Roger Daniels, in his novel, “Not Like Us: Immigrants and Minorities in America”, highlights the terrible conditions and undertakings immigrants and minorities had to face through early to modern America. He presents his argument through different people, starting with the Chinese and Chinese Exclusion Act during the industrial era and going on into detail with the treatment Native Americans, African Americans, and other minorities throughout time. He states in his thesis that he simply wishes not to “negate or minimize other aspects of that turbulent and dramatic period.”, but instead to emphasize the side of history that is usually glossed over by historians. He does successfully in context highlight the true reality minorities and immigrants faced throughout this specific time period, and while he does have a compelling argument and evidence to back it up, there are some minor critiques in an otherwise beautifully constructed novel.…
The language of the United States changed drastically once the Vietnam War began. At the start of the Cold War, the United States' society was caught in an age of consensus. During this time period, the people of the United States conformed to a certain normality which was widespread because of the Cold War. However, once the generation born in the age of consensus came of age, the age of dissent began. Through expanded education and literary works from the Left, the youth began to rebel against conformity.…
A quarter of the way through the century the worst economic recession in history hit America. The populus of the United states lived through ten grueling years of hardship up until the year America entered the war. The entire country raised itself from the ground and stood proud not only against its enemies but for the ideals it stood for. World War Two brought on a new wave of American idealism and propelled the country into an age of world dominance. From there, their war changed to a fight for democracy in the west against the communists in the east.…
19 Nov 2013. <http://postmodernblog.tumblr.com/post/106532710/a-list-of-postmodern-characteristics>. Keep, C., T. McLauglin, and R. Parmar. N.p.. Web. 21 Nov 2013.…
After the events of WWII, to say that America had changed drastically was an understatement; with the entirety of the Cold War, amongst other political strife at home and abroad, America during this time was an era of conflicting ideals. Consequently, literature changed its perspective; most commonly, however, was the transition from modernist ideals to postmodernist ideals. Much like modernism, post-modernism offered to reject the ideals presented by popular trends during their time; yet for postmodernism, the rejection, in this case, mostly dealt with homogeneity (a universal standard defined by advancements in American quality of life) and how literature acts as a deconstructive tool (Byam 2259-2260). Yet many of these deconstructions during…
The first chapter of Spreading the American Dream by Emily Rosenberg focuses mainly on the American economic and cultural expansion of 1890 to 1945, with the help of liberal-developmentalism. Rosenberg opens up the chapter discussing the Columbian exposition in Chicago of 1893, and provides multiple examples of how it displayed America’s progressive advancements. The exhibitors of the exposition proudly displayed all the wonderful advancements the country had made so far, flaunting America’s faith. Some examples of the technological and scientific advancements included new types of machinery and transportation methods. Rosenberg also discusses the ideology of liberal-developmentalism and how it contributed to the progressive period in the…
Karen Ann Faulk’s In the Wake of Neoliberalism: Citizenship and Rights in Argentina provides a look into how Argentina’s history has shaped the populace’s view of human rights and how human rights has in tern affected public discourse and history in Argentina through groups like Memoria Activa and Hotel BAUEN. This book was valuable to me because I was able to see the effects of neoliberalism in a way I had never seen before, since I have grown up within the culture of neoliberalism my entire life. Faulk studies the conception of human rights in Argentina, how these conceptions were influenced by the past dictatorships, and how human rights language and work is being employed in response to neoliberalism.…
In the story “Harrison Bergeron”, nobody was different and everyone was the same, everybody was equal. The story explains about the future of what could happen and the possibilities of it happening. The way things have changed was nobody was smarter than one another, and nobody was stronger either, America has changed the way life is for the people. Most of the people are controlled and are not allowed to be more intelligent than each other.…
If it were not for World War II, the Depression era might have extended. This war solidified the role of America as a global power. Moreover, the nation drastically changed because now America had to deal with new challenges. In the novel, The Moon is Down, Steinbeck denotes from a character, that the war indeed changed “outwardly”. World War II marked the beginning of new achievements that took years to improve.…
Efficiency is a concept that is intuitively associated with business and economics, rather than philosophy. For most of philosophy's history, efficiency was largely untouched, and was largely secondary to the ahistorical, metaphysical and epistemological questions. In modern times, this has changed and the concept of efficiency has played an increasingly important role within the various contemporary philosophical traditions. This is no more apparent than in postmodernism. Although difficult to categorize as a unified system of thought, postmodernism does seem to have an overall fixation on efficiency's crucial role in society and structures of meaning.…
After World War II, American lives will change due to the middle class unexpectedly expanding due to suburbanization, unemployment rates were decreasing, and the United States will become the most powerful country in the world due to the technological creation of the nuclear bomb which won’t last very long because the Soviet Union will test their nuclear weapon in 1949. The 1950’s deserves its reputation as an age of political, social, and cultural conformity to a great extent due to Eisenhower needing to enhance old policies, the eagerness of America wanting to get rid of communism and to prove that the American lifestyle was the best way to live. Politics was in the 1950’s was known as the “age of conformity” due to the rise of Eisenhower…
Many times, adults become so caught up in other's lives that they forget to look at their own. Adults judge their acquaintances' lives, however, do not take a hard look at themselves. Greedy describes adults perfectly; Adults seek a better life, with more opportunities, and more money. Greed transpires as a major theme throughout The Postmortal. People’s selfish desire to have anything they want drives the entire story.…
In Global Capitalism, Jeffry Frieden makes a pioneering attempt at pointing out the key economic and political events that framed the global economy during the last century to the present. He provides an account of the rise and fall from the golden age of globalization, especially its peak years from 1896 to 1914, the post-World War I and II till present condition. The book is divided into four equally covered periods: Last Best Years of the Golden Age, 1896-1914; Things Fall Apart 1914-1939; Together Again, 1939-1973 and Globalization, 1973-2000. Each period describes political events and economic developments, across the regions and in the countries and also analyzes global trends.…
Lesson Objective To understand the concept of nostalgia and how it is a theme in ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’. A warning: This will stray a little into ‘Whose Reality?’ territory, but remember that this is a text response and whenever you mention nostalgia in a text response essay, it must be when directly discussing the text. NO general discussion of the concept is allowed! Definition The term nostalgia describes a yearning for the past, often in idealised form.…
In her book, “A Poetics of Postmodernism”, Linda Hutcheon identifies the term postmodernism, when used in fiction, to describe fiction that is at once metafictional and historical in the way it presents the texts and contexts of the past (Hutcheon, 40). This is what she calls historiographic metafiction. Most of the historiographic novels emphasize self-reflexivity and our paradoxical relations to past events. Historiographic metafiction somehow acknowledges the paradox of the past, that is to say, the past is accessible to us today only in the form of text. As Fredric Jameson reminds us, “history is not a text, but it is only accessible in textual form” (Homer, 4).…