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Third wave feminism
First, second and third waves of feminism
Third wave feminism essay
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Much has been written about the Beat generation, especially about the hold its radical freedom has exerted on the American imagination. The Beats who stand out in most of our minds are men and the freedom they enjoyed--a freedom of movement, of creativity, of sexuality--is coded as a particularly male kind of freedom. My paper will suggest that in their autobiographical texts On the Road and The First Third Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady construct a travelling masculinity in an attempt to escape bourgeois patriarchal structures without abandoning traditional patriarchal definitions of masculine power.
In the American imagination, the archetypal national hero is a travelling man: the frontiersman, pioneer, cowboy, scout, who subdued the wilderness and inscribed "America" over the continent. Moving unfettered through American frontiers, they exemplified the freedom of complete self-creation. Lawrence Ferlinghetti's "Editor's Note," which serves as an introduction to Neal Cassady's The First Third, positions Cassady in the American heroic tradition as representative of th...
The Frontier Thesis has been very influential in people’s understanding of American values, government and culture until fairly recently. Frederick Jackson Turner outlines the frontier thesis in his essay “The Significance of the Frontier in American History”. He argues that expansion of society at the frontier is what explains America’s individuality and ruggedness. Furthermore, he argues that the communitarian values experienced on the frontier carry over to America’s unique perspective on democracy. This idea has been pervasive in studies of American History until fairly recently when it has come under scrutiny for numerous reasons. In his essay “The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature”, William Cronon argues that many scholars, Turner included, fall victim to the false notion that a pristine, untouched wilderness existed before European intervention. Turner’s argument does indeed rely on the idea of pristine wilderness, especially because he fails to notice the serious impact that Native Americans had on the landscape of the Americas before Europeans set foot in America.
One of the more romantic elements of American folklore has been the criss-crossing rail system of this country – steel rails carrying Americans to new territories across desert and mountain, through wheat fields and over great rivers. Carl Sandburg has flavored the mighty steam engine in elegant prose and Arlo Guthrie has made the roundhouse a sturdy emblem of America’s commerce.
Because of the outlaw hero’s definitive elements, society more so identifies with this myth. Ray said, “…the scarcity of mature heroes in American...
...to Americans: if their prospects in the East were poor, then they could perhaps start over in the West as a farmer, rancher, or even miner. The frontier was also romanticized not only for its various opportunities but also for its greatly diverse landscape, seen in the work of different art schools, like the “Rocky Mountain School” and Hudson River School, and the literature of the Transcendentalists or those celebrating the cowboy. However, for all of this economic possibility and artistic growth, there was political turmoil that arose with the question of slavery in the West as seen with the Compromise of 1850 and Kansas-Nebraska Act. As Frederick Jackson Turner wrote in his paper “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” to the American Historical Association, “the frontier has gone, and with its going has closed the first period of American history.”
Tindall, G.B. & Shi, D.E. (2010). America a narrative history 8th edition. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. p.205-212.
The West: From Lewis and Clark and Wounded Knee: The Turbulent Story of the Settling of Frontier America.
Somewhere out in the Old West wind kicks up dust off a lone road through a lawless town, a road once dominated by men with gun belts attached at the hip, boots upon their feet and spurs that clanged as they traversed the dusty road. The gunslinger hero, a man with a violent past and present, a man who eventually would succumb to the progress of the frontier, he is the embodiment of the values of freedom and the land the he defends with his gun. Inseparable is the iconography of the West in the imagination of Americans, the figure of the gunslinger is part of this iconography, his law was through the gun and his boots with spurs signaled his arrival, commanding order by way of violent intentions. The Western also had other iconic figures that populated the Old West, the lawman, in contrast to the gunslinger, had a different weapon to yield, the law. In the frontier, his belief in law and order as well as knowledge and education, brought civility to the untamed frontier. The Western was and still is the “essential American film genre, the cornerstone of American identity.” (Holtz p. 111) There is a strong link between America’s past and the Western film genre, documenting and reflecting the nations changes through conflict in the construction of an expanding nation. Taking the genres classical conventions, such as the gunslinger, and interpret them into the ideology of America. Thus The Western’s classical gunslinger, the personification of America’s violent past to protect the freedoms of a nation, the Modernist takes the familiar convention and buries him to signify that societies attitude has change towards the use of diplomacy, by way of outmoding the gunslinger in favor of the lawman, taming the frontier with civility.
The New Deal was a set of acts that effectively gave Americans a new sense of hope after the Great Depression. The New Deal advocated for women’s rights, worked towards ending discrimination in the workplace, offered various jobs to African Americans, and employed millions through new relief programs. Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR), made it his duty to ensure that something was being done. This helped restore the public's confidence and showed that relief was possible. The New Deal helped serve American’s interest, specifically helping women, african american, and the unemployed and proved to them that something was being done to help them.
Roosevelt was elected president in 1932. Once he was elected he came up with the New Deal programs. These programs were a series of government funded projects that lowered unemployment, strengthened the value of the dollar, and kept money in circulation. The purpose of the New Deal programs were the 3 R’s; relief, recovery, and reform. Direct relief and economic recovery were the short term goals and financial reform was the long term goal of the New Deal programs. (Big Tent Democract) The New Deal programs did reach some of their short term goals, but did not ever reach the long term goal of financial reform. Roosevelt’s New Deal did not improve America’s economy as many people believe. In fact, the New Deal has harmed America in the long run.
Miller, Derek D Essay: Brave New World and the threat of technological growth Vol 3 2011.Print
The New Deal period has generally - but not unanimously - been seen as a turning point in American politics, with the states relinquishing much of their autonomy, the President acquiring new authority and importance, and the role of government in citizens' lives increasing. The extent to which this was planned by the architect of the New Deal, Franklin D. Roosevelt, has been greatly contested, however. Yet, while it is instructive to note the limitations of Roosevelt's leadership, there is not much sense in the claims that the New Deal was haphazard, a jumble of expedient and populist schemes, or as W. Williams has put it, "undirected". FDR had a clear overarching vision of what he wanted to do to America, and was prepared to drive through the structural changes required to achieve this vision.
Appleby, Joyce, Alan Brinkley, James M. McPherson. The American Journey: Building a Nation. New York: Glencoe McGraw-Hill, 2000
The stock market crash of October 1929 brought the economic prosperity of the 1920s to an abrupt halt. For the next ten years, the United States was thrown into a deep economic depression. By 1933, the unemployment rate had soared to 25%, up from 3% in 1929. Industrial production declined by approximately 50%, and international trade plunged 30%. This period in history is known as The Great Depression. The Great Depression plunged the American people into an economic crisis unlike anyone had ever experienced in history. Millions of hardworking individuals fell into poverty. Many lost their homes and lived on the street. Many more suffered from mass starvation. Overall, people lost their sense of pride and national spirit for America. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt took office in 1933, when the economy was in a time of complete failure. Right away, Roosevelt took to not only helping the economy but also reviving the American morale after this tough era. Roosevelt implemented a series of executive actions, creating programs and new Federal agencies to help revive the economy. Together this was called The New Deal. One of the agencies that was created was called The Works Progress Administration (WPA). The WPA was created in order to put millions of unemployed Americans to work through governmental projects. Over a period of 8 years, the WPA spent over 3.3 billion dollars on public projects, some of which are still used today. Simultaneously as the United States struggled valiantly to climb out of the Great Depression, the threat of another crisis, a World War, loomed over the US. In June of 1939, the United States army only had 185,000 men enlisted. The need for a stronger, m...
To begin with, the second wave of feminism helped being equality to women in the areas of education, work and pay. Women’s education level has increased dramatically over the last few decades. Just over fifty years from today, there was a smaller percentage of women compared to men who were educated. In the twenty-first century, education indicators show that there is a greater rate of educated women than men. Before the second wave, girls were often bullied and treated unequally for attending school. Girls were expected to follow their mother’s footsteps and practice cooking, cleaning, gardening and other chores performed by the mother. The Title IX of the Education Amendment Act of 1972 was created to “forbid gender discrimination in schools and universities, and also addressed equity in sports.” Equality to girls was not given in school bu...
The New Deal brought significant changes to the employment, banking, rural, housing, labor relations, and retirement industries. All of these major changes created an entirely transformed nation. The nation under FDR’s rule had hope for a better future.