History
In Order to Ensure Permanency: Hiking Trails and Grassroots Conservation in Early Twentieth-Century Pennsylvania
Members of Pennsylvania’s first hiking clubs, founded as early as 1916, crafted ideologies to justify outdoor recreation and preserve hiking opportunities that drew from conservationism, health, religion, and patriotism. This process resulted not only in the growing popularity of hiking throughout the twentieth century but also activities resembling and, in some cases, fostering the modern environmental movement. Central to the formation of this ideology was the construction, maintenance, and protection of hiking trails. Pennsylvania’s 229 miles of the Appalachian Trail demanded the most attention, but the 116-mile long Horse Shoe Trail and other shorter trails also required years of volunteer construction work followed by constant maintenance. Even as hiking clubs blazed and cleared trails, they realized that shifting ownership of the land and subsequent development would threaten the permanency of their efforts. In response, individuals and clubs waged aggressive public relations campaigns, secured easements, bought and managed land, and lobbied government for funding and protection. These tactics—some effective, others less so—anticipated the corridor protection, greenway, and conservation easement policies and rhetorical strategies of the modern environmental movement but also struck a balance between pragmatic conservationism and the deeper patriotic and spiritual meaning hikers drew from the act of nature walking. These clubs have left a rich, if widely dispersed, historical record in the form of meeting minutes, hike schedules, financial documents, and newspaper clippings that serve to resurrect a dynamic form of grassroots conservation that has escaped previous studies of the modern environmental movement.
Representing the Yellow ‘Other’: Japan and China in American Popular Culture 1924-1942
The National Origins Act of 1924 effectively ended Japanese immigration into the United States. The act was a response to pressures from Progressive eugenicists and West Coast agricultural interests who feared competition from Japanese migrant workers. The passage of the National Origins Act also ended a period in which American political leaders saw Japanas a close partner and protg to the United States, and began a slow process in which the American people othered Japan. American filmmakers, writers, artists and other popular culture figures were deeply involved in othering Japan and the Japanese, and ultimately rehabilitating the image of China and the Chinese, who had, up until that time, been seen as the great yellow peril and much more of a threat than the Japanese, who were seen as much more like Americans. Ultimately, those similarities would prove to be Japanese-Americans undoing. › Continue reading
What’s That I Hear: Domestic Surveillance and Counterintelligence on Antiwar Musicians in the 1960s
During the 1960′s era, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) engaged in numerous campaigns of intelligence gathering and counterintelligence against an unknown number of targets that were perceived as threats to the American government. Among these targets were numerous musicians who chose to voice protest against U.S. involvement in Vietnam through song. My paper examines the FBI’s surveillance and counterintelligence activities carried out against these musicians, most notably folksinger Phil Ochs, and questions whether such efforts were necessary for maintaining national security, or were instead an attempt to compel a more favorable environment for war-making. Looking further, I question whether similar actions could be carried out in today’s comparably polarized wartime environment, and what might be done to help protect the voice of peace from an often hostile government.