Dans le New York underground des années 1940, la Beat Generation gagne son nom, de même que son étoffe contreculturelle, grâce à l’union entre la quête littéraire d’avant-garde et l’art de vivre anticonformiste que concrétisent spontanément ses inspirateurs. La sensibilité revendiquée par les beats de la première heure, soit leur volonté de libération spirituelle, se forge au milieu de l’American Century, entre le péril nucléaire de la guerre froide et l’effervescence hipster exaltée par le jazz. Pourtant, une décennie après cet épisode marginal aboutissant aux publications de Howl and Other Poems (1956) par Allen Ginsberg et de On the Road (1957) par Jack Kerouac, une nouvelle figure sociale entre dans l’orbite de la Beat Generation : le beatnik. Créé par un journaliste, le néologisme reflète les stéréotypes prêtés au mouvement, sitôt subjugué aux forces de la société de consommation. Le mémoire a pour sujet l’entrée de cette contreculture au sein de la culture de masse, tout en signalant le rôle clé qu’y occupe la presse écrite. Par-delà l’implacabilité proverbiale des critiques que relève l’historiographie, la présente étude soutient que les journaux et les magazines, en ouvrant le champ des représentations associées à la Beat Generation, participent à l’avènement du beatnik, réverbéré dans les autres médias. Au terme de l’analyse, la contreculture se comprend tant par ses idées fondatrices que par la pression qu’exerce la culture de masse sur elle; la réunion de ces deux éléments antagoniques renforce l’importance historique de la Beat Generation comme mouvement social aux États-Unis. / In the New York underground scene of the 1940s, the Beat Generation earns its name as well as its countercultural essence thanks to the union between the avant-garde literary pursuit and the unconventional lifestyle that its inspirers spontaneously create. The sensibility proclaimed by the Beats from the very beginning – their desire for spiritual liberation – builds up in the middle of the American Century, between the nuclear threat of the Cold War and the hipster activity exalted by jazz. Nevertheless, a decade after this period leading to the publication of Howl and Other Poems (1956) by Allen Ginsberg and of On the Road (1957) by Jack Kerouac, a new social figure enters the orbit of the Beat Generation : the Beatnik. Conceived by a journalist, the neologism reflects the stereotypes attributed to the movement, soon subdued by the forces of consumer society. This master’s thesis focuses on the insertion of counterculture into mass culture, while noting the key role played by the written press. Beyond the proverbial harshness of the critics acknowledged by the historiography, this study argues that newspapers and magazines, in opening the field of representations associated with the Beat Generation, participate in the arrival of the Beatnik, also echoed in other media. In the end, the meaning of counterculture depends on both its founding ideas and the pressure mass culture exerts on it; the junction of these two antagonistic elements reinforces the historical importance of the Beat Generation as a social movement in the United States.

New Orleans's extreme flood risk is not entirely inherent in its physical site. Rather, the city's flood vulnerability has been manufactured over time via the efforts of its growth machine to expand the Port of New Orleans and the city's footprint via a series of drainage and shipping canal megaprojects. These canals were created largely at the behest of elite members of the Levee and Dock Boards, who sought to capitalize on New Orleans' strategic location during wartime---particularly World War II---in order to further their own business interests by creating an 'Inner Harbor' facility out of the swampland between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain. Unable to pursue their desired 'improvement' projects with local resources alone, these elites lobbied for and eventually won authorization and funding for their projects from the state and federal governments, with help from allies throughout the Mississippi Valley. As a result, the city's outfall canals along with the Industrial Canal, the Intracoastal Waterway, and the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet have repeatedly allowed flood waters to penetrate the city during hurricanes. While New Orleanians properly blame the Corps of Engineers for the levee and floodwall failures during Hurricane Katrina, the impact of this catastrophic storm cannot be completely understood without an acknowledgment of the role that local elites of decades past have played in continually putting economic growth ahead of public safety, a process which has created New Orleans' near-complete dependence on structural mitigation flood control projects that are never enough to truly protect the city / acase@tulane.edu

<p>In the years 1866-1916, the U.S. Army changed from a frontier constabulary to an industrial age force capable of expeditionary operations. This conversion was made possible by organizational reforms including the creation of a system of professional education, a coordinating central staff, and doctrine integrating tactics, equipment, and organization. Yet formal structures acted in parallel with the informal culture of the officer corps, which proved far more resistant to change. This dissertation will follow the formulation of these reforms by Emory Upton following the Civil War, through their implementation by Elihu Root in the early twentieth century. It concludes in 1916, when new conditions produced an entirely different agenda for reform.</p><p>This period has generally been interpreted in one of two ways. Previous scholarship examining the internal workings of the Army has seen it as a transition from obsolete to modern organization. Despite disagreements as to the origins, impetus, and length of reform, the theme of progress has been consistent. In contrast, the historiography of the Army's external relationship with society has interpreted reform as a failed attempt to introduce militarism by mimicking foreign military institutions alien to American traditions. Although some of the foreign organizational forms were adopted, society ultimately rejected the militarist aims. This dissertation modifies both interpretations by arguing that these reforms were not as great a break with previous practices as generally asserted. The internal changes were actually a reordering of existing practices made possible by the sudden elevation of the reforming faction to organizational power. Individuals sought to emphasize only those limited aspects of the old professional culture that they valued. These individual aims often diverged, leading to a series of disjointed reforms that, while successful in altering the army, did so in unanticipated ways. These internal efforts were meant to improve the army's effectiveness; there was little effort to alter the Army's role in society. Yet the next generation of reformers sought such a change under the dubious guise of a return to tradition. In doing so, they falsely portrayed their predecessors as foreign-inspired militarists, a mischaracterization that has been largely accepted by historians.</p> / Dissertation

<p>"The Afterlives of King Philip's War" examines how this colonial American war entered into narratives of history and literature from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, and investigates how narrative representations of the War restructured both genre and the meaning of the historical event itself. This investigation finds its roots in colonial literature and history - in the events of King Philip's War and the texts that it produced - but moves beyond these initial points of departure to consider this archive as a laboratory for the study of the relationship between genre and knowledge on one hand, and literature and the construction of (proto-) national community on the other. Because of its unique place in the history of the colonies, as well as its positioning within literary studies of Puritan New England, King Philip's War is an example not just of how one community faced a crisis of self-definition, but how that crisis was influenced by, and in turn is reflected in, the literature it produced. In this conception, genre is more than literary form, but represents a social technology with implications for the broader production of knowledge: following the use and production of genre in narrative reveals both literary history and the complicated map of how narrative constructs knowledge in tension with the conventions of genre simultaneously hem in and catalyze reading.</p> / Dissertation

The purpose of this study was to explore systematically the interaction among nation states by focusing on a single case of American policy toward the Arab-Israeli conflict, specifically the symbolic rhetoric in presidential speeches. This study seeks to increase our knowledge about international crises, and any possible patterns and fluctuations in presidential symbolic rhetoric toward the Arab-Israeli conflict during the 1948-1992 period. The central objective is to explore whether changes in symbolic rhetoric may be related to the escalation of the conflict, as well as investigating numerous parameters of the rhetoric itself. The measure of presidential symbolic rhetoric was tested in seven Middle East countries: Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Syria. Theoretically the study adopts Edelman's classification method in distinguishing between referential and condensational symbols. Attention in this study is paid to condensational symbols or symbolic commitment (i.e pride, anxieties, patriotism), and whether the use of those symbols in the Middle East might have been related to three other primary variables: actual conflict in the Middle East, United States military and economic aid to the region, and U.S. political initiatives in the region. In addition, we focused on five distinct conflict periods to see whether changes in symbolic rhetoric patterned itself differently before, during, and after the five crises. The principle conclusion of this research is that the Arab-Israeli conflict was an important issue symbolically to U.S. policy makers, and the presidents of United States lean toward positive symbols. These symbolic commitments tend to increase during the escalation process, and the amount of attention and symbols decreased when war de-escalated. From these results it is possible to assert that presidential perceptions reacted to events as they developed in the region. Convergence between rhetoric and conflict in this specific study suggests that symbols are important political and social indicators in the way policy makers perceive certain issue-areas, and this rhetoric relates to important political events in the Middle East.

The Norden Bombsight was a complex, 2000-piece mechanical computer. It was designed to solve the mathematical problem of dropping bombs from high altitude bombers in order to hit specific ground targets. Originally developed under the supervision of the U.S. Navy, the device was picked up by the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1935, and quickly became the Air Corps’ most important military technology. For the Air Corps, the device not only defined its institutional relevance, but also enabled air power proponents to appeal to the American public’s predilection for technology in order to gain popular support. By the time America entered the Second World War, the device was famous and it captured the hearts of many Americans due to its touted pinpoint accuracy and ability to make war more humane. The belief that the device would make war less brutal reinforced American notions of the link between progress and technology. During the war, the device proved to be a failure, yet the rhetoric and altruistic belief in the bombsight’s ability to save lives persisted. This thesis deconstructs this enduring myth by investigating the language the mass media used to discuss it before and during the war.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of California, Davis, 2006. / (UMI)AAI3250858. Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-02, Section: A, page: 0683. Adviser: Clarence E. Walker.

Thesis (D.A.)--Illinois State University, 1999. / Title from title page screen, viewed July 26, 2006. Dissertation Committee: M. Paul Holsinger (chair), Lawrence W. McBride, John B. Freed, Steven E. Kagle. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 225-239) and abstract. Also available in print.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies, 2006. / "Title from dissertation home page (viewed July 16, 2007)." Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-10, Section: A, page: 3743. Adviser: Donald Warren.

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