scholarly journals Fit to be president: William Howard Taft, sports and athleticism

2021 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-134
Author(s):  
Adam Burns
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Physical Fitness ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Theodore Roosevelt ◽  
White House ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The Us ◽  
Public Consciousness

The early twentieth century was a time when the US public consciousness recognized an increasing association between their political leaders and sports and athleticism. With an exceptional precedent for this connection set by Theodore Roosevelt (1901–09), his replacement as US president would inevitably find it hard to keep pace. In the modern-day popular consciousness, Roosevelt’s immediate successor, William Howard Taft (1909–13), is often noted more for his obesity than for his physical athleticism or sporting prowess. Yet, as this article shows, as Taft moved closer to the White House, the contemporary US press increasingly associated him with sports, and at least the pursuit of physical fitness. In a post-Rooseveltian America, a rise to national political prominence demanded a portrayal of a president’s links to sports and athleticism, even in the unlikeliest of candidates.

Girl Wonder: Nathalia Crane, Poetic Prodigy of the 1920s

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
PAUL BRADLEY BELLEW
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Agency ◽  
Women's Sexuality ◽  
Young Girls ◽  
Women’S Sexuality ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The Us

Largely forgotten today, from approximately the late 1910s through the 1930s, at least a dozen young girls brought out numerous books in the US. But there was one girl who was particularly talented and successful: Nathalia Crane, who published her first collection of poetry when she was just eleven years old in 1924. This article analyzes both her work and her reception from her first success through the subsequent controversy over her authorship instigated by a local Brooklyn newspaper. In the process, the article demonstrates the complicated connections between perceptions of girlhood and women's sexuality as they relate to political agency in the early twentieth-century United States.

Opening the Chrysalis: Willard D. Straight’s Sketches, Photographs, and Accounts of Korea’s Interaction with the Outside World, 1904–5

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bahar Gürsel
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Textual Analysis ◽  
Transition Period ◽  
Global History ◽  
Cornell University ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The Us ◽  
Manuscript Collections ◽  
Visual Reading

Abstract Willard D. Straight – architect, diplomat, photographer, publisher, sketcher, and writer – arrived in Korea in 1904 as a correspondent during the Russo-Japanese War, and became the US vice consul in Seoul in 1905. By utilizing a number of images from the Willard Dickerman Straight Papers of Cornell University Library’s Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, and by referring to other relevant sources of/about Straight, this essay presents a textual analysis and comprehensive visual reading about the country which Straight observed in a very crucial transition period in global history. It provides a glimpse at the perspective of an early twentieth-century American diplomat, eyewitness, photographer, and writer on the cultural, industrial, and technological transformations that Korea experienced in the early 1900s as a consequence of its interaction with major world powers.

1900–1915

2020 ◽  
pp. 37-54
Author(s):  
Barbara Barksdale Clowse
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Progressive Era ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Rural Families ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The Us

Bradley emphasized prevention with patients because curing diseases remained problematic in early twentieth century medicine. The zeitgeist of the Progressive Era boded well for expanding health care in urban areas, but the doctor worried about rural families, especially in Appalachia. She closed her Atlanta office in 1915 and became a rural field doctor for the US Children’s Bureau.

Catholic Charismatic Renewal and Pentecostalism

2020 ◽  
pp. 60-66
Author(s):  
Opoku Onyinah
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Holy Spirit ◽  
John Xxiii ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
Charismatic Renewal ◽  
Pope John Xxiii ◽  
Catholic Charismatic Renewal

A new set of Pentecostal renewal started in the early twentieth century leading to the proliferation of Pentecostal denominations, and renewal movements within the then existing denominations. The beginning of this Pentecostal renewal has often been linked with the Bethel Bible School, which was started by Charles Fox Parham, and amplified by William Joseph Seymour at Azusa Street, Los Angeles, in the US. This article brings another dimension of the renewal by demonstrating that, for the Catholic Charismatics the outbreak of the Holy Spirit in the early twentieth century was partly an answer to the prayer of Pope Leo XIII. In addition, the Catholic Charismatic advocates consider the Pentecostal experience, dubbed Duquesne Weekend, which led to the Catholic Charismatic Renewal movements as the answer to the prayer of Pope John XXIII at the Second Vatican. The considerations of the Catholic Charismatics are presented apparently as an affirmation of the sovereignty of God over his Church and the world.

Pharmaceutical patenting and the transformation of American medical ethics

2016 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 577-600 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOSEPH M. GABRIEL
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
American Medical Association ◽  
Medical Association ◽  
Medical Ethics ◽  
American Medical ◽  
Medical Science ◽  
Pharmaceutical Patents ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The Us

AbstractThe attitudes of physicians and drug manufacturers in the US toward patenting pharmaceuticals changed dramatically from the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth. Formerly, physicians and reputable manufacturers argued that pharmaceutical patents prioritized profit over the advancement of medical science. Reputable manufactures refused to patent their goods and most physicians shunned patented products. However, moving into the early twentieth century, physicians and drug manufacturers grew increasingly comfortable with the idea of pharmaceutical patents. In 1912, for example, the American Medical Association dropped the prohibition on physicians holding medical patents. Shifts in wider patenting cultures therefore transformed the ethical sensibilities of physicians.

New Asian Races, New Mixtures, and the “Mexican” Race

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Schor
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Racial Classification ◽  
Racial Categorization ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The Us ◽  
European Immigrants ◽  
The One ◽  
Us Census

This chapter discusses changes in racial categorization in the early twentieth century with respect to the US census. Whenever there was a question of the racial classification of new populations, whether in the continental United States or in the territories acquired since 1867, the census always relied on the principles and techniques developed since 1850 to distinguish blacks from whites. Chief among these was the principle of hypodescent, in more or less rigid forms. However, the early twentieth century saw change occurring in two directions: on the one hand, the racialization of a growing number of non-European immigrants and their descendants; on the other, the weakening of the distinctions between the descendants of European immigrants. The remainder of the chapter details the disappearance of the “mulatto” category and the introduction and forcible elimination of the “Mexican” category.

The Promise and The Lost City of Z: Diasporas, Cinematic Imperialism and Commercial Films

1969 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 150-161
Author(s):  
Sophia Balakian ◽  
Virginia R. Dominguez
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Pop Culture ◽  
Armenian Genocide ◽  
Movie Industry ◽  
Lost City ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The Us ◽  
Global North

Through a mutual interview exchange, the authors reflect on two recent commercial films – The Promise and The Lost City of Z. The films deal with the Armenian genocide and British exploration of the Amazon, respectively, both chronicling events that took place in the early twentieth century. The authors’ inquiries address questions of diasporic imperialism through film, Othering, violence, and the US movie industry. While differing in their readings and opinions of the films, the authors argue that both movies reflect contemporary US fantasies and preoccupations, and that commercial cinema – and pop culture in the Global North more broadly – ought to be taken more seriously by anthropologists.

Sound of Body: Music, Sports and Health in Victorian Britain

2015 ◽  
Vol 140 (2) ◽  
pp. 343-369 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer R. Sheppard
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Physical Exercise ◽  
Physical Fitness ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Sporting Events ◽  
Victorian Britain ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Main Emphasis ◽  
New Ideas

ABSTRACTThis article explores ways in which music intersected with the growth of sports in Victorian Britain at the end of the nineteenth century. Although there have been valuable studies of music and sports recently, their main emphasis has been on popular music and contemporary sporting events; a study of the period when playing and watching sports began to acquire its present-day shape has yet to be undertaken. This article moves towards that by examining connections between music and sports through broader social and cultural developments, in particular new ideas about morality, health and physical fitness. It situates commentaries about the healthfulness of music in relation to nineteenth-century discourses about sport, in addition to contextualizing notions of singing and health in the increasing professionalization of Victorian medicine. Finally, this article extends and relocates early twentieth-century encapsulations of singing as physical exercise in the context of concern over degeneration in national fitness.

A Mighty Bulwark against the Blind and Raging Forces of Nature

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew M. Busch
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Water Supply ◽  
Colorado River ◽  
River System ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Environmental Improvements ◽  
Early Twentieth Century

This chapter describes Austin’s natural features and hazards, concentrating on the Colorado River system. It then investigates how Austin’s early twentieth century business and political leaders struggled to fund dams to make the river safer and to profit from it via hydroelectricity, recreation, and water supply. Finally, it demonstrates how early environmental improvements benefited whites but not other groups.

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