New Errands: The Undergraduate Journal of American Studies
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Exploring the Domestic Ideology of the Postwar Era through Cookbooks
Full text linkCookbooks were increasingly published and marketed to overwhelmingly female audiences during the aftermath of the Second World War, when tensions with the Soviet Union escalated and the new consumer culture of the 50s materialized. Upon first glance, these instructional guides may have seemed a frivolous and unnecessary part of history, not unlike commonly held attitudes about women\u27s roles themselves. These books did more than merely show readers how to prepare the perfect Baked Alaska, however, because they also provided evidence of a burgeoning anxiety toward gender roles in postwar America. Cookbooks, which were carefully constructed by primarily male editors, utilized gendered language in their recipes that aimed not only to help women help themselves but also to simultaneously oppress them by reminding them of their proper place in the home. In sharing time-saving, cost-efficient recipes that often stressed the necessity of convenience foods, cookbooks affirmed, consciously or otherwise, that expectations on women to maintain the home were not only burdensome but unavoidable. Postwar cookbooks were fraught with contradictory language that revealed concerns about the gender hierarchy in1950s and 1960s America thinly veiled by encouraging, often complimentary language that damaged rather than fortified women\u27s standing in society.Exploring the Domestic Ideology of the Postwar Era Through Cookbooks by Lauren Fabrizio is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Phyllis Schlafly: Transgender Hero
Full text linkThe woman who is widely credited as the successful champion of the anti-Equal Rights Amendment campaign in the 1970s is the hero that the transgender community needs. Yes, Phyllis Schlafly, conservative Republican activist and founder of the Eagle Forum and STOP-ERAmovement, has inadvertently articulated the importance of transgender rights through her many years as a gender privilege activist. Ultimately,Schlafly and transgender activists have been saying the same thing for years: men and women deserve the legal right to be celebrated and validated in their gender category. The main distinction between these two parties, however, is a different interpretation of gender and what it means to be male or female. Phyllis Schlafly: Transgender Hero by Elisabeth Wilder is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licens
Identity Through the Passport: Negotiating Simultaneous Belonging to the Nation-State and Cosmopolitan World Society
Full text linkIn 1920 and 1926 the League of Nation\u27s "passport regime" met to discuss the existence of the modern passport. Before these dates the passport did not have a unified function as a document; it had a different process and appearance depending on the nation-state of issuance. With the end of WWI, a period in which nations were connected on a grand scale through conflict, there was a push to standardize travel. Countries saw a need to increase the safety measures that existed in a realm beyond the jurisdiction of the nation-state (Robertson, 2010). From this beginning moment of standardization, the passport has evolved to be an accepted normal part of trans-national movement. It is recognizably the same document regardless of the issuing nation-state, yet the different issuing countries are still easily distinguishable as one waits in airport customs lines. This reality is an illustration of the complex tension contained within the passport. The document itself represents the push and pull between the two competing forces that negotiate power and control in the current globalized world, the nation-state and the cosmopolitan global existence. The passport allows for a more global citizen through its facilitation of movement and international governance while simultaneously reinforcing nation-state boundaries both ideologically and physically. This illustrates the tension between nation-state identity and global belonging within the context of contemporary accelerated globalization. Identity Through the Passport: Negotiating Simultaneous Belonging to the Nation-State and Cosmopolitan World Society by Catherine Mazanek is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licens
How Early German Immigration and the Establishment of Germantown Influenced Philadelphia
Full text linkPhiladelphia, the sixth largest city in the United States, is a city forged from decades of immigration. The City of Brotherly Love\u27s foundations rest on its immigrant communities that have developed over the past several centuries, including one of the most influential settlements in Philadelphia, established by early Germans who migrated to the New World in the seventeenth century. Germantown, along with the German migrants who founded it, influenced the Greater Philadelphia, not only with their founding of one of the oldest neighborhoods in America, but also through their religion, ideology, language, culture and industry. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licens
Magic: The Obsession
Full text linkIt was Friday night in downtown State College, home of Penn State University. This school is known as one of the biggest party schools in the nation, so Friday nights are usually filled with excitement and carousing, and tonight was no different. As I got out of my car on top of the Frasier Street parking garage, I instantly felt the familiar Friday night pulse of downtown. My heart raced in anticipation; the rambunctious combination of loud music and laughter in the streets evoked vivid memories of nights where I sought excitement. The mixture of streetlights and the stars above was magical. Here, high above the chaos below, the unforgiving January wind whipped my face and reminded me to keep moving, as if it knew I had another kind of Magic to go admire
In the Palm of Your Hand: Lobster Rolls and Contradicting Performances of Regional Identity
Full text linkThe Maine lobster roll survives as a reminder of the importance that lobster has had from the earliest years of settlement in the New England colonies and has become an icon for the state of Maine. The food of a culture or region represents an aspect of embodied material culture and serves as a cultural archive. Edible objects should be read as closely as other material texts. The Maine lobster roll is composed of ingredients layered with regional histories while exhibiting formal qualities appealing to American culture more broadly. The cultural scripts that accompany mobile foods like sandwiches can reveal important links between people, place, and diet. The mobility inherent in lobster rolls helps to present and define regional identity for a broader American audience in a way that familiarizes "difference" within the American nation
Al Capone: Gangster from the Gutter
Full text link“I am like any other man. All I do is supply a demand.”1 A quote from the notorious American gangster Al Capone, one cannot help but wonder if there is a sliver of truth behind this statement. Acting as the boss of the famed Chicago Outfit, Capone ruled the world of organized crime with an iron fist from 1925-1931.2 With the United States government outlawing the “manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcohol from 1920 to 1933” through the Eighteenth Amendment, Capone took full advantage and made millions of tax-free dollars through bootlegging.3 Extremely violent and reactionary, Capone’s inability to escape the public eye swiftly gained him the attention of many Americans, who were both disgusted and enamored by his actions. However, a plethora of Progressive Era politicians and scholars recognized a trend for impoverished Americans: a path into the criminal underworld as a means of escape from poverty and a pursuit for better living conditions. After examining the environmental circumstances in which Capone was raised and his subsequent endeavors in illicit activities such as bootlegging, prostitution, and gambling, the framework of Shaw and McKay’s social disorganization theory offers an explanation to Al Capone’s entrance into the world of crime and his incredibly successful stint as the head of an organized crime empire