U.S. welfare rights activists have long envied women in Sweden, who benefited from social policies that made the incidence of poverty among children and solo mothers among the lowest in the world. This situation has begun to change with the rise of neoliberalism in Sweden from the late 1970s to the middle of the 1990s; social policy that had once dramatically improved the lives of solo mothers began to give way to policies that privatized their problems. Solo mothers in the United States were worse off, as conservative policymakers launched a clamorous campaign to restore the "traditional nuclear family" as the only guarantor of women's and children's well-being, blaming solo mothers for everything from juvenile crime to their own poverty. In this revealing and timely book, sociologist and former legal services attorney, Celia Winkler, charts the policies in Sweden and the United States that transformed the social and economic situation of solo mothers, who are an early warning of more general danger: the canary in the coal mine.
U.S. welfare rights activists have long envied women in Sweden, who benefited from social policies that made the incidence of poverty among children and solo mothers among the lowest in the world. This situation has begun to change with the rise of neoliberalism in Sweden from the late 1970s to the middle of the 1990s; social policy that had once dramatically improved the lives of solo mothers began to give way to policies that privatized their problems. Solo mothers in the United States were worse off, as conservative policymakers launched a clamorous campaign to restore the "traditional nuclear family" as the only guarantor of women's and children's well-being, blaming solo mothers for everything from juvenile crime to their own poverty. In this revealing and timely book, sociologist and former legal services attorney, Celia Winkler, charts the policies in Sweden and the United States that transformed the social and economic situation of solo mothers, who are an early warning of more general danger: the canary in the coal mine.
Placed between and around the temporal and spatial context of the midnineteenth and mid-twentieth century revolutions in Central Europe, fi ve generations of two families spun their interwoven lives while gallantly fi ghting against the dark undercurrents of history.
Cover -- Copyright page -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Part I: Places -- 1 How German Is It? -- 2 Music in Place -- 3 Musical Itinerancy in a World of Nations -- 4 Music at the Fairs -- Part II: People -- 5 Mendelssohn on the Road -- 6 A.B. Marx's Cosmopolitan Nationalism -- 7 Schumann's German Nation -- 8 The Musical Worlds of Brahms's Hamburg -- Part III: Public and Private -- 9 What Difference Does a Nation Make? -- 10 Men with Trombones -- 11 Women's Wagner -- 12 Hausmusik in the Third Reich -- 13 To Be or Not to Be Wagnerian in Leni Riefenstahl's Films -- 14 Saving Music -- Notes -- Index
Bach's St. Matthew Passion is universally acknowledged to be one of the world's supreme musical masterpieces, yet in the years after Bach's death it was forgotten by all but a small number of his pupils and admirers. The public rediscovered it in 1829, when Felix Mendelssohn conducted the work before a glittering audience of Berlin artists and intellectuals, Prussian royals, and civic notables. The concert soon became the stuff of legend, sparking a revival of interest in and performance of Bach that has continued to this day. Mendelssohn's performance gave rise to the notion that recovering and performing Bach's music was somehow "national work." In 1865 Wagner would claim that Bach embodied "the history of the German spirit's inmost life." That the man most responsible for the revival of a masterwork of German Protestant culture was himself a converted Jew struck contemporaries as less remarkable than it does us today—a statement that embraces both the great achievements and the disasters of 150 years of German history. In this book, Celia Applegate asks why this particular performance crystallized the hitherto inchoate notion that music was central to Germans' collective identity. She begins with a wonderfully readable reconstruction of the performance itself and then moves back in time to pull apart the various cultural strands that would come together that afternoon in the Singakademie. The author investigates the role played by intellectuals, journalists, and amateur musicians (she is one herself) in developing the notion that Germans were "the people of music." Applegate assesses the impact on music's cultural place of the renewal of German Protestantism, historicism, the mania for collecting and restoring, and romanticism. In her conclusion, she looks at the subsequent careers of her protagonists and the lasting reverberations of the 1829 performance itself.
From the author of the bestselling classics We're Just Like You, Only Prettier, and Bless Your Heart, Tramp, comes a collection of essays so funny, you'll shoot co'cola out of your nose. Topics include such gems as: • Why Miss North Carolina is too nice to hate • How Gwyneth Paltrow wants to improve your pathetic life • Strapped for cash? Try cat whispering • Sex every night for a year? How do you wrap that? • Get yer Wassail on: It's carolin' time • Airlines serving up one hot mess • Action figure Jesus • Why Clay Aiken ain't marrying your glandular daughter • And much more! Complete with a treasure trove of Celia's genuine southern recipes, You Can't Drink All Day if You Don't Start in the Morning is sure to appeal to anyone who lives south of something.
At the center of this pioneering work in modern European history is the German word Heimat—the homeland, the local place. Translations barely penetrate the meaning of the word, which has provided the emotional and ideological common ground for a variety of associations and individuals devoted to the cause of local preservation. Celia Applegate examines at both the national and regional levels the cultural meaning of Heimat and why it may be pivotal to the troubled and very timely question of German identity. The ideas and activities clustered around Heimat shed new light particularly on problems of modernization. Instead of viewing the Germans as a dangerously anti-modern people, Applegate argues that they used the cultivation of Heimat to ground an abstract nationalism in their attachment to familiar places and to reconcile the modern industrial and urban world with the rural landscapes and customs they admired. Primarily a characteristic of the middle classes, love of Heimat constituted an alternative vision of German unity to the familiar aggressive, militaristic one. The Heimat vision of Germany emphasized cultural diversity and defined German identity by its internal members rather than its external enemies. Applegate asks that we re-examine the continuities of German history from the perspective of the local places that made up Germany, rather than from that of prominent intellectuals or national policymakers. The local patriotism of Heimat activists emerges as an element of German culture that persisted across the great divides of 1918, 1933, and 1945. She also suggests that this attachment to a particular place is a feature of Europeans in general and is deserving of further attention. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1990.
Unique in the literature on Jewish camping, this book provides an in-depth study of a community-based, residential summer camp that serves Jewish children from primarily rural areas. Focused on Camp Ben Frankel (CBF), established in 1950 in southern Illinois, this book focuses on how a pluralist Jewish camp constructs meaningful experiences of Jewish “family” and Judaism for campers—and teaches them about Israel. Inspired by models of the earliest camps established for Jewish children in urban areas, CBF’s founders worked to create a camp that would appeal to the rural, often isolated Jewish families in its catchment area. Although seemingly on the periphery of American Jewish life, CBF staff and campers are revealed to be deeply entwined with national developments in Jewish culture and practice and, indeed, contributors to shaping them. This research highlights the importance of campers’ experiences of traditional elements of the Jewish “family” (an experience increasingly limited to time at camp), as well as the overarching importance of song. Over the years, Judaism becomes constructed as fun, welcoming, and easy for campers, while Israel is presented in ways that are meant to be appropriate for a community camp. In the camp’s earliest decades, Israel was framed by “traditional” Zionist discourse; later, as community priorities shifted, the cause of Russian Jews was the focus. Most recently, as Israeli politics have been increasingly viewed as potentially divisive, the camp has adopted an “Israel-lite” approach, focusing on Israel as the Biblical homeland of the Jewish people and a place home to Jews who are similar to American Jews. In sum, this study sheds light on how a small, rural, community camp contributes in significant ways to our understanding of American Jews, their Judaism, and their Zionism.
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