Visions of Statesmanship Across The Atlantic: Presidential Masculinity and the American Response to Benito Mussolini

This article explores how hegemonic masculinity forged discourses of modern statesmanship in the United States and Italy in the first three decades of the twentieth century. It unpacks the ‘presidential masculinity’ of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson and compares these gendered performances of political leadership in the United States to Benito Mussolini's Fascist rule in Italy during the 1920s. In doing so, this article contends that the manliness of these three modern leaders rested on a contrasting of pairs: if Roosevelt embodied the hegemonic ideal of the ‘frontiersman-as-president’, Wilson personified its ‘unmanly’, bourgeois-liberal countertype and thereby engendered the initially hospitable view of Mussolini's Fascist masculinity in the United States during the Jazz Age. The article covers the publications in The Atlantic Monthly to reveal how the American disillusion with Wilson's liberal internationalism transformed the Duce into a Fascist surrogate for Roosevelt. In a decade of political, economic and social upheaval, the transatlantic ‘public relations state’ in both the United States and Italy discursively positioned Mussolini as the personification of the masculine ideals of acumen, willpower and virility for the American public; a ‘Doctor-Dictator’ who, akin to Roosevelt, became a symbol of modern manliness that signified stability, progress and reform. In the process, the Duce's Fascist manhood shaped hegemonic ideals of statesmanship across the Atlantic while hinting at the paltry support for the liberal democracies of the West.     

Toward an Understanding of Canada’s International Identity

ABSTRACT

This article examines the construction of Canada’s postwar international identity and how that identity continues to influence Canadian foreign policy, especially with the United States. Furthermore, the article illustrates how changes in Canadian policy necessitated by the Trump Administration may impact Canada’s international identity in the future. The article argues Canadian policy makers have consistently constructed an international identity in opposition to the United States and continue to use the US as a reflective tool in shaping their own policy. The first part of the article briefly examines the concept of state identity outlining both type and role variants and their relevance to foreign policy and this is followed in the second part by a discussion of Canada’s postwar international identity.     

Nazism as modern magic: bronislaw malinowski's political anthropology

In the 1930s, the functionalist anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski embarked on a lecture tour of the United States in an attempt to alert the American public to the threat posed by Nazism. This article considers how Malinowski's public campaigning built on his anthropological studies, and suggests how the insights contained therein can still be an impetus to further augment our understanding of Nazism as a phenomenon.     

Red Aesthetics,Intermediality and the Use of Posters in Chinese Cinema after 1949

Abstract

This article focuses on the aesthetic and affective techniques of saturation through which posters legitimated the Party-State in Mao’s China by closing the gap between everyday experience and political ideology. Propaganda posters were designed to put into practice the principle of unity, as conceptualised by Mao Zedong. The argument posits that while the “poster” is normally a printed edition of a painting or design intended for mass distribution in this way, the term may fairly be deployed to capture other cultural objects that function as “posters”, in that they provide public, political information that expresses or constructs a political self in aesthetic form. This approach requires a metonymic understanding of a visual field in which cultural objects are interrelated and mutually reinforcing. The essay draws on recent in-depth interviews with poster artists of the 1960s and 1970s.     

Trumping foreign policy: public diplomacy,framing, and public opinion among middle power publics

Even as the world’s sole superpower, the United States requires the cooperation of other states to achieve many of its foreign policy objectives. The President of the United States thus often serves as ‘Diplomat in Chief’ in public diplomacy efforts to appeal directly to publics abroad. Given Donald Trump’s antagonistic approach to foreign relations and widespread lack of popularity, what are the implications for support for US policy among publics abroad – particularly among middle power states allied to the US? While previous research on public opinion relying on observational data has found that confidence in the US President is linked to support for American foreign policy goals, the mechanisms at work remain unclear. Using original data from survey-based experiments conducted in Canada and Australia, this article seeks to clarify the effect of ‘presidential framing’ (presenting a policy goal as endorsed or not endorsed by Trump) on attitudes toward key policy issues in the Canada–US and Australia–US relationships. Results point to a negative ‘Trump framing’ effect in Canadians’ and Australians’ trade policy attitudes, but such an effect is not observed in other policy domains (energy policy in Canada, and refugee policy in Australia).     

The New World and the ‘New Turks’: the American-Turkish Claims Commission and Armenian-Americans’ contested citizenship in the interwar period

The flourishing of nativist political sentiments during the recent United States presidential election has resulted in popular speculation about who is, and who is not, a ‘real’ American. Foreign-born citizens’ struggles to forge a sense of civic belonging amid fears of national disloyalty have significant precedent. This article examines one such historical episode, which centres on a claims commission established between the United States and Turkey during the interwar period. The American-Turkish Claims Commission was intended to aid the resumption of diplomatic relations between the two nations through the resolution of private claims. For the hundreds of Armenian-Americans who filed claims, the Commission provided an unparalleled opportunity to seek their new government’s assistance in claiming compensation from the Republic of Turkey for losses incurred during the Armenian genocide. However, such faith was unwarranted, as the United States excluded from consideration all of the claims made by American citizens who were former Ottoman subjects. This article examines the reasons behind the exclusion of these claims and raises questions as to how immigrant communities can overcome the narrowing of what it means to be American both on the world stage and at home.     

Visualizing Pollution: Representations of Biological Data in Water Pollution Control in the United States, 1948–1962

After the United States Congress passed the Water Pollution Control Act of 1948, biologists played an increasingly significant role in scientific studies of water pollution. Biologists interacted with other experts, notably engineers, who managed the public agencies devoted to water pollution control. Although biologists were at first marginalized within these agencies, the situation began to change by the early 1960s. Biological data became an integral part of water pollution control. While changing societal values, stimulated by an emerging ecological awareness, may explain broader shifts in expert opinion during the 1960s, this article explores how graphs changed experts’ perceptions of water pollution. Experts communicated with each other via reports, journal articles, and conference speeches. Those sources reveal that biologists began experimenting with new graphical methods to simplify the complex ecological data they collected from the field. Biologists, I argue, followed the engineers’ lead by developing graphical methods that were concise and quantitative. Their need to collaborate with engineers forced them to communicate, negotiate, and overcome conflicts and misunderstandings. By meeting engineers’ expectations and promoting the value of their data through images as much as words, biologists asserted their authority within water pollution control by the early 1960s.     

Canada's history wars: indigenous genocide and public memory in the United States,Australia and Canada

In this article, I explore the slow development of a national debate in Canada about genocide in the Indian residential schools, which I compare to earlier ‘history wars’ in Australia and the United States. In the first section I begin with a brief introduction to the history of the IRS system and some of its legacies, as well as attempts at redress. These include financial compensation through the 2006 IRS Settlement Agreement, an official apology and the creation of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which has been a nodal point for articulating claims of genocide. I follow this in the second section with an analysis of the history wars in the United States and Australia over indigenous genocide, before engaging in the third section with debates about genocide in Canada. Overt debates about genocide have been relatively slow in developing, in part because of the creation of a TRC, mandated with collecting the ‘truth’ about the IRS system while similarly engaging in ‘reconciliation’ (a contested term) with settler Canadians. While Canada's history wars may seem slow in getting off the ground, the TRC's more ‘balanced’ approach and wide-ranging engagement with non-Aboriginal societal actors may have a greater effect in stimulating national awareness than in the United States and Australia.     

The moment when Peking fell to the Japanese: a “horizontal” perspective

ABSTRACT

Due to its equivocal character, the fall of Peking in 1937 was a historical moment that deserves a thorough revisit focusing on the city’s multifaceted structure. As a narrative strategy, “moment” aims at putting various spatial imageries of multiple events in a minimized temporal unit. This article focuses on two moments after the Marco Polo Bridge incident of July 7, 1937: July 29, when the Chinese troops withdrew from Peking, and August 8, when the Japanese troops entered the city. It reconstructs these historical scenarios by utilizing the reports of journalists, diary entries, and reminiscences, along with literary works to capture the moment of Peking’s fall. Using a “horizontal” perspective, this paper reveals Peking residents’ communal awareness and attempts to excavate nationalist elements from local experiences.     

The Ambivalent Thematics of Commodity Fetishism in Contemporary Latina/O Narrative Fiction

One of the chief cultural dynamics in the contemporary United States is the omnipresent commodity fetishism that drives its consumer society, so it comes as little surprise that this figures prominently in the attempts of much contemporary U.S. Latina/o fiction to come to terms with the social milieu of the late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century United States. This essay argues that Helena Maria Viramontes’s Miss Clairol, Sandra Cisneros’s Barbie-Q, and Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao each manifest a deep-seated ambivalence towards commodity fetishism: an awareness of how the agency to break with traditionalist modes of being and some measure of cultural assimilation might be achieved through engagement with fetishized attributes commodities place on offer, yet one that is tempered by an appreciation of the dangers such as alienation and cultural homogenization that also proceed from immersion in a world defined by commodity fetishized relations.     

Something to Compete with ‘Gunsmoke’: ‘The Big Picture’ Television series and selling a ‘modern,progressive and forward thinking’ Army to Cold War America

Airing from 1951 until 1971, ‘The Big Picture’ was the United States Army’s primary means of marketing itself to the U.S. public, particularly between the Korean and Vietnam Wars. Drawing for the first time on archival records concerning the show’s production, this paper documents how information officers sought to escape the stock-footage straightjacket embedded in the show’s origins and showcase an Atomic Age Army standing sentry at the Cold War’s ramparts. Ultimately, they fought dual losing battles against parsimonious budgets and public indifference, while their insistence on content control hampered potential exposure in more appealing prime-time entertainment programmes.     

The social representation and reality of BSE's impact in North Central Alberta

Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), popularly known as ‘Mad Cow’ disease, was discovered in the late 1980s in Britain; in 1996, scientists announced a ‘probable’ link between eating BSE‐contaminated meat and a new form of Creutzfeldt‐Jakob disease, a fatal human brain disease. Britain's beef industry was devastated, beef consumption dropped, export markets closed and a mass cull of older cattle was implemented. This article uses social representation theory to analyze how Canada's 2003 BSE outbreak was portrayed to Canadians in major newspapers and compares this representation with BSE's impact in two rural Alberta counties. The day Canada's BSE case was reported, the United States closed its border to Canadian cattle and beef. The event was represented as ‘devastating’ to Canada's cattle and beef industries and rural areas in general, a view that went largely unchallenged and was critical to gaining government support for the affected industries. Little evidence of economic devastation was found in the heart of Alberta's cow‐calf producing area; producers adapted to their changing economic circumstances and acquired other sources of income. But there is little doubt that the financial uncertainty associated with BSE added to stress levels among farm families.     

The Pied Piper of the ghetto: Lyndon Johnson, environmental justice, and the politics of rat control

When Congress rejected President Lyndon Johnson’s Rat Extermination and Control Bill in the summer of 1967, in a mood of growing conservatism, it inadvertently sparked a heated political controversy that brought the desperate conditions of life in inner-city America into sharp focus. This article focuses on the issue of rat infestation to explore the conditions of “urban blight” that disproportionately afflicted ghetto communities in the United States during the 1960s and that represented a form of environmental inequality linked to racial marginalization and poverty. It is suggested that a growing awareness of environmental aspects of inequality increasingly fueled ghetto discontent, feeding the outbreak of riots during the “long, hot summers,” and spurring liberals to think of new ways to understand the problems of inner-city poverty.     

Quebec–US Relations: The Big Picture

ABSTRACT

The objective of this article is to propose a periodization of the international policy between Quebec and the United States focusing on two levels of analysis: The first level is interested in public policy instruments such as the opening of delegations, while the second focuses on the paradigm of state action. From these two main criteria, I propose an analysis of five periods. The first period (1867–1960) is characterized by the absence of a structured paradigm and the virtual absence of diplomatic instruments with the exception of a tourism and trade office in New York. The second period (1960–1976) reflects a desire by Quebec to develop a larger presence in the United States with the creation of many instruments, as the public policy paradigm is gradually being built. The third period (1976–1980) is characterized by Quebec sovereignists’ awareness of the importance of the United States. This period is noted for a significant paradigm shift. The fourth period (1980–2001) is marked by the turn toward free trade. The last period (2001 to present) is characterized by the importance of new challenges that extend the public policy paradigm to issues such as security in the 9/11 environment, as well as to energy and environmental issues.     

An Authoritative Voice: Jane Addams and the Oratorical Tradition

Oratory, the act of speaking in public on civic matters, remained a male prerogative in the United States until the 1830s, when increasing numbers of women began ignoring the taboo and established a female oratorical tradition. This essay outlines how American women claimed the authority to speak and then developed their tradition, which was a social reform in itself, over three generations. It then examines how the youthful Jane Addams, a member of the third generation who became a social reformer, gained her education as an orator and struggled in new ways with society’s continuing doubts about women's civic authority.     

Drones,Hobbes, and Liberal Enchantment

ABSTRACT

This article reconceptualizes military drones by drawing on early-modern debates about the sanctity of political power. Ian Shaw has claimed that the proliferation and automation of drones threatens to subject humanity to a robotic regime of control, which he describes as the ultimate instantiation of Thomas Hobbes’s artificial sovereignty. I argue instead that the United States’ drone strategy is closely informed by a liberal political theology that can be traced back to Hobbes’s seventeenth- and eighteenth-century opponents, Samuel Clarke and Nehemiah Grew. These physico-theologians held that constitutionally balanced polities such as Britain were important vessels for divine providence. Today, a parallel faith that the United States represents humanity’s best hope is used to justify the extralegal and secretive bombing of territories that are deemed to be profane in comparison with America. Hobbes’s demystification of politics in Leviathan provides the platform for a critique of this modern form of liberal enchantment.     

Peripheral Players? German Colonial Interests,The Press,and the Spirit of Locarno

The Locarno Conference, held on 5–16 October 1925, represented the culmination of nearly two years of diplomatic communication between the foreign offices of Germany, Britain, and France. The conference was an attempt to normalize relations between the former Allied powers and Germany's new Weimar Republic and more tightly bind Germany's politics and economy to Western Europe. Colonial German lobbies hoped that the Locarno talks heralded the return of empire and an end to Germany's banishment from the work of the ‘civilizing mission’ and the humiliating experience of being a ‘postcolonial state in a still colonial world’. Public scrutiny from false press reports about the restoration of the German colonies emanating from Germany, France, Britain and its colonies and dominions, and even the United States complicated matters for Locarno delegates by forcing discussion of off-agenda topics. This article interrogates how the Colonial German lobby influenced the Locarno Conference through activity in the international public sphere, how they managed a partial victory in the wake of Locarno, and more importantly, the Colonial German lobby learned new and better strategies for playing properly to public opinion and international bureaucracies.     

西班牙佛朗哥政府与美古间的秘密接触(1963-1967)

美国与革命后的古巴是意识形态严重对立的一对邻国。自1961年1月断交起,两国政府经常在公开场合表达对对方的敌意。但是,在双方敌意的背后却存在着美古间的秘密接触,特别是在古巴导弹危机爆发后的5年间。在此期间,真正获得美古两国政府信任、促成双方对话的是西班牙佛朗哥政府。西班牙与美古间长期维持的特殊关系,西班牙外交官高超的外交技巧,西班牙在经济腾飞后想要恢复帝国荣光的强烈心愿,是西班牙成功地充当美古中间人的重要原因。这一案例体现出前宗主国在前殖民地国家对外交往中所扮演的特殊角色。     

The “Ideological Offensive” in Education: the Portrayal of the United States in Secondary Curricula and Textbooks in Poland during the Stalinist Period (1948–1956)

During the period of the People’s Republic of Poland (1952–1989), schools played a decisive role in transmitting the official ideology of the ruling Communist regime and cultivating young supporters. One of the most important aspects of indoctrination was constructing in students’ hearts and minds a particular image and disposition towards the United States. While existing research has examined the high level of political propaganda in the content of textbooks and curricula during the Communist period in Poland, no one has specifically analysed how these materials depicted the United States during the critical Stalinist years (1948–1956). Analysis of official curricula and textbooks for civics and history courses in secondary schools indicates that over this period, school materials increasingly depicted the United States as ‘predatory,’ ‘imperialist,’ and ‘exploitative.’ This study illustrates how curricular materials aligned with the foreign policy objectives of the Polish United Workers’ Party and the Soviet Union.