The press and the presidency

Este artículo discute el destino interrelacionado de dos instituciones estadounidenses que se originaron en la época revolucionaria y que son extensiones de la idea de la soberanía del pueblo. Una es la presidencia, algo que no tiene equivalente fuera de los Estados Unidos, y la otra es la prensa independiente, cosa que ha sido muy escasa fuera del mundo occidental. La libertad de la prensa está garantizada en la Constitución de los Estados Unidos y, como resultado, muchos periodistas han aprovechado del derecho para criticar duramente a la política, y en particular al presidente. Este artículo recorre la evolución de la relación entre estas dos instituciones, utilizando distintos ejemplos de conflicto y malentendidos, desde la época de Benjamín Franklin hasta los presidentes más destacados del siglo XX. Aunque la controversia de los últimos años entre la prensa estadounidense y los presidentes ha provocado mayor auto-conciencia e introspección entre los periodistas, desafortunadamente estos problemas no están más cerca a una resolución que cuando surgieron por primera vez hace varias décadas

Florida\u27s Fudged Identity

No symbols where none intended, the warning that Samuel Beckett issued near the end of his second novel, would drive American Studies professors out of business and push them into an occupation of greater social benefit.1 For it is the point of this essay to find some inadvertent symbols and to discern iconographic significance in the history of a state. Florida should make an especially promising subject because of its mythic status, tapping into the nation’s definition of itself. Its saga appears to be more than a combination of geographic constraints and political boundaries and economic developments and demographic patterns. Its history also incorporates a mystique, which no state in the union needs but which a few states have nevertheless transmitted. Florida might well be such a rarity because it has claimed to be a kind of hologram of Paradise, a place where the most ancient, Edenic memories of the race are somehow re-invented in the form of contemporary fantasies

Making America Harmonious: The Jewish Contribution to Popular Music

Dr. Stephen J. Whitfield, Max Richter Professor of American Civilization, Brandeis University… An exploration of how American musical taste was unified from World War I through the Vietnam War by the contributions of Jewish songwriters.https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/bennettcenter-posters/1331/thumbnail.jp

From modernization to post-modernism : a century and a half of french views of the United States

Pese al tiempo transcurrido, Democracy in America de Alexis de Tocqueville continúa siendo una obra fundamental para entender cómo los europeos ven y entienden a los Estados Unidos. La aproximación de Tocqueville se entiende, desde nuestra visión de finales del siglo XX, como una obra eminentemente sociológica y no exclusivamente política. Será desde esta perspectiva a partir de la cual se aproximen a la realidad norteamericana autores contemporáneos como Baudrillard, Simone de Beauvoir o Micel Crozier

From modernization to post-modernism : a century and a half of french views of the United States

Pese al tiempo transcurrido, Democracy in America de Alexis de Tocqueville continúa siendo una obra fundamental para entender cómo los europeos ven y entienden a los Estados Unidos. La aproximación de Tocqueville se entiende, desde nuestra visión de finales del siglo XX, como una obra eminentemente sociológica y no exclusivamente política. Será desde esta perspectiva a partir de la cual se aproximen a la realidad norteamericana autores contemporáneos como Baudrillard, Simone de Beauvoir o Micel Crozier

Management of the Brown-Headed Cowbird: Implications for Endangered Species and Agricultural Damage Mitigation

The brown-headed cowbird (Molothrus ater; cowbird) is unique among North American blackbirds (Icteridae) because it is managed to mitigate the negative effects on endangered songbirds and economic losses in agricultural crops. Cowbird brood parasitism can further affect species that are considered threatened or endangered due to anthropogenic land uses. Historically, cowbirds have often been culled without addressing ultimate causes of songbird population declines. Similar to other North American blackbirds, cowbirds depredate agricultural crops, albeit at a lower rate reported for other blackbird species. Conflicting information exists on the extent of agricultural damage caused by cowbirds and the effectiveness of mitigation measures for application to management. In this paper, we reviewed the progress that has been made in cowbird management from approximately 2005 to 2020 in relation to endangered species. We also reviewed losses to the rice (Oryza sativa) crop attributed to cowbirds and the programs designed to reduce depredation. Of the 4 songbird species in which cowbirds have been managed, both the Kirtland’s warbler (Dendroica kirtlandii) and black-capped vireo (Vireo atricapilla) have been removed from the endangered species list following population increases in response to habitat expansion. Cowbird trapping has ceased for Kirtland’s warbler but continues for the vireo. In contrast, least Bell’s vireo (V. bellii pusillus) and southwestern willow flycatcher (Empidonax traillii extimus) still require cowbird control after modest increases in suitable habitat. Our review of rice depredation by cowbirds revealed models that have been created to determine the number of cowbirds that can be taken to decrease rice loss have been useful but require refinement with new data that incorporate cowbird population changes in the rice growing region, dietary preference studies, and current information on population sex ratios and female cowbird egg laying. Once this information has been gathered, bioenergetic and economic models would increase our understanding of the damage caused by cowbirds

Book Reviews

Book reviews of: In the Wake of War: Military Occupation, Emancipation, and Civil War America. By Andrew F. Lang. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2017. Acknowledgements, notes, bibliography, index. Pp. xi, 317. $47.50 cloth. ISBN: 978-0-8071-6706-9.) Keep the Days: Reading the Civil War Diaries of Southern Women. By Steven M. Stowe (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2018. Acknowledgements, bibliographical references, and index. Pp. xxv, 199.$29.95 paper. ISBN: 9781469640969.) The Guerrilla Hunters: Irregular Conflicts during the Civil War. Edited by Brian D. McKnight and Marton A. Myers. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2017. Acknowledgments, illustrations, maps, notes, index. Pp. ix, 399. $49.95, cloth. ISBN: 0807164976.) Strategic Sisterhood: The National Council of Negro Women in the Black Freedom Struggle. By Rebecca Tuuri. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018. Acknowledgements, illustrations, notes, index. Pp. xi, 313.$90 cloth, $29.95 paperback. ISBN: 9781469638898.) Environmental Disaster in the Gulf South: Two Centuries of Catastrophe, Risk, and Resilience. Edited by Cindy Ermus. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2018. Pp. 1-206.$45 hardcover. ISBN-978-0-8071-6710-6.) In Remembrance of Emmett Till: Regional Stories and Media Responses to the Black Freedom Struggle. By Darryl Mace. (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2014. Preface, introduction, illustrations, acknowledgements, notes, bibliography, index. Pp. xi, 212. $40 cloth. ISBN: 978-0-8131-4536-5.) The Annotated Pickett’s History of Alabama And Incidentally of Georgia and Mississippi, from the Earliest Period. Edited by James P. Pate. (Montgomery: New South Books, 2018. Notes, acknowledgements, illustrations, index. Pp. 600.$60.00. ISBN: 978- 1-58838-032-6.

The Legacy of ERA, Privatization and the Policy Ratchet

This article explores the ways in which the neo-liberal impetus toward the privatization of state schooling signalled in the Education Reform Act 1988 (ERA) has become embedded in the English school system. Four main points are made. First, that ERA itself was of huge strategic rather than substantive importance as far as privatization is concerned. Second, by tracing the lineage of privatization from ERA onwards a 'ratchet' effect of small and incremental policy moves can be identified, which have disseminated, embedded and naturalized privatization within public sector provision. Third, that while privatization has been taken up and taken much further by New Labour than it had been by the Conservatives there are differences between the two sets of governments in the role of privatization in education policy and the role of the state. Fourth, the participation of private providers in the planning and delivery of state services has put the private sector at the very heart of policy. At points the article draws upon interviews conducted with private sector providers. © 2008 Sage Publications

Book Reviews

Book reviews of: Grant at Vicksburg: The General and the Siege. By Michael B. Ballard. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2013. Illustrations, maps, notes, index. Pp. xiii, 232. $32.95 cloth,$32.95 e-book. ISBN: 9780809332403. A Voice That Could Stir an Army: Fannie Lou Hamer and the Rhetoric of the Black Freedom Movement. By Maegan Parker Brooks (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2014. Index, bibliography. Pp. 314. $60 cloth,$60 e-book. ISBN 978- 1-628646-004-9.) A New Southern Woman: T he Correspondence of Eliza Lucy Irion Neilson, 1871-1883. Edited by Giselle Roberts. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2013. Acknowledgements, illustrations, notes, index. Pp. viii, 306. $49.95 cloth. ISBN: 9781611171037.) Pageants, Parlors, and Pretty Women: Race and Beauty in the Twentieth-Century South. By Blain Roberts. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014). Acknowledgments, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. Pp. ix, 363.$39.95 hardcover, $29.99 e-book. ISBN: 978-1-4696-1420-5.) Black Freedom, White Resistance, and Red Menace: Civil Rights and Anticommunism in the Jim Crow South. By Yasuhiro Katagiri. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2014. Acknowledgements, illustrations, notes, index. Pp.xi, 392.$47.50 hardcover. ISBN 9780807153130.) Natchez Country: Indians, Colonists, and the Landscapes of Race in French Louisiana. By George Edward Milne. (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2015. List of figures, acknowledgments, notes, bibliography, index. Pp. xi, 293. $84.95 cloth,$26.95 paper. ISBN: 9780820347509.) In Remembrance of Emmett Till: Regional Stories and Media Responses to the Black Freedom Struggle. By Darryl Mace. (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2014. Preface, introduction, illustrations, acknowledgements, notes, bibliography, index. Pp. xi, 212. $40 cloth. ISBN: 978- 0-8131-4536-5.) The Edible South: The Power of Food and the Making of an American Region. By Marcie Cohen Ferris. (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2014. 496 pp., 7x10, 50 halftones, notes, bibl., index.$35 cloth, $34.99 e-book. ISBN: 978- 1-4696-1768-8.) Down to the Crossroads: Civil Rights, Black Power, and the Meredith March Against Fear. By Aram Goudsouzian. (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014. Map, notes, acknowledgements, index. Pp. ix, 351.$30 cloth, $18 paper. ISBN: 0374192200.) After Slavery: Race, Labor, and Citizenship in the Reconstruction South. Edited by Bruce Baker and Brian Kelly. Afterword by Eric Foner. (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2013. Acknowledgments, images, maps, notes, bibliography, index. Pp. vii, 279.$74.95 cloth. $24.95 paper. ISBN 978- 0-8130-4477-4.) George Ohr: Sophisticate and Rube. By Ellen J. Lippert. (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2013. Acknowledgements, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index, Pp. x, 163.$40 cloth. ISBN: 9781617039010.