by Charlotte Canning Stephanie Batiste, Darkening Mirrors: Imperial Representation in Depression-Era African American Performance (2012). Batiste explores the ways in which African Americans used performance to construct global identities in the face of US oppression and imperialism. The book argues that claiming agency and empowerment was not impossible in a world of entrenched racism. Donna […]
Great Books on Women’s History: Asia
Great Books on Women’s History: United States
Not Even Past asked the UT Austin History faculty to recommend great books for Women’s History Month. The response was overwhelming so we will be posting their suggestions throughout the month. Here are some terrific book recommendations on women and gender in the United States. Penne Restad recommends: Jill Lepore, The Secret History of Wonder Woman (2014). […]
Sowing the Seeds of Communism: Corn Wars in the USA
Smallpox: Eradicated but Not Erased
Call Pest Control: The Bug Problem at the US Embassy in Moscow
Every popular American spy novel and film of the past half-century has had to contain a Russian character, usually in the form of a femme fatale or a burly, deep-voiced brute. Is there a strong historical basis for this? Did the US and Soviet Union conduct espionage as extensively as the movies would make us believe? The short answer is “yes.”
Vietnam between the United States and Yugoslavia
The War in Vietnam Revisited
Encountering America: Humanistic Psychology, Sixties Culture, and the Shaping of the Modern Self, by Jessica Grogan (2012)
From Yellow Peril to Model Minority
Unlike their working-class counterparts, who were seen as unwanted labor competition and incapable of sharing American democratic values, Chinese intellectuals were seen as members of China’s leadership class and culturally compatible. Educating them in the United States was a friendly, inexpensive, yet effective means of extending American influence over China.