The selection from the text that I’ve chosen to discuss is the following: The situation was exacerbated, according to Lisa Tetrault, because women could earn a living through the lyceum lecture circuit in the 1870s – 1880s, a popular form of entertainment and adult education featuring traveling lecturers and performers. They came to expect similar …
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Quebecois Immigration to New England
The selection from the reading that I’ve chosen to discuss is the following: Industrialization, well under way by the 1860s, created a stiff demand for workers in the textile and boot and shoe industries. Laborers were also needed in building construction and in canal and railroad work. The native and Irish-immigrant labor force present in …
Irish-Americans, Baseball, Whiteness
Here’s my first discussion post for HIS-200: Applied History. ===== The selection from the text that I’ve chosen to discuss is the following: In contrast, the other main non-English immigrant group of the period, the Germans (Cohn 1995), assimilated much more easily. While language was a problem, they were more highly educated and skilled than …
A New Year and a New Term
I finished my World War II class back in December and had a couple of weeks off before starting my second-to-last history class, one called Applied History. It’s a lower-level class, which I’ll follow with a thesis writing class. Since I started a new job in late November, and I’m currently teaching two literature classes …
Balancing Act: Bombing the Auschwitz Rail Lines
The inherent conflict between the strategic and humanitarian concerns of the Allies as the war drew to a close is perhaps best symbolized by certain aspects of the Holocaust. One of the major ethical debates that has arise out of the Holocaust is the decision by the Allied forces not to bomb the rail lines …
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The War in 1943: Allied Victories and Outproduction
While I am cautious to state that I do not believe that the whole of the Allied victory in World War II can be attributed to a handful of causes, I do nevertheless believe that two of the factors Richard Overy lists in his book were more decisive than the others: the Soviet victories at …
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Perkonkrusts and the Final Solution in Latvia
Andrew Ezergailis, the author of what remains the standard work in English on the Final Solution in Latvia, gave his book the subtitle The Missing Center.[1] He chose this subtitle to represent what he felt was a noticeable absence in the discussion of collaboration by Latvians with Nazis. On the one hand, Ezergailis argued, some …
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WWII: Race and the Pacific War
To determine the extent to which racial identity played in a role in combat in the Pacific theater in World War II, it is necessary to examine the question from both sides of the conflict, i.e., from the standpoint of both the Japanese and the Allies. On the latter point, it is necessary to consider …
Strategic Bombing: A Moral Hazard?
To say that the Allied campaign of “strategic bombing” during World War II was controversial is ans understatement. With the exception of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it might be the single most debated purely military aspect of the war. While the initial reactions to the strategic bombings of Germany might have been …
Japanese Victories from China to Midway
Understanding why the Japanese were so successful in the early years of World War II requires a thorough exploration of the several campaigns in which Japan was involved during that period. Although period began with occupation of and campaigns against China, later actions undertaken against the European anti-Axis countries and finally the United States had …
Inevitable Historicity 