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Seeing red from the pulpit shifting perceptions of Mormons and Pentecostals in American society during the first Red scare, 1919-1921
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Eggheads arise, how the discourse of anti-intellectualism shaped modern American polictics
Get PDFDuring the 1950s, the echo of totalitarian regimes and the intricacies of the Cold War complicated an already tenuous relationship between intellectuals and the American public. As a result of precedents set by World War II and the ensuing Red Scare, large numbers of American liberal intellectuals came to believe that the influence that they enjoyed during the Roosevelt administration had come to an end. Indeed, social and political forces had shifted in favor of those who sought to limit the influence of academics in government. To countervail this perceived shift, liberal intellectuals co-opted the philosophical term "anti-intellectualism" to undermine the emerging "radical" right. I argue that liberal intellectuals actively constructed and subsequently vilified Americans they dubbed "anti-intellectual" in an effort to defend both their political ideology and their position in society. Right-wing conservatives, originally powerless against the charge of "anti-intellectualism" in the 1950s, co-opted the discourse in the 1960s and beyond, extolling the populist virtues of anti-intellectualism as characteristic of the common American they purported to represent. To this day, the rhetoric of anti-intellectualism is an indispensable part of political debates between liberals and conservatives in America
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Reorganize or perish William Edgar Borah and the Republican Civil War 1930-1936
Get PDFIn the aftermath of the electoral humiliation of 1932, the Republican Party faced a crossroads on two fronts. The first of these was the pressure placed on the party by its, largely western, leftwing to liberalize and embrace reform in order to wrest the White House from Franklin Delano Roosevelt. When the Old Guard refused to accede to the demands of its West wing, a Republican civil war commenced: further dividing the party in its darkest hour. The second impasse was in regard to the Republican Party’s southern strategy. The party faced increasing pressure to capitulate to white southerners on issues of states’ rights and anti;lynching legislation: a move that would cost them the legacy of Lincoln and African American voters. At the center of both controversies was Idaho senator William Edgar Borah, whose presidential ambitions in 1936 forced these issues out of the smoke;filled rooms and into the public sphere. Borah not only led the campaign to reorganize the party along western lines, he also ultimately forced the GOP to adopt a national policy with regards to anti;lynching legislation: forcing them to choose between the coveted white South or their traditional African American voting base. I argue that the Republican civil war had a profound effect on the future of the Republican Party and, consequently, the development of modern American conservatism
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Carl Sagan's groovy cosmos public science and American counterculture in the 1970s
Get PDFThis thesis discusses the public science of Carl Sagan and its relationship with American counterculture in the 1970s. Historians have recently begun to rethink the seventies, emphasizing the lasting power of its turbulent politics. This is the decade in which Sagan published his most popular books and which he ended with Cosmos, his blockbuster documentary series. By infusing these pieces with a countercultural ethos, this thesis argues, Sagan helped create a demand for science that was socially accountable and intellectually democratic—a demand that helped bolster the resurgence of technocratic liberalism in the decades to come. For most Americans, the 1970s were years of powerful cultural and material unease. In the gloomy economic climate, the money that the government had been pouring into scientific research since the end of World War II for the purported purpose of peace, security, and progress seemed wasteful and grotesque. Not coincidentally, the 1970s also saw a boom of literature on metaphysical transcendence and spiritual escape. For Sagan, the very scientific establishment that had led to cultural enervation could also be a tool for personal fulfilment. Science could improve Americans' lives by giving them a "cosmic perspective" that would promote peace and unity. This project is significant for three reasons. First, it reveals a productive interchange between science and American life by demonstrating how Sagan, an important and influential scientist, used science to promote the transcendent ideal of the “cosmic perspective.” Second, it shows how the fringe-scientific ideas that so fascinated Americans during this era—particularly the question of aliens—were brought into establishment circles by Sagan and others who grounded these ideas as part of a fundamentally scientific quest. Finally, following developments in recent American history writing, it helps us complicate the division between culture and counterculture and to better understand the productive intellectual space between the two by showing how Sagan, in reaching out to a countercultural audience, was arguing that their values could be reconciled with the kinds of science that he hoped would shape the future of intellectual inquiry
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Closeted tongues of fire the holiness movement, pentecostalism, and the rise of evangelical cooperation in the twentieth century
Get PDFPentecostals appear on the fringes of evangelicalism in modern American life and as historians look back over their history. Most scholars recognize that pentecostals merit inclusion in studies of the broadly evangelical, politically conservative coalition of Christians that organized--in fits and starts--in the early twentieth century. Nevertheless, pentecostals are almost never central to narratives of the rise of politically conservative religion in the United States. Likewise, the holiness tradition from which pentecostalism emerged exists primarily on the periphery of the history of evangelicalism. Scholars' placement of pentecostals and holiness believers on the fringes of the history of evangelicalism obfuscates the importance of these movements to the history of evangelical cooperation in the United States. This study aims to correct this oversight for one particularly important organization--the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE). Early pentecostal involvement bolstered the NAE's initial membership, enhancing the organization's clout. Pentecostal and holiness fellowships provided the vision to launch the evangelical conglomerate--which remains the largest lobbying organization for American evangelicals--and key personnel to advance that vision in a competitive religious atmosphere. They also provided abundant financial support that buoyed the NAE through several years of hardship that repeatedly threatened to sink the nascent lobby. For all these contributions, the NAE never became an overtly pentecostal organization. Pentecostals' inability to make the NAE in their own image is central to the point of this study. I argue that pentecostal-holiness believers' ability to succeed amongst evangelicals at large depended on their willingness to obscure rather than to champion their distinct doctrine. The more these worshipers covered over their religious identity, the higher they could rise in the echelons of mainstream American evangelical authority
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Book review: American apocalypse: a history of modern evangelicalism by Matthew Avery Sutton
No full textWith American Apocalypse, Matthew Avery Sutton aims to draw on extensive archival research to document the ways an initially obscure network of charismatic preachers and their followers reshaped American religion, at home and abroad, for over a century. Elaine Housby is impressed with this readable contribution
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