Performing Imperial Masculinity in British Theatre in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Century

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on theatrical representations of India in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, with special reference to two stage productions, Ramah Droog (1798) and The Cataract of the Ganges (1823). It argues that whilst the plays may have intended to deploy India as a space upon which to outline a militaristic British national identity and bourgeois gender norms, they in fact reflected contemporary anxieties about the fragility of British imperial masculinity. Moreover, it proposes that though theatre directors sought to impress upon audiences a sense of imperial dominance over the subcontinent through the deployment of visual technologies, such attempts were not wholly successful, with spectators having the capacity to deconstruct the façade that lay before their eyes.     

Politics,Pauperism and Power in Late Nineteenth Century Ireland. By Virginia Crossman.

ABSTRACT

Food and military identity were inextricably linked in the British Army: rations were a thrice daily indicator of the men's separation from their civilian selves. The soldiers were what they ate, but they were also where and how they ate; the grubby rapacity of the barrack dining hall, the absence of civilizing cutlery and the unfamiliar food delineated their new role as clearly as any uniform. Institutional feeding facilitated the erasure of self, an unhelpful attribute in the military world. Men's accounts indicate the conflict between their appetites and what they all too often regarded as oppression in a dietary form.     

Doing a literary journal in a divided country: Changbi,its history and projects

Abstract

This paper tells a story about miscegenation between US military personnel and Okinawan women from 1945–1952, which includes sexual violence, the establishment of ‘entertainment districts,’ and the emergence of international marriage. Whereas this history has been mobilized by leftists as a truth‐weapon in the struggle for political sovereignty from the US military, this paper takes an explicitly genealogical approach. Drawing on Foucault's work on biopower, this paper shows how Okinawans were transformed into ‘petitioning subject’ – subjects that negotiated the sexual exploitation of their bodies in tandem with the radically changing relationship between their bodies and the territory.     

David Underdown’s Revel,Riot and Rebellion: Popular Politics and Culture in England, 1603–1660

Abstract

This article examines the strategies and tactics of surveillance that were used by Manchester City Police in relation to anxieties about gender, sexuality, juvenile delinquency and drugs misuse in post-war England. In the early 1960s the members-only ‘coffee beat club’ became a target of police activity, resulting in a series of raids, minor prosecutions and the intensification of the licensing laws. Commenting on the relationship between police culture and youth culture, including the leisure practices of adolescent girls, this article argues that the targeting of the ‘coffee beat club’ became a motif for the defence of an older imagined social order.     

‘Subtopias of Good Intentions’

ABSTRACT

This article investigates the cultural and political meanings of everyday landscapes in postwar Britain. Public discussions of these landscapes have moved beyond relatively narrow questions about the aesthetics or design of public space to consider broader issues of land use, national identity, historical tradition and the management of social change. They have fed into anxieties about postwar reconstruction and the spread of ‘subtopia’, national decline, and more recent concerns about conservation and heritage. The article argues that the recurrent fear that Britain is being colonized by standardized subtopian clutter has tended to ignore more subtle historical shifts, produced by changing relationships between government and commerce, public and private space, urban centre and suburban periphery.     

American Commentaries

ABSTRACT

Despite widespread assertions as to the ‘Americanization’ of British culture in the first half of the twentieth century, the true extent of this cultural transfer remains open to question. This article considers what the British people actually knew about ‘America’, its institutions, culture and way of life, in this period through an analysis of coverage of the USA in the British news media (press, newsreels and wireless) in the inter-war years. Specific attention is paid to the attempts of the BBC – in particular through the broadcasting work of Raymond Gram Swing and Alistair Cooke – to provide an understanding of contemporary America beyond the widely cited stereotypes of ‘Chicago gangsters and Hollywood blondes'.     

Producing the German Civic Nation: Immigrant Patriotism in Berlin's World Cup Flag Fight

In order to untangle the tension between the exclusionary prerogative of sovereignty and the universalizing philosophy of the nation-state under civic nationalism, this study examines the press coverage of a flag fight in an immigrant neighborhood of Berlin during the 2010 FIFA World Cup. In the heavily mediatized struggle, German anti-fascists repeatedly damaged and stole a 22-meter-tall German flag belonging to a family of Lebanese extraction. The flag fight and the media's coverage of it demonstrated competing and overlapping definitions of citizenship, with the media and the flag owners promoting a civic form of nationalism. The case illuminates a national project to redefine German national identity and expand it beyond the boundaries of ethnic nationalism. At the same time, it reveals persistent anxieties about migrant spaces and their place in the nation.     

From Sawney Beane to Sweeney Todd

ABSTRACT

This article traces the changes and continuities in fictional stories of serial murder in London from the late-seventeenth century to the mid-nineteenth century. In particular, it shows how changes in the primary audience for metropolitan popular culture necessitated dramatic shifts in the tale of serial killing and narratives of violence. Thus, by the nineteenth century, as the lower classes had become the main supporters of both traditional and new genres of entertainment in popular culture, their experience of and fears and anxieties about urban change became intertwined with myths about serial killing and reflected in a new character of the public nightmare, Sweeney Todd, the barber of Fleet Street, who set out to effectively depopulate the capital with his ghastly murder machine.     

War Games: Ender's Game,The Monuments Men,and Movies for Peace

The popularity of adolescent fantasy movies about cosmic war and the enjoyment of military adventures that we find in World War II movies suggest the unique importance of war-themed culture in fostering solidarity in large, complex, and factionalized societies. War movies offset the power of sub-cultural movements by emphasizing the togetherness to be found in patriotic attachment to the whole society. A review of the history of recent war movies such as Ender's Game and The Monuments Men raises the possibility of a new militarism among young people. However, the persistence of war-weariness indicates that young people may differentiate fantasies of combat from the recognition of the horrors of real war.     

‘A Dangerous Revolutionary Force Amongst Us’

ABSTRACT

Historians of nineteenth-century British tea consumption have highlighted the function of the substance as an index of middle-class civility and marker of national identity. In this article, I maintain that concerns about tea drinking were equally prominent throughout the late Victorian period. As medical practitioners increasingly intervened in food matters, apprehension about the physiological and psychological consequences of increasing access to tea in working-class communities proliferated. This pessimistic discourse can be firmly situated in the context of broader debates about national decline, physical and mental deterioration, the subversion of gender roles in the domestic sphere and Imperial expansion.     

Out in the Cold and Back: New-Found Interest in the Great Flu

The article surveys the historiography of the influenza pandemic of 1918–19, charting growing interest in the field and offering a critical review of recent publications. While, against the background of current anxieties concerning the threat of an outbreak of an avian influenza epidemic, the Great Flu has belatedly become a hot topic, the cultural history of this catastrophe remains to be written.     

Reconnecting Religion with Social and Cultural History: Secularization's Failure as a Master Narrative

This article argues that the religious history written within the last thirty years has been unduly constrained by the impact of the secularization thesis. Through evaluating the original historiography and sociology that gave birth to it, and aspects of its cultural presence in Western (predominantly British) society and finally through an examination of the most recent scholarship, secularization emerges as a belief in itself. Focusing upon religion as a means of organizing responses to the world the article concludes with some suggestions about the directions the construction of religious history reunited with social and cultural concerns might wish to follow away from a now less than useful theory.     

Racial discrimination and forms of redress in the military

Since passage of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, employers have been required to eliminate race as a criterion for virtually all job decisions. Because of a series of legal rulings, however, the U.S. military has more or less been exempt from complying with the requirements of Title VII. The reason for this exemption has been the prevailing belief that the ability to address grievances to civilian courts would undermine the discipline necessary for accomplishment of the military mission. Such an assumption is unsupported by empirical evidence. Uniformed military personnel who feel they are victims of racial discrimination must use the military justice system, which provides less protection for the individual. This paper argues that allowing uniformed military personnel access to civilian courts for redress of Title VII grievances may improve military morale and efficiency.     

Changes in multicultural, Muslim and acculturation attitudes in the Netherlands armed forces

The present study examined changes in multicultural, Muslim and acculturation attitudes in the Dutch military. In 2008 and 2006 two large quantitative surveys were conducted within the Dutch military. The results of the survey in 2006 showed a slightly negative attitude of Dutch Defense employees towards multiculturalism and a strong preference for assimilation in the public context. Interestingly, in 2008 attitudes towards Multiculturalism had become more positive as compared to 2006. Although in 2008 a higher rate of employees preferred the integration strategy, the majority still favored migrants to adopt an assimilation strategy.     

‘Salk Hops’: Teen Health Activism and the Fight against Polio, 1955 – 1960

In the late 1950s, a health charity, known as the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (March of Dimes), organized American teens into volunteer divisions to fight polio, as well as tame adult anxieties surrounding juvenile delinquency. The alliance that developed permitted the NFIP to increase its influence and revenue, while granting teens an opportunity to assert their cultural power and challenge negative stereotypes. Although the NFIP nurtured and at times dominated the relationship, young volunteers joined for their own reasons and shaped the program to suit their own aspirations and interests.     

Some effects of curriculum innovation on the racial attitudes of adolescents

The paper reports results of one aspect (assessment of racial prejudice) of a large-scale British curriculum research project concerned with the problems and effects of exposure to three different race-oriented teaching strategies. Over 1,500 14–16 year olds from 39 British schools of varying multiracial composition participated in this research which was also concerned with gaining some insight into the relevance of teaching about race relations in schools. The conclusions point to the possible benefit of such teaching but also draw attention to the constraints operating against curriculum innovation in this area and to the need to consider other contributory factors before definitive answers can be given.     

Issues of integration abroad and readjustment to Japan of Japanese returnees

Returnees, or Japanese parents and children who live overseas and then return to Japan, often have anxieties about their ability to both cope with life abroad and to successfully readjust to Japanese life upon their return. The issues of returning are particularly acute for children, who face difficulties of reintegrating into both their peer group and the Japanese educational system. In this study, 21 returnee families, with a total of 40 children, were investigated. In general, it was found that most parents felt they had successfully integrated abroad and readjusted to Japan. Children were evaluated as being even more successful at integrating abroad, but almost all had a series of problems readjusting to Japan. However, most of these problems were resolved within a year or two after return. It was found, though, that the problem of cultural identity seems to linger as a continuing issue for returnee children. It was also found that, in general, children retained their degree of competence in English even after several years back in Japan, and that active (as opposed to merely expressed) parental support was important in motivating the children to continued English study.     

From Silent Screen to Multi-screen: A History of Cinema Exhibition in Britain since 1896. By Stuart Hanson/The British Musical Film. By John Mundy.

ABSTRACT

This article explores the political, economic, media and social reactions to the Sex Pistols' Anarchy Tour of December 1976. A critical reading of the sociological concept of ‘moral panic’ is used to examine the ways in which responses to the Sex Pistols were related to the notion of post-war decline, immorality, delinquent youth and the changing nature of the British working class. The responses to the Anarchy Tour constitute a further episode in the cycle of ‘moral panics' that emerged in British society in connection with the development of youth culture, juvenile delinquency and popular music. The exploration that follows posits the view that although ‘moral panic’ is useful for understanding particular aspects of popular music, it also conceals the complexity of the differing responses of political/social groups to the appearance of such phenomena. The article also forms a critique of recent revisionist characterizations of Britain in the 1970s. The ‘moral panic’ surrounding the Sex Pistols was in part ‘socially constructed’ by the media, yet reactions by trade unionists, students, feminists and socialists show that concerns about British society in 1976 were not confined to religious pressure groups, conservative media commentators and political elites.     

Beyond the Black and White: Female Domestic Servants,Dress and Identity in France and Britain, 1900-1939

ABSTRACT

Far from being a trivial detail, clothes fundamentally define who we are and how we are perceived by others. Drawing on a large sample of French and British servants’ memoirs, this article explores how dress served a crucial but contrasting role in the way French and British servants articulated their identities within and outside the home between 1900 and 1939. It argues that servants’ dress was deeply linked to the nature of the occupation in each country and the structure of their respective female labour markets.     

From Scholarship Boy to Social Historian: J.F.C. Harrison (1921-2018): An Appreciation

ABSTRACT

John F. C. Harrison, who has recently passed away, was one of the founders of British social and labour History. Along with figures such as E.P. Thompson and Asa Briggs, Harrison put nineteenth-century social history on the scholarly map. He traced the histories of adult education, Owenism and popular millenarianism. Many came to Victorian history through his textbooks about the period. This appreciation traces his life and work, attempting to establish what was distinctive about his work. Harrison eschewed theory but built important bridges between social, labour and intellectual history which give his work an enduring importance.