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Comparing prostitution and courtship with a new working-class practice of heterosexual barter called 'treating' during the period between 1900 and 1945, this book examines changes in sexual morality and sexual and economic practices in New York.
The story of the intrepid young women who volunteered to help and entertain American servicemen fighting overseas, from World War I through the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The emotional toll of war can be as debilitating to soldiers as hunger, disease, and injury. Beginning in World War I, in an effort to boost soldiers’ morale and remind them of the stakes of victory, the American military formalized a recreation program that sent respectable young women and famous entertainers overseas. Kara Dixon Vuic builds her narrative around the young women from across the United States, many of whom had never traveled far from home, who volunteered to serve in one of the nation’s most brutal wo...
Why We Write provides a forum for scholars, activists, and novelists to reflect on the ways in which they use their writing and academic work to create social change. This volume uncovers the political agendas, social missions, and personal and professional experiences that compel writers to bring their stories to the page. Why We Write examines the dual commitment of writing articles and books that are committed to high scholarly standards as well as social justice. These essays will be of great interest to college and graduate students who currently lack a model of social justice scholarship.
Love and the Working Class is a unique look at the emotions of hard-living, racially diverse nineteenth-century Americans who were often on the cusp of literacy. Wrongly assumed to be inarticulate on paper, these laboring folk highly valued letters and, however difficult it was, wrote to stay connected to those they loved.
Josephine Roche (1886–1976) was a progressive activist, New Deal policymaker, and businesswoman. As a pro-labor and feminist member of Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration, she shaped the founding legislation of the U.S. welfare state and generated the national conversation about health-care policy that Americans are still having today. In this gripping biography, Robyn Muncy offers Roche’s persistent progressivism as evidence for surprising continuities among the Progressive Era, the New Deal, and the Great Society. Muncy explains that Roche became the second-highest-ranking woman in the New Deal government after running a Colorado coal company in partnership with coal miners themselv...
Sister Thorn and Catholic Mysticism in Modern America
Baltimore, in the heart of the Jazz Age. Margaret and Richard Whittemore reached for the dream of a better life. They headed up a gang that in less than a year stole over one million dollars' worth of diamonds and precious gems-- over fifteen million dollars today. Margaret was the archetypal gun moll/femme fatale, Richard the quintessential bad boy whose cunning and violent amorality turned their dreams into reality. He killed at least three men, and when he promised to confess if she were set free, they became heroes to a generation of young Americans, the tabloids breathlessly reporting the details of their star-crossed romance. -- adapted from jacket
Policing Sex in the Sunflower State: The Story of the Kansas State Industrial Farm for Women is the history of how, over a span of two decades, the state of Kansas detained over 5,000 women for no other crime than having a venereal disease. In 1917, the Kansas legislature passed Chapter 205, a law that gave the state Board of Health broad powers to quarantine people for disease. State authorities quickly began enforcing Chapter 205 to control the spread of venereal disease among soldiers preparing to fight in World War I. Though Chapter 205 was officially gender-neutral, it was primarily enforced against women; this gendered enforcement became even more dramatic as Chapter 205 transitioned f...
How do you convince men to charge across heavily mined beaches into deadly machine-gun fire? Do you appeal to their bonds with their fellow soldiers, their patriotism, their desire to end tyranny and mass murder? Certainly—but if you’re the US Army in 1944, you also try another tack: you dangle the lure of beautiful French women, waiting just on the other side of the wire, ready to reward their liberators in oh so many ways. That’s not the picture of the Greatest Generation that we’ve been given, but it’s the one Mary Louise Roberts paints to devastating effect in What Soldiers Do. Drawing on an incredible range of sources, including news reports, propaganda and training materials,...
This book analyses historical, literary, and cultural shifts in African American literature from the 1920s-1930s.