Browsing by Subject "Cultural history"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    Displacement and equilibrium: a cultural history of engineering in America before its "Golden Age"
    (2012-08) Kmiec, David M.
    An understanding of the value structures around and cultural context of engineers and engineering in America in the period before professionalization is essential to critical rhetorical and historical treatment of engineering in the late nineteenth century and beyond. Yet, political and critical histories of engineering alike tend to ignore (or superficially treat) the influence of the military origins of engineers and the novel political, social, and environmental context of the engineering concept's development. This dissertation is a cultural study of the engineering concept in America from the Revolution to the beginning of the Civil War. Using rhetorical criticism and historical context drawn from both familiar and alternative settings, it makes critical observations about the displacement of military legitimacy in the changing political environment of the early American period and suggests a value structure for engineering that could be used to produce alternative readings of engineering organizations and events in later periods.
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    Love China, But Not the Bomb: Toward A Cultural History of Western-educated Chinese Scientists
    (2014-06) Song, Baojie
    Building on the author's own research experience in writing the life of one Chinese nuclear physicist, this paper discusses the conflict between his life and two narrative conventions that constrain the writing of biographies of western-educated Chinese scientists--biographies of "great men" and biographies of "great patriots." Cultural history is proposed as an alternative approach to scientific biography in writing the life of scientific individuals. A cultural history narrative of Hoff Lu unfolds the tensions in the twentieth century China by exploring the meanings he himself conceived in the daily experience of his life, especially his experience of Peking opera, which are significant for interpreting his choice to quit the Chinese nuclear bomb program.
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    War is the health of the State: war, empire, and anarchy in the languages of American national security
    (2014-12) Johnson, Ryan M.
    On the evening of September 6, 1901 anarchist Leon Czolgosz shot and killed U.S. President William McKinley. This violent scene set the stage for the creation of a popular, political, and legal culture premised upon defending the American nation from the specter of anarchy, both real and imagined. In this dissertation, I argue that the opening years of the twentieth century should be understood as a critical moment in the history of the American national security state. Beginning in 1901, government institutions enacted security legislation and policy in an effort to defend the state and the nation from the threat of enemy anarchists, engaging in a political and popular cultural environment defined by discourses surrounding exclusion and surveillance. I analyze these popular conceptualizations of anarchists as enemies of the nation and state alongside the circulation of a security-centric political discourse and the growth of surveillance bureaucracies as a way to trace the rise of a culture of state power and national identity centered upon the languages and metaphors of national security. National leaders enacted regulatory policies such as the Anarchist Exclusion Act of 1903 at a critical moment of federal growth in U.S. history. They increased the breadth and scope of federal bureaucracies like the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Justice, and the Immigration and Naturalization Service in order to secure the nation from the threats posed by anarchists. This national security project was rationalized as a necessary defensive measure to protect the nation from enemy anarchists. Americans engaged in a culture of war during a time of peace and from 1901 onward, the American nation-state acted as if it was at war with anarchy.