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Row with Roosevelt on the Good Ship USA

Constructing Fitness and Disability through Song in FDR’s 1932 Campaign

By Annika Christensen | comments |

This paper examines how campaign songs in Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s 1932 presidential campaign aided his attempts to conceal his physical disability and to project himself as an able candidate. Through these songs, Roosevelt and his supporters reinforced rigid societal constructions of “ability” and what constitutes a capable body. Though polio left him paralyzed for life in 1921, Roosevelt constructed an elaborate ruse of recovery in order to be a viable contender for a public that equated power with a normative physical body. He actively created a discourse, through appearances, speeches, and songs, that put forth his supposedly fit physicality as a principal reason for electing him president. Songs like  “Row, Row, Row With Roosevelt” and “The Roosevelt Glide” entered the minds and bodies of voters, shaping their ideas about ability and their ideals concerning a candidate who would go on to reshape the United States.

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Champion of the “Forgotten Man?”

FDR and the 1932 Election

By Adrian Zita-Bennett | comments |

Italian-American bricklayer Giuseppe Zangara’s failed assassination attempt on President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt in mid-February 1933 represents an interesting example of how the former president is memorialized, as the current narrative—which still rightly holds FDR’s presidency in high esteem—more or less glosses over the kinds of motives that may have spurred the attempt at all. Though Zangara was not at all reasonably justified for his attempt, the event itself importantly illustrates that current opinions of FDR are not reflective of opinions on the man upon his landslide victory in 1932. This paper advances an alternate, yet more accurate narrative of FDR that accounts for the multifaceted sentiments and circumstances surrounding the 1932 election and broader US society at the time.

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A 20/20 Focus on Gaydar

Examinations of Sexuality in Television News Magazines

By Aaron Tobler | comments |

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Crooning, Country, and the Blues:

Redefining Masculinity in Popular Music in the 1930s and 1940s

By Byrd McDaniel | comments |

In the 1930s and 1940s, the United States witnessed massive shifts in the ways in which individuals conceived and embodied "masculinity." These shifts resulted in part from reactions to more conservative notions of masculinity in previous years, and, in the 1930s and 1940s, the notion of "masculinity" became increasingly diverse in terms of its applications and manifestations. This essay examines how shifting notions of masculinity arise within the realm of popular music. Although numerous genres explored many facets of gender, three particular genres—crooning, country, and the blues—offer insightful examples of how questions of masculinity surfaced and evolved within the realm of popular music and performance. Exploring a few iconic artists within each genre, this study illuminates how the artists reflect larger trends in regards to masculinity and gender normativity. Ultimately, this article reveals the way in which popular music, as a commodity, became more regionalized, specialized, and diversified, and it demonstrates how conventional notions of masculinity followed a similar trajectory.

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A review of Among Empires: American Ascendancy and Its Predecessors. by Charles S. Maier

By | comments |

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A review of Educating Scholars: Doctoral Education in the Humanities by Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Harriet Zuckerman, Jeffrey A. Groen, and Sharon M. Brucker

By Christian B. Long | comments |

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In Search of Excitement:

Understanding Boston’s Civil War “Draft Riot”

By Ian Jesse | comments |

On July 14, 1863, a riot broke out in the North End, Boston’s Irish neighborhood. The rioters attacked the armory on Cooper Street and several gun stores within the area. The protesters also assaulted several police officers in the street. The riot was short lived and lasted only several hours. A few days prior to the mêlée in Boston a much larger event began in New York City. The riot in New York was clearly in opposition to the new conscription law which drafted men for the Union army. This riot quickly turned into a full out race and class war. While the riot in Boston looks very different from the one in New York, and both have little in common outside of timing, historians are quick to tie the two events together. The easy answer is to say that the Boston riot occurred in response to the draft thus connecting it to New York. A close review of sources reveals otherwise. Key sources for my research include the Irish Catholic newspaper, The Pilot, which portrayed the Irish as loyal patriots who did not oppose the draft and an abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator, which attempted to tie Boston’s protest to New York City without much evidence. In addition to these sources I analyze personal accounts of the Boston riot which makes the event seem like a mob with no direction or opposition to the conscription, separating it from the riot in New York.

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Woody Allen and the Golden Age of Kitsch

By Shaun Clarkson | comments |

Remembered primarily as an era of artistic achievement and innovation, the Golden Age of Cinema was, in fact, a period plagued by censorship and formulaic restraints. Though some films transcended this repressive environment, most resorted to easily marketable genres, character types, and plot arcs that resulted in little more than artless kitsch. Most important filmmakers immediately following the Golden Age’s demise wholly disregarded its old-fashioned codes, but Woody Allen has made a career out of simultaneously working within and upending the conventions of this earlier period. Allen takes three broad approaches to critique the old Hollywood style: reducing a complicated story to the mores and traditions of ‘30s and ‘40s cinema (Hannah and Her Sisters), disrupting recognized plots and genres (The Purple Rose of Cairo), and self-reflexively commenting upon the process of artistic creation (Stardust Memories). This article analyzes these three Allen’s films to explore the contradictions inherent to his critique of and tribute to the cinema he grew up watching and illustrates the commercial and artistic perils of such methods.

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The Political Sermon as Cultural Text:

John Winthrop, Increase Mather, Jonathan Edwards, and American Identity in the Colonial Era

By Laura McGee | comments |

Scholars of American exceptionalism often suggest that this concept was born from the American Revolution.  This paper argues that this ideology enjoys a longer history, one that can be traced to the sermons of three prominent colonial ministers: John Winthrop, Increase Mather, and Jonathan Edwards.  Through their ‘political sermons’ these men emphasized the exceptionality and divine ordination of the Puritan mission in America.  These men provided the literary foundations from which the national culture derived much of its foundational doctrine.  The ‘city upon a hill’ that Winthrop envisioned, entailed the social, spiritual, and political commitment of the colonists and their descendents, which he and subsequent ministers invoked through a variety of literary devices.  By emphasizing individual and community fulfillment of the spiritual covenant, these sermons explicated and expounded the colony’s exceptionality.  As a source of textual authority, these tracts provided the foundation for a distinct national ideology. 

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The Pied Pipers of Pluralism

Song and Verse During the XYZ Affair

By Geoff Ralston | comments |

Song and verse hold an important position in the realm of political discourse.  When complicated oration and partisan pandering fail to inspire the public conscience, rhymes and prose influence political opinion by disseminating ideas through a popular medium.  Unlike books or newspapers, poetry exchanged through pamphlets or by word of mouth can reach large numbers of people in community meetings, social gatherings, and even in the streets.  During the XYZ Affair of 1797-98, hostile relations with the French Directory following a diplomatic fiasco threatened the stability of the new republic.  With a possible war between the United States and France looming on the horizon, anti-French songs invoked imagery of patriotic revolutionary struggle to support the pro-British Federalists.  Conversely, pro-French poetry decried the trappings of blind patriotism and supported the ideals of the pro-French Democratic-Republicans.  This piece explores several of these songs and poems and their role in disguising partisan rhetoric in the form of attractive alternatives to open attacks against political opponents.  In an age before overt political partisanship, song and verse distilled party platforms into easily recited poetry, a tradition that continues to the present day.

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