Kristin L. Hoganson
Autor(a) de Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars
About the Author
Kristin L. Hoganson (Ph.D., Yale University) is professor of history at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She is the author of Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars and Consumers' Imperium: The Global Production of mostrar mais American Domesticity, 1965-1920. Her longstanding interest in empire carries over to her current research on the making of the U.S. heartland. She has held a Fulbright lectureship at Ludwig-Maximilians Universitat and the Harmsworth Visiting Professorship of American History at Oxford University and has served the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations and the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era in various capacities. mostrar menos
Obras de Kristin L. Hoganson
Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars (1998) 109 cópias
American Empire at the Turn of the Twentieth Century: A Brief History with Documents (Bedford Series in History and… (2016) 9 cópias
Etiquetado
Conhecimento Comum
- Sexo
- female
Membros
Resenhas
Prêmios
You May Also Like
Estatísticas
- Obras
- 8
- Membros
- 258
- Popularidade
- #88,950
- Avaliação
- 3.8
- Resenhas
- 6
- ISBNs
- 17
Many Americans have the impression that the American Heartland, defined as the Prairie States, or as those states bound by the Appalachians on the east and the Rockies on the west, as insular and provincial, as a place deeply rooted in boosterish Americana. However, those who have lived in these states for any length of time know that such a description doesn’t capture the true spirit of the place. These people know that even those living and working in the lightly populated towns and on farms are as much globalists as those living on the coasts. The plight of farmers caught up in the current administration’s trade wars should disabuse anybody clinging to the notion of an isolated midland. And if that isn’t sufficient, well, then there is Kristin Hoganson’s new and fine history of the world at the doorstep of mid America, The Heartland.
Hoganson, a professor of U.S. history at the University of Illinois, in Champaign-Urbana (about as deep in the heart of America as you can get), starts at the beginning, the very beginning, when Native American tribes roamed the heartland. She focuses on the Kickapoos who hunted far and wide over the mid lands, until white pioneers poured into their land and drove them out onto reservations in the Southwest, and pushed some into northern Mexico, a sad tale of cultural destruction she narrates well. These settlers came from the East, but also from northern Europe. Engaged in dividing the land, possessing it, cultivating it, and breeding animals for mass consumption, these settlers reached across the ocean, to the old country, for stock and capital. She illustrates this globalism in many ways.
To mention two prominent examples, she spends considerable time on hog breeding, specifically the imperial pig, the Berkshire Hog. You’ll learn quite a bit about animal husbandry, but you’ll also see how people in the middle of America drew from overseas to improve their stocks and their fortunes. Then there is the Illinois Central Railroad, famously the subject of Steven Goodman’s song “The City of New Orleans.” This all-American rail line was the first land-grant railroad in the U.S. However, though granted 2.5 million acres by the Illinois legislature, to get going, the company needed capital. When it couldn’t get it from New York investors, it turned to London. Eventually, the British took control to get their hands on the land. They imported capital and labor from Ireland. Going full circle, so to speak, the Canadian National Railroad now runs the all-American Illinois Railroad. These tales and more make for fascinating reading and support the idea of the interconnectedness of people.
Now, Americans seem to hate talking about racism, probably because the majority of people don’t like thinking of themselves, or their ancestors, as racists. However, racism is a forming feature of the U.S., even embedded in our most cherished (though little read) founding document, the U.S. Constitution. Hoganson is not one of those people who shy away from the subject. Her extensive coverage of the near annihilation of the Kickapoo people is at its heart murderous racism. Racism was a dominant aspect of heartland life. So ingrained was it that it reached into every aspect of life, even the breeding of hogs. While breeders liked the Berkshire hog for many reasons, including snobbery, they didn’t much care for the black tint of its skin. And so they worked to breed it white. To quote the American Swine and Poultry Journal and Hoganson, “‘Some of our best breeders are now getting their best pigs with a nearly clear or white skin and black hair, which makes them very attractive, much more so than a dull black skin.’ Since skin coloring had no intrinsic economic value in a dressed animal, Berkshire breeders’ efforts to whiten their animals can be attributed to their investments in white supremacy.” No words minced there.
All in all, readers wishing another viewpoint on the American heartland and the international nature of American life throughout our history as a nation, these readers will find The Heartland a worthwhile adventure in American history.… (mais)