Author: John Gilbert McCurdy
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801457807
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 283
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Book Description
In 1755 Benjamin Franklin observed "a man without a wife is but half a man" and since then historians have taken Franklin at his word. In Citizen Bachelors, John Gilbert McCurdy demonstrates that Franklin's comment was only one side of a much larger conversation. Early Americans vigorously debated the status of unmarried men and this debate was instrumental in the creation of American citizenship. In a sweeping examination of the bachelor in early America, McCurdy fleshes out a largely unexamined aspect of the history of gender. Single men were instrumental to the settlement of the United States and for most of the seventeenth century their presence was not particularly problematic. However, as the colonies matured, Americans began to worry about those who stood outside the family. Lawmakers began to limit the freedoms of single men with laws requiring bachelors to pay higher taxes and face harsher penalties for crimes than married men, while moralists began to decry the sexual immorality of unmarried men. But many resisted these new tactics, including single men who reveled in their hedonistic reputations by delighting in sexual horseplay without marital consequences. At the time of the Revolution, these conflicting views were confronted head-on. As the incipient American state needed men to stand at the forefront of the fight for independence, the bachelor came to be seen as possessing just the sort of political, social, and economic agency associated with citizenship in a democratic society. When the war was won, these men demanded an end to their unequal treatment, sometimes grudgingly, and the citizen bachelor was welcomed into American society. Drawing on sources as varied as laws, diaries, political manifestos, and newspapers, McCurdy shows that in the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the bachelor was a simultaneously suspicious and desirable figure: suspicious because he was not tethered to family and household obligations yet desirable because he was free to study, devote himself to political office, and fight and die in battle. He suggests that this dichotomy remains with us to this day and thus it is in early America that we find the origins of the modern-day identity of the bachelor as a symbol of masculine independence. McCurdy also observes that by extending citizenship to bachelors, the founders affirmed their commitment to individual freedom, a commitment that has subsequently come to define the very essence of American citizenship.
Author: John McNelis O'Keefe
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501756168
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 223
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Book Description
Stranger Citizens examines how foreign migrants who resided in the United States gave shape to citizenship in the decades after American independence in 1783. During this formative time, lawmakers attempted to shape citizenship and the place of immigrants in the new nation, while granting the national government new powers such as deportation. John McNelis O'Keefe argues that despite the challenges of public and official hostility that they faced in the late 1700s and early 1800s, migrant groups worked through lobbying, engagement with government officials, and public protest to create forms of citizenship that worked for them. This push was made not only by white men immigrating from Europe; immigrants of color were able to secure footholds of rights and citizenship, while migrant women asserted legal independence, challenging traditional notions of women's subordination. Stranger Citizens emphasizes the making of citizenship from the perspectives of migrants themselves, and demonstrates the rich varieties and understandings of citizenship and personhood exercised by foreign migrants and refugees. O'Keefe boldly reverses the top-down model wherein citizenship was constructed only by political leaders and the courts. Thanks to generous funding from the Sustainable History Monograph Pilot and the Mellon Foundation the ebook editions of this book are available as Open Access (OA) volumes from Cornell Open (cornellpress.cornell.edu/cornell-open) and other Open Access repositories.
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 566
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Author: Ted Hollander
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780578850931
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 262
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Book Description
Many of us feel that America has lost its way and suffers from a variety of illnesses, social and economic inequality, failure of our justice system and other institutions, and attacks on our democracy from both home and abroad. Our ability to meet these challenges - once our greatest strength - has eroded. Individually and collectively, we are paralyzed by partisan politics and unable to reach compromises and take any action whatsoever on national and global issues. Both our allies and adversaries see this, the former having lost faith in our ability to lead, and the latter no longer fearing confrontation with us. When we look at our shortcomings, if there is one common root cause that we all see, it is in education. In Mr. Hollander's previous book Step Forward America!, he made a case for a universal national service program that would get everyone involved in meeting our challenges. Now in Bachelors of Citizenship, he addresses and expands upon the importance of education, specifically certain "lessons in living" that he identifies, in enlightening us and leading us down a path to becoming better citizens more able to meet our challenges.
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ISBN:
Category : Almanacs, Irish
Languages : en
Pages : 698
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Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Almanacs, Irish
Languages : en
Pages : 700
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ISBN:
Category : Chemical engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 296
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Book Description
This is a collection of theses completed to fulfill B.S. requirements in the College of Engineering, University of Wisconsin from 1895 to 1962.
Author: Sayid Sattar Langary
Publisher: Author House
ISBN: 1452022771
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 130
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Book Description
Prior to the atrocities of September 11, 2001, the inhumane treatment of women by the Taliban received sporadic media and academic coverage. After the disintegration of the Taliban and al-Qaeda alliance, Afghanistan has been on the forefront of international headlines. The Taliban removal has also opened the venue for academic studies in Afghanistan. However, Afghanistan's urban and rural social structures and in particular the role of women remains an understudied topic. In Women from Afghanistan in Diaspora, Langary embarks on the task of describing the social structures of Afghanistan, precisely, the role of women within the Afghan social fabric. This study covers the various policies aimed at women, marriage, and emancipation from the ascendency of Amir Aman Allah Khan to the Kabul throne in 1919 until the establishment of President Hamid Karzai's representative government. This study sheds light on the lives of the Afghan women who have migrated to the United States through means of marriage. The fieldwork was conducted in various cities across California. These women share their marriage experiences, life in the United States, and resiliency of overcoming challenges. This qualitative research is now integrated with the broader phenomena of “arranged marriages,” “consanguineous marriages,” “mail-order bride,” and “patriarchal family structures.”
Author: Judith Surkis
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501729993
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 296
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Book Description
How did marriage come to be seen as the foundation and guarantee of social stability in Third Republic France? In Sexing the Citizen, Judith Surkis shows how masculine sexuality became central to the making of a republican social order. Marriage, Surkis argues, affirmed the citizen's masculinity, while also containing and controlling his desires. This ideal offered a specific response to the problems—individualism, democratization, and rapid technological and social change—associated with France's modernity. This rich, wide-ranging cultural and intellectual history provides important new insights into how concerns about sexuality shaped the Third Republic's pedagogical projects. Educators, political reformers, novelists, academics, and medical professionals enshrined marriage as the key to eliminating the risks of social and sexual deviance posed by men-especially adolescents, bachelors, bureaucrats, soldiers, and colonial subjects. Debates on education reform and venereal disease reveal how seriously the social policies of the Third Republic took the need to control the unstable aspects of male sexuality. Surkis's compelling analyses of republican moral philosophy and Emile Durkheim's sociology illustrate the cultural weight of these concerns and provide an original account of modern French thinking about society. More broadly, Sexing the Citizen illuminates how sexual norms continue to shape the meaning of citizenship.
Author: Deondra Rose
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019065094X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 313
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Book Description
"What explains the progress that American women have made since the 1960s? While many point to the feminist movement, this book argues that higher education policies paved the way for women to surpass men as the recipients of bachelor's degrees and helped them move toward full, first-class citizenship"--
