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The article discusses the significance of an anecdote in a letter written by 19th century Vermont 1st lieutenant Stephen Spalding to his University of Vermont roommate, James Peck in which Spalding tells a racially-charged joke about an African American servant. The article examines 19th century racial sensitivities and mores, the portrayal of African Americans among whites, and the concept of white supremacy. It also discusses the differences between power as opposed to literal racism exposed in Spalding's anecdote

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This article examines the emergence of Oklahoma's Office of Inter-agency Coordination (OIC)--an organization that one exposé dubbed the "Sooner CIA" (Central Intelligence Agency). The article sets the OIC within the context of a growing national culture of surveillance, driven in part by fears of race riots and widespread unrest during the Vietnam War Era. Examining the connection between the OIC, the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO) and the Army spy scandal illustrates that Oklahoma's surveillance activities and civil disorder planning were part of a larger nationwide erosion of civil liberties [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the United States and across the globe, World War I intensified anxieties about the relationship between cultural diversity and national identity. In that context, the Americanisation programmes of the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) bridged the organisation's international experiences with its domestic agenda of service work. This article recovers the YWCA's woman-centric methods for facilitating communication and civic engagement among diverse groups of immigrants in the USA; it draws attention to the YWCA's insights into the relationship between gender, culture and democratic life; and it highlights the practical utility, theoretical insight and ethical implications of the YWCA's techniques for contemporary peace building and international work. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Exploiting complete census manuscript files, we derive a new segregation measure using the racial similarity of next-door neighbors. The fineness of our measure reveals new facts not captured by traditional segregation indices. First, segregation doubled nationally from 1880 to 1940. Second, contrary to prior estimates, Southern urban areas were the most segregated in the country and remained so over time. Third, increasing segregation in the twentieth century was not strictly driven by urbanization, black migration, or white flight: it resulted from increasing racial sorting at the household level. In all areas—North and South, urban and rural—segregation increased dramatically. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the significance of the connection between U.S. Zionists and the concept of Irish nationalism, focusing on the period between 1897 to 1922. It examines interest among U.S. Zionists in Irish history and nationalist sentiment, the success of Irish nationalism in the U.S., and Irish nationalists as a model for U.S. Zionists in establishing themselves in the U.S. and becoming Americanized.

The arrival of Donald J. Trump as President of the United States is frightening to U.S. intellectuals on many grounds, not the least of which is his narrow conception of who and what is an “American.” This essay explores this broad worry but also reflects more personally on those dangers. It contrasts visions of ‘America’ and argues that the U.S. is indeed a house divided unto itself, but not in terms of geography or citizenship. And, contrary to much wishful thinking over the years, that right-wing of the U.S. population is not a fringe element of U.S. society. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article uses the comparative history of federal systems to interpret the citizenship of the European Union as a form of federal citizenship. The general categories of contemporary citizenship law implicitly refer to centralized states. In order to free ourselves from such unitary concepts, we have to consider the forms of tiered, nested citizenship that have characterized empires, (post) colonial arrangements, and earlier federal systems. Research in comparative federalism is particularly useful here. Thus, the article highlights the beginnings of federal citizenship in the early stages of the United States, Switzerland, and Germany, and stresses parallels with the development of European citizenship. The striking similarities between the citizenship of the early federations and EU citizenship should no longer be overlooked. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the author's criticism on the works of scholar Richard Morse on the cultural tradition of Latin America and the U.S. between 1960 and 1990. Various topics discussed include philosophy of influential writings, principles of the natural law in 17th century, communal life in the U.S. and existence of old cultures in both countries.

Prison crowding is a pervasive modern problem with deep historical roots. The long-term solution to crowding has been more prisons; the short-term solution is early release. Early release programs can be effective when they balance the savings of reduced prison costs against the costs of recidivism by released convicts. This paper uses historical data to investigate how prison officials altered their early release policies in the face of prison crowding and rising real detention costs. The empirical evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that prison officials make use of information about the risks of recidivism revealed at trial and during incarceration to make informed decisions about whom to release and when. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented that examines 19th century American dwarf entertainer Charles Stratton, also known as General Tom Thumb, as a freak body politic. Topics covered include his role as the slave child Tom Tit in H. J. Conway's stage adaptation of Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel "Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp," how he may be regarded as a corporeal metaphor of the U.S., and assumptions about 19th-century U.S. freak shows, and Stratton's embodiment of the Yankee Doodle character.

An essay is presented on the challenges facing U.S. soldiers of the U.S. Civil War between 1865 and 1872, particularly the personal and political costs of the war, the impossibility of forgetting the war for veterans, and the difficulties of returning to civilian life.

The article discusses Black Nationalism in the Southern States in the post-Civil War era and compares Southern blacks to Northern blacks. Topics mentioned include emigration to Liberia and Kansas, the Liberian Emigration and Agricultural Association of New York City and the American Colonization Society (ACS), support for territorial separatism in the North, and interracial cooperation.

A literary criticism of the book "Freedom" by Jonathan Franzen is presented. It outlines the characters and explores the symbolic significance of the characters on the social conditions in the U.S. Also mentioned are the social conditions of middle class family in the U.S., the life in towns and cities of Minnesota, and the social aspects of freedom.

A case study is presented on the relationship between the white Jewish immigrant and singer Sophie Tucker and race and gender in the U.S. during the early 20th century, including in regard to her audience's associating the racial identity of her music with blackness. An overview of Tucker's use of blackface masks during her performances is provided.

The article discusses the murder trial of German American physician Paul Schoeppe during the mid-19th century. According to the article, Schoeppe was convicted of murdering Baltimore, Maryland, resident Maria Steinecke in 1869. The article examines support for Schoeppe within the U.S. medical community and among German Americans, the concepts of nativism and ethnic mistrust and their significance in the Schoeppe case, and the significance of German American attorney Charles Goepp in the case.

Despite an acknowledgement that, historically, the relationship between horse racing, women and fashion was important, existing literature provides little detail on the actual clothes that women wore as racegoers. The aim of this article is to add missing depth on the clothing of fashionable women at horse races, focusing on the United States during the inter-war period. In so doing, the discussion extends understandings of the history, and the material culture, of sporting spectatorship more generally. The article also introduces original work on the male spectator and his racegoing wardrobe. Climatic considerations to do with dressing appropriately for the great outdoors are discussed along with other influential factors on spectator dress such as contemporary fashion journalism and photography. The industry supplying fashion consumers was in transition at this time also and New York acquired prominence as a centre for a new mode of sporty, all-American fashion that was termed ‘sportswear’. As well as dealing with the clothes and the individuals who wore them, then, the article tells the story of the broader socio-economic conditions of American fashion, sport and sportswear that formed – and informed – their wearing. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines representations of urban domestic sphere and communication technologies in Playboy during the 1950s and 1960s. I argue that Playboy carved out a space for a seamless relationship between work (production) and leisure/free time (reproduction) in the domestic sphere, specifically the bachelor pad, which contributed to current notions of the live–work lifestyle. Combining work, consumption, and leisure through technology within the home permits the erosion of boundaries between work and free time. Consequently, advances in communication and entertainment technologies, consumerism and Playboy's celebration of the urban bachelor pad contributed to current definitions of the good life and reflected the paradigm shift to the post-industrial economy and the subsequent emergence of the knowledge economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented on teaching history of human rights and humanitarian interventions in the U.S. It offers the course that explores where and when to locate the idea of human rights. It discusses the primary commitment of the U.S. in creating neoliberal economic order. It mentions the selected meta-narratives of history of human rights.

An introduction is presented in which the author discusses the special issue of the journal on the subject of the history of Asian Americans in U.S. suburbs.

It is often assumed that Jefferson-acquainted with the writings of Scottish thinkers such as Adam Ferguson, Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, Lord Kames, Adam Smith, and John Millar--was a stadialist of some persuasion, as several of his writings are at least consistent with stadialism. If so, was he a cyclicalist, committed to a society having a life-cycle, or a linearist, committed to the possibility of continued convergence toward some ideal of perfection? An important letter to William Ludlow and several writings where Jefferson writes of human progress as imprescriptible suggest linear stadialism. Numerous other writings, point to urbanization as a stage of social decay, and suggest cyclicalism. The correct answer, I argue, is that Jefferson was neither a linearist nor a cyclicalist, but a medialist. He viewed movement toward increased urbanization as symptomatic of social decline, but always believed any society, by rooting itself in an agrestic manner--a normative mean between the excesses of subsistence living and urbanization--could avert decline and even work toward continued advance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the role that the racial identity of whites in the U.S. played in the country's social structure from the end of World War II through the early 21st century, including in regard to whites' alleged reluctance to give up their social position of privilege. An overview of the social conditions of U.S. minorities, including in regard to the alleged capitalist exploitation of minority communities and affirmative action programs, is provided.

An essay is presented which discusses the relationship between the social psychology of Americans and zombie apocalypses in American popular culture during the early 21st century, including in regard to the impact of the latter have on American government policy discourse. The metaphorical and symbolic aspects of zombies in U.S. popular culture, including their representation of a societal breakdown, are discussed.

The story of the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male was broken in 1972 by Associated Press reporter Jean Heller, resulting in a public uproar. Eunice Rivers, a nurse, was the only person associated with the study to have worked on it consistently for its entire forty-year span. Historians have evaluated her role in very different ways. In this article, I discuss the role she played in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study with a view to the provision of medical care during the era of segregation in America to explain why Rivers insisted that she acted correctly. First, I will show that Rivers' position within the study changed in increments during those forty years due to changes in personnel. Those changes led to her acquiring a degree of authority behind the scenes, such that she became an irreplaceable part of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. Her changing position was internalized, resulting in attitudinal changes. Through face-to-face encounters, Rivers was aware of the community's needs, and knew what she could provide in terms of medical care. She provided the men who trusted her with medical directions, instead of prescriptions, and thus sought to remain true to the Nightingale Pledge by making use of the advantages that came from her long-experience in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. Viewed in this way, Rivers was not shrewd, as many historians have described her, but simply motivated to cast her role in this complex study in the best possible light. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Americanization of the Common Law, the first of many significant monographs that William E. Nelson has produced in his career, redirected the writing of American legal history by demonstrating the explanatory power of using a comprehensive archival database to pose, test, and advance hypotheses about legal change. Nelson had been trained to appreciate such a methodology while a graduate student at Harvard University, where his mentor Bernard Bailyn had begun his own academic career with studies that aggregated large amounts of data from which to draw and test creative hypotheses about Early American social and economic change. In the work of both scholars we can see how a powerful "Intellectual Migration"--that of particular German social scientists who found welcome in the United States in the 1930s--transformed scholarly writing about the changes that overtook New England following the "Great Migration" of three centuries earlier--that of the Puritan founders of New England. The methods of aggregating legal usage that Nelson employed in Americanization, and then put to use in Conflict and Dispute Resolution in Plymouth County, Massachusetts, 1725-1825, have survived and transcended the historiographical debates of the 1970s and transformed the writing of Early American legal history [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the literary works that describe the working-class culture in the U.S. These includes the poem by Bertolt Brecht entitled "A Worker Reads History" which deals about working-class culture and women's literature. It notes that the study "The Industrial Muse" has discussed functions of working-class art. It mentions the book "The House of Bondage" which shows the lives of workers in the 1900s.

In this paper we adjudicate between competing claims of persisting segregation and rapid integration by analyzing trends in residential dissimilarity and spatial isolation for African Americans, Hispanics, and Asians living in 287 consistently defined metropolitan areas from 1970 to 2010. On average, Black segregation and isolation have fallen steadily but still remain very high in many areas, particularly those areas historically characterized by hypersegregation. In contrast, Hispanic segregation has increased slightly but Hispanic isolation has risen substantially owing to rapid population growth. Asian segregation has changed little and remains moderate, and although Asian isolation has increased it remains at low levels compared with other groups. Whites remain quite isolated from all three minority groups in metropolitan America, despite rising diversity and some shifts toward integration from the minority viewpoint.Multivariate analyses reveal that minority segregation and spatial isolation are actively produced in some areas by restrictive density zoning regimes, large and/or rising minority percentages, lagging minority socioeconomic status, and active expressions of anti-Black and anti-Latino sentiment, especially in large metropolitan areas. Areas displaying these characteristics are either integrating very slowly (in the case of Blacks) or becoming more segregated (in the case of Hispanics), whereas those lacking these attributes are clearly moving toward integration, often quite rapidly. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the reported price of privacy in America between 1973 and 2014, focusing on the social and legal impacts of the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in abortion rights case Roe v. Wade. Abortion-rights activists and choice-related arguments are mentioned, along with reproductive autonomy in America. A pro-life movement in the U.S. is addressed, along with various organizations such as the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws and the National Organization for Women.

The article discusses the women's suffrage in the U.S. from the late 1770s through the passing of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1919, including suffragists' protest marches. An overview of U.S. state policies on women's suffrage, including New Jersey's allowing of women to vote in 1790 and taking away their suffrage rights in 1807, is provided. An overview of the U.S. Congress' actions on women's suffrage is also provided.

A photograph of a list of reasons for admission into an insane asylum in the U.S. between 1864 and 1889 is presented.