UMBC HIST355: Unleashing the Insect War

Having read various views of the American war on insects from 1944 to 1962, what do you think ultimately was behind the war?--i.e. what motivations or values propelled these relentless campaigns of extermination? Did Americans just flat out hate "bugs" during the period? Or was there something else going on here? Other thoughts? 

 

UMW HIST300F: The New American Militarism

What does Bacevich say are the root causes of this new wave of American militarism and what are its manifestations? Thinking about some of our earlier discussions, how does this new American militarism differ from the militarism we saw in the 1890s that ultimately helped lead the U.S. into the war of 1898?

UMBC HIST355: The Horrible Wonder of the Bomb

I want to get the discussion started off with a quote that Fiege uses from one of the nuclear scientists. Isidor Rabi explained, "Physicists are the Peter Pans of the human race. They never grow up, and they keep their curiosity."

What is your reaction to this formulation of scientists? Is Rabi's view of the imaginative power of scientists and their inherent innocence simply trivializing the deeper moral implications of the work of the Manhattan Project? For instance, Rachel Carson normally got lost in the wonder of nature as a child, yet her imagination took her on a very different path, shaped by her sense of morality and protecting humanity.

Or is it not so black and white? By shedding light on this overlooked side of the atomic scientists, what is Fiege trying to do?

UMBC HIST355: The Dust Bowl

The notable African-American intellectual, James Baldwin, wrote frequently during the middle of the twentieth century about the social processes by which the "new" immigrants gradually became American. In his estimation, the new immigrants were seduced by the allure of white supremacy as they increasingly loss contact with land and with community. Regimented into the disciplines of industrial work, and having loss previous forms of independence and intimate relationships with land and soil, the new immigrants found white supremacy as the ideal method to gain back the illusion of control in their lives. As Baldwin sees it, white supremacy itself became a confining "factory" for the new immigrants without them even knowing it.

I point to Baldwin's work because it offers us an interesting angle for understanding the social transformations that helped lead to the Dust Bowl in the Southern Plains. Notably, many observers have pointed to this late-nineteenth-century development of American laborers and farmers gradually losing their sense of independence and connections to the land as they were incorporated into industrial and wage-labor sectors or who attempted independence but found little permanence (such as the "suitcase farmers" who came to the Great Plains to exploit the land but not make a home there).

Did the farmers of the Southern Plains lose a connection with the land? If they did, as Baldwin suggests about the new immigrants, what did the farmers embrace in order to gain some measure of control over their lives? In the drive to overproduce in excess and overuse the land, did farmers lose a sense of having something more than just capital invested in the landscape? What happens when we, as human beings, only see the land as potential capital?

UMBC HIST355: Roosevelt Invents the Safari

Teddy Roosevelt: After three days on safari, have yet to take quinine--real American men should go into the tropics without any anti-malarial protection. I firmly believe a sound immune system is the sign of sound physical rigor and moral character.   (May 1, 1909 at 7:43 a.m.)

Teddy Roosevelt: Feeling feverish. Probably just the heat. (May 2, 1909 at 1:37 p.m.)

Teddy Roosevelt: Laying down for just a moment to regain my strength. (May 2, 1909 at 6:12 p.m.)

Teddy Roosevelt: Vomited. (May 2, 1909 at 6:15 p.m.)

[also, click on the image below to see the film of Roosevelt on safari]