic, and African American studies, the book examines the impact this community has had on the changing meaning of “African Americanness” and addresses the provocative question of whether West African immigrants are becoming the newest African Americans.Less

Against Wind and Tide: The African American Struggle against the Colonization Movement

Ousmane K. Power-Greene

This book tells the story of African Americans' battle against the American Colonization Society (ACS), founded in 1816 with the intention to return free blacks to its colony Liberia. Although ACS ... More

This book tells the story of African Americans' battle against the American Colonization Society (ACS), founded in 1816 with the intention to return free blacks to its colony Liberia. Although ACS members considered free black colonization in Africa a benevolent enterprise, most black leaders rejected the ACS, fearing that the organization sought forced removal. As the book shows, these African American anticolonizationists did not believe Liberia would ever be a true “black American homeland.” The book draws on newspapers, meeting minutes, and letters to explore the concerted effort on the part of nineteenth-century black activists, community leaders, and spokespersons to challenge the ACS's attempt to make colonization of free blacks federal policy. The ACS insisted the plan embodied empowerment. The United States, they argued, would never accept free blacks as citizens, and the only solution to the status of free blacks was to create an autonomous nation that would fundamentally reject racism at its core. But the activists and reformers on the opposite side believed that the colonization movement was itself deeply racist and in fact one of the greatest obstacles for African Americans to gain citizenship in the United States. The book synthesizes debates about colonization and emigration, situating this complex and enduring issue into an ever broader conversation about nation building and identity formation in the Atlantic world.Less

Aksum and Nubia: Warfare, Commerce, and Political Fictions in Ancient Northeast Africa

George Hatke

This book assembles and analyzes the textual and archaeological evidence of interaction between Nubia and the Ethiopian kingdom of Aksum, focusing primarily on the fourth century CE. Although ancient ... More

This book assembles and analyzes the textual and archaeological evidence of interaction between Nubia and the Ethiopian kingdom of Aksum, focusing primarily on the fourth century CE. Although ancient Nubia and Ethiopia have been the subject of a growing number of studies in recent years, little attention has been given to contact between these two regions. This book argues that ancient Northeast Africa cannot be treated as a unified area politically, economically, or culturally. Rather, Nubia and Ethiopia developed within very different regional spheres of interaction, as a result of which the Nubian kingdom of Kush came to focus its energies on the Nile Valley, relying on this as its main route of contact with the outside world, while Aksum was oriented towards the Red Sea and Arabia. In this way Aksum and Kush coexisted in peace for most of their history, and such contact as they maintained with each other was limited to small-scale commerce. Only in the fourth century CE did Aksum take up arms against Kush, and even then the conflict seems to have been related mainly to security issues on Aksum's western frontier. Although Aksum never managed to hold onto Kush for long, much less dealt the final death-blow to the Nubian kingdom, as is often believed, claims to Kush continued to play a role in Aksumite royal ideology as late as the sixth century. This book examines the extent to which relations between two ancient African states were influenced by warfare, commerce, and political fictions.Less

All Together Different: Yiddish Socialists, Garment Workers, and the Labor Roots of Multiculturalism

Daniel Katz

In the early 1930s, the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU) organized large numbers of Black and Hispanic workers through a broadly conceived program of education, culture, and ... More

In the early 1930s, the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU) organized large numbers of Black and Hispanic workers through a broadly conceived program of education, culture, and community involvement. The ILGWU admitted these new members, the overwhelming majority of whom were women, into racially integrated local unions and created structures to celebrate ethnic differences. This book revolves around this phenomenon of interracial union building and worker education during the Great Depression. Investigating why immigrant Jewish unionists in the ILGWU appealed to an international force of coworkers, the book traces their ideology of a working-class-based cultural pluralism, which it newly terms “mutual culturalism,” back to the revolutionary experiences of Russian Jewish women. These militant women and their male allies constructed an ethnic identity derived from Yiddish socialist tenets based on the principle of autonomous national cultures in the late nineteenth-century Russian Empire. The book offers a fresh perspective on the nature of ethnic identity and working-class consciousness and contributes to current debates about the origins of multiculturalism.Less

Amheida I: Ostraka from Trimithis, Volume 1

Roger S. Bagnall and Giovanni R. Ruffini

This book presents 455 inscribed pottery fragments, or ostraka, found during New York University's excavations at Amheida in the western desert of Egypt. The majority date to the Late Roman period ... More

This book presents 455 inscribed pottery fragments, or ostraka, found during New York University's excavations at Amheida in the western desert of Egypt. The majority date to the Late Roman period (3rd to 4th century AD), a time of rapid social change in Egypt and the ancient Mediterranean generally. Amheida was a small administrative center, and the full publication of these brief texts illuminates the role of writing in the daily lives of its inhabitants. The subjects covered by the Amheida ostraka include the distribution of food, the administration of wells, the commercial lives of inhabitants, their education, and other aspects of life neglected in literary sources. The book provides a full introduction to the technical aspects of terminology and chronology, while also situating this important evidence in its historical, social, and regional context.Less

Ancient Jewish Sciences and the History of Knowledge in Second Temple Literature

Seth L. Sanders

Jonathan Ben-Dov (ed.)

Since the 1990s, Early Modern and Medieval Science in Jewish sources has been actively studied, but the consensus was that no real scientific themes could be found in earlier Judaism. This book ... More

Since the 1990s, Early Modern and Medieval Science in Jewish sources has been actively studied, but the consensus was that no real scientific themes could be found in earlier Judaism. This book points them out in detail, and posits a new field of research: the scientific activity evident in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Early Jewish Pseudepigrapha. The publication of new texts and new analyses of older ones reveals crucial elements that are best illuminated by the history of science, and may have interesting consequences for it. The book attempts to account for scientific themes in Second Temple Judaism. It investigates the meaning and purpose of scientific explorations in an apocalyptic setting. An appreciation of these topics paves the way to a renewed understanding of the scientific fragments scattered throughout rabbinic literature. The book first places the Jewish material in the ancient context of the Near Eastern and Hellenistic worlds. While the Jewish texts were not on the cutting edge of scientific discovery, they find a meaningful place in the history of science, between Babylonia and Egypt, in the time period between Hipparchus and Ptolemy. The book uses recent advances in method to examine the contacts and networks of Jewish scholars in their ancient setting. Second, the book tackles the problematic concept of a national scientific tradition. It explores the tension between the hegemony of central scientific traditions and local scientific enterprises.Less

As Long as We Both Shall Love: The White Wedding in Postwar America

Karen M. Dunak

When Kate Middleton married Prince William in 2011, watched by hundreds of millions of viewers, the wedding followed a familiar formula: ritual, vows, reception, and a white gown for the bride. ... More

When Kate Middleton married Prince William in 2011, watched by hundreds of millions of viewers, the wedding followed a familiar formula: ritual, vows, reception, and a white gown for the bride. Commonly known as a white wedding, the formula is firmly ensconced in popular culture, with movies like Father of the Bride or Bride Wars, shows like Say Yes to the Dress and Bridezillas, and live broadcast royal or reality-TV weddings garnering millions of viewers each year. Despite being condemned by some critics as “cookie-cutter” or conformist, the wedding has in fact progressively allowed for social, cultural, and political challenges to understandings of sex, gender, marriage, and citizenship, thereby providing an ideal site for historical inquiry. This book establishes that the evolution of the American white wedding emerges from our nation's proclivity towards privacy and the individual, as well as the increasingly egalitarian relationships between men and women in the decades following World War II. Blending cultural analysis of film, fiction, advertising, and prescriptive literature with personal views expressed in letters, diaries, essays, and oral histories, the book engages ways in which the modern wedding emblemizes a diverse and consumerist culture and aims to reveal an ongoing debate about the power of peer culture, media, and the marketplace in America. Rather than celebrating wedding traditions as they “used to be” and critiquing contemporary celebrations for their lavish leanings, the book provides a history of the American wedding and its celebrants.Less

At Home in Nineteenth-Century America: A Documentary History

Amy G. Richter

At Home in Nineteenth-Century America uses primary documentsto revisit the variety of places Americans called home—middle-class suburban houses, slave cabins, working-class tenements, frontier ... More

At Home in Nineteenth-Century America uses primary documentsto revisit the variety of places Americans called home—middle-class suburban houses, slave cabins, working-class tenements, frontier dugouts, urban settlement houses—and explore the shifting interpretations and experiences of these spaces from within and without. The selection and juxtaposition of primary sources compresses the insights of several historical fields and approaches, including house history, social history, and cultural history. It also draws heavily from the work of women’s history, particularly scholarship exploring the separate spheres ideal. Rather than offering an account of material culture, architectural history, or Victorian domesticity, this volume uses the home as a synthetic tool to pull together stories of nineteenth-century America. The result is less a tidy account of shared domestic values, or a straightforward chronology of change over time, than an opportunity to eavesdrop on a wide-ranging conversation recounting the ways in which a variety of women and men created, conformed to, critiqued, and transformed the ideal of home. This conversation included a diverse group of historical actors: a domestic servant and Herman Melville, a newlywed housewife and W.E.B. Du Bois, an interior designer and Theodore Roosevelt, all of whom contemplated the power and boundaries of the American home. Together, these voices offer an intimate yet broad view of nineteenth-century American history and sketch a narrative of both inclusion and difference.Less

Beyond the Bonus March and GI Bill: How Veteran Politics Shaped the New Deal Era

Stephen R. Ortiz

The period between World Wars I and II was a time of turbulent political change, with suffragists, labor radicals, demagogues, and other voices clamoring to be heard. One group of activists that has ... More

The period between World Wars I and II was a time of turbulent political change, with suffragists, labor radicals, demagogues, and other voices clamoring to be heard. One group of activists that has yet to be closely examined by historians is World War I veterans. Mining the papers of the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) and the American Legion (AL), the book reveals that veterans actively organized in the years following the war to claim state benefits (such as pensions and bonuses) and strove to articulate a role for themselves as a distinct political bloc during the New Deal era. The book is unique in its treatment of World War I veterans as significant political actors during the interwar period. It reinterprets the political origins of the “Second” New Deal and Roosevelt's electoral triumph of 1936, adding depth not only to our understanding of these events and the political climate surrounding them, but to common perceptions of veterans and their organizations. In describing veteran politics and the competitive dynamics between the AL and the VFW, the book details the rise of organized veterans as a powerful interest group in modern American politics.Less

Brokering Servitude: Migration and the Politics of Domestic Labor during the Long Nineteenth Century

Andrew Urban

Brokering Servitude examines how labor markets for domestic service were identified, shaped, and governed by philanthropists, missionaries, commercial offices, and the state. Because household ... More

Brokering Servitude examines how labor markets for domestic service were identified, shaped, and governed by philanthropists, missionaries, commercial offices, and the state. Because household service was undesirable work and stigmatized as menial and unfree, brokers were integral to steering and compelling women, men, and children into this labor. By the end of the nineteenth century, the federal government—as the sovereign power responsible for overseeing immigration—had become a major broker of domestic labor through border controls. By determining eligibility for entry, federal immigration officials dictated the availability of workers for domestic labor and under what conditions they could be contracted. Brokering Servitude is the first book to connect the political economy of domestic labor in the United States to the nation’s historic legacy as an imperial power engaged in continental expansion, the opening of overseas labor markets in Europe and Asia, and the dismantling of the unfree labor regime that slavery represented. The question of how to best broker the social relations of production necessary to support middle-class domesticity generated contentious debates about race, citizenship, and economic development. This book asserts that the political economy of reproductive labor, usually confined to the static space of the home, cannot be properly understood without attention to labor migrations, and especially migrations of workers who were assisted, compelled, or contracted. Their interventions responded to household employers who were eager to not only compare the merits of different labor sources, but also pit these sources against each other. Less

Brown Beauty: Color, Sex, and Race from the Harlem Renaissance to World War II

Laila Haidarali

Between the Harlem Renaissance and the end of World War II, a discourse that privileged a representative ideal of brown beauty womanhood emerged as one expression of race, class, and women’s status ... More

Between the Harlem Renaissance and the end of World War II, a discourse that privileged a representative ideal of brown beauty womanhood emerged as one expression of race, class, and women’s status in the modern nation. This discourse on brown beauty accrued great cultural currency across the interwar years as it appeared in diverse and multiple forms. Studying artwork and photography; commercial and consumer-oriented advertising; and literature, poetry, and sociological works, this book analyzes African American print culture with a central interest in women’s social history. It explores the diffuse ways that brownness impinged on socially mobile New Negro women in the urban environment during the interwar years and shows how the discourse was constructed as a self-regulating guide directed at an aspiring middle class. By tracing brown’s changing meanings and showing how a visual language of brown grew into a dynamic racial shorthand used to denote modern African American womanhood, Brown Beauty works to unpack a set of intertwined values and judgments, compromises and contradictions, adjustments and resistances, that were fused into social valuations of women.Less

The Captain's Widow of Sandwich: Self-Invention and the Life of Hannah Rebecca Burgess, 1834-1917

Megan Taylor Shockley

In 1852 Hannah Rebecca Crowell married sea captain William Burgess and set sail. Within three years, Rebecca Burgess had crossed the equator eleven times and learned to navigate a vessel. In 1856, ... More

In 1852 Hannah Rebecca Crowell married sea captain William Burgess and set sail. Within three years, Rebecca Burgess had crossed the equator eleven times and learned to navigate a vessel. In 1856, 22-year-old Rebecca saved the ship Challenger as her husband lay dying from dysentery. The widow returned to her family's home in Sandwich, Massachusetts, where she refused all marriage proposals and died wealthy in 1917. This is the way Rebecca Burgess recorded her story in her prodigious journals and registers, which she donated to the local historical society upon her death, but there is no other evidence that this dramatic event occurred exactly this way. This book examines how Burgess constructed her own legend and how the town of Sandwich embraced that history as its own. Through careful analysis of myriad primary sources, the book also addresses how Burgess dealt with the conflicting gender roles of her life, reconciling her traditionally masculine adventures at sea and her independent lifestyle with the accepted ideals of the period's “Victorian woman.”Less

Caribbean Crossing: African Americans and the Haitian Emigration Movement

Sara Fanning

Shortly after winning its independence in 1804, Haiti's leaders realized that if their nation was to survive, it needed to build strong diplomatic bonds with other nations. Haiti's first leaders ... More

Shortly after winning its independence in 1804, Haiti's leaders realized that if their nation was to survive, it needed to build strong diplomatic bonds with other nations. Haiti's first leaders looked especially hard at the United States, which had a sizeable free black population that included vocal champions of black emigration and colonization. In the 1820s, President Jean-Pierre Boyer helped facilitate a migration of thousands of black Americans to Haiti with promises of ample land, rich commercial prospects, and most importantly, a black state. His ideas struck a chord with both blacks and whites in America. Journalists and black community leaders advertised emigration to Haiti as a way for African Americans to resist discrimination and show the world that the black race could be an equal on the world stage, while antislavery whites sought to support a nation founded by liberated slaves. Black and white businessmen were excited by trade potential, and racist whites viewed Haiti as a way to export the race problem that plagued America. By the end of the decade, black Americans migration to Haiti began to ebb as emigrants realized that the Caribbean republic wasn't the black Eden they'd anticipated. This book documents the rise and fall of the campaign for black emigration to Haiti, drawing on a variety of archival sources to share the rich voices of the emigrants themselves. Using letters, diary accounts, travelers' reports, newspaper articles, and American, British, and French consulate records, this text profiles the emigrants and analyzes the diverse motivations that fueled this unique early moment in both American and Haitian history.Less

Children and Youth during the Civil War Era

James Marten (ed.)

The Civil War is a much plumbed area of scholarship, so much so that at times it seems there is no further work to be done in the field. However, the experience of children and youth during that ... More

The Civil War is a much plumbed area of scholarship, so much so that at times it seems there is no further work to be done in the field. However, the experience of children and youth during that tumultuous time remains a relatively unexplored facet of the conflict. This book seeks a deeper investigation into the historical record by and giving voice and context to their struggles and victories during this critical period in American history. The chapters explore issues important to both the Civil War era and to the history of children and youth, including the experience of orphans, drummer boys, and young soldiers on the front lines, and even the impact of the war on the games children played. Each chapter places the history of children and youth in the context of the sectional conflict, while in turn shedding new light on the sectional conflict by viewing it through the lens of children and youth. The book touches on some of the most important historiographical issues with which historians of children and youth and of the Civil War home front have grappled over the last few years.Less

Children and Youth During the Gilded Age and Progressive Era

James Marten (ed.)

In the decades after the Civil War, urbanization, industrialization, and immigration marked the start of the Gilded Age, a period of rapid economic growth but also social upheaval. Reformers ... More

In the decades after the Civil War, urbanization, industrialization, and immigration marked the start of the Gilded Age, a period of rapid economic growth but also social upheaval. Reformers responded to the social and economic chaos with a “search for order,” as famously described by historian Robert Wiebe. Most reformers agreed that one of the nation's top priorities should be its children and youth, who, they believed, suffered more from the disorder plaguing the rapidly growing nation than any other group. This book explores both nineteenth-century conditions that led Progressives to their search for order and some of the solutions applied to children and youth in the context of that search. The book offers case studies relevant to educational reform, child labor laws, underage marriage, and recreation for children, among others. Including important primary documents produced by children themselves, the book foregrounds the role that youth played in exerting agency over their own lives and in contesting the policies that sought to protect and control them.Less

Children and Youth in a New Nation

James Marten (ed.)

In the early years of the Republic, as Americans tried to determine what it meant to be an American, they also wondered what it meant to be an American child. A defensive, even fearful, approach to ... More

In the early years of the Republic, as Americans tried to determine what it meant to be an American, they also wondered what it meant to be an American child. A defensive, even fearful, approach to childhood gave way to a more optimistic campaign to integrate young Americans into the Republican experiment. This book unearths the experiences of and attitudes about children and youth during the decades following the American Revolution. Beginning with the Revolution itself, the book explores a broad range of topics, from the ways in which American children and youth participated in and learned from the revolt and its aftermaths, to developing notions of “ideal” childhoods as they were imagined by new religious denominations and competing ethnic groups, to the struggle by educators over how the society that came out of the Revolution could best be served by its educational systems. The book concludes by foreshadowing future “child-saving” efforts by reformers committed to constructing adequate systems of public health and child welfare institutions. Rooted in the historical literature and primary sources, the book is a key resource in our understanding of origins of modern ideas about children and youth and the conflation of national purpose and ideas related to child development.Less

Citizens of Asian America: Democracy and Race during the Cold War

Cindy I-Fen Cheng

During the Cold War, Soviet propaganda highlighted U.S. racism in order to undermine the credibility of U.S. democracy. In response, incorporating racial and ethnic minorities in order to affirm that ... More

During the Cold War, Soviet propaganda highlighted U.S. racism in order to undermine the credibility of U.S. democracy. In response, incorporating racial and ethnic minorities in order to affirm that America worked to ensure the rights of all and was superior to communist countries became a national imperative. This book explores how Asian Americans figured in this effort to shape the credibility of U.S. democracy, even while the perceived “foreignness” of Asian Americans cast them as likely alien subversives whose activities needed monitoring following the communist revolution in China and the outbreak of the Korean War. While histories of international politics and U.S. race relations during the Cold War have largely overlooked the significance of Asian Americans, the book challenges the black-white focus of the existing historiography. It highlights how Asian Americans made use of the government's desire to be leader of the “free world” by advocating for civil rights reforms, such as housing integration, increased professional opportunities, and freedom from political persecution. It examines the liberalization of immigration policies, which worked not only to increase the civil rights of Asian Americans but also to improve the nation's ties with Asian countries, providing an opportunity for the U.S. government to broadcast, on a global scale, the freedom and opportunity that American society could offer.Less

City Folk: English Country Dance and the Politics of the Folk in Modern America

Daniel J. Walkowitz

This is the story of English Country Dance, from its 18th-century roots in the English cities and countryside, to its transatlantic leap to the United States in the 20th century. The book argues that ... More

This is the story of English Country Dance, from its 18th-century roots in the English cities and countryside, to its transatlantic leap to the United States in the 20th century. The book argues that the history of country and folk dancing in America is deeply intermeshed with that of political liberalism and the “old left.” The book situates folk dancing within surprisingly diverse contexts, from progressive era reform, and playground and school movements, to the changes in consumer culture, and the project of a modernizing, cosmopolitan middle-class society. Tracing the spread of folk dancing, with particular emphases on English Country Dance, International Folk Dance, and Contra, the book connects the history of folk dance to social and international political influences in America. Through archival research, oral histories, and ethnography of dance communities, it allows dancers and dancing bodies to speak. From the norms of the first half of the century, marked strongly by Anglo-Saxon traditions, to the Cold War nationalism of the post-war era, and finally on to the counterculture movements of the 1970s, the book injects the riveting history of folk dance in the middle of the story of modern America.Less