Minnesota History Center Competition, St. Paul, Minnesota, 1984-1986 (unbuilt project)

[Facade Study], untitled. Blue ink sketch on tracing paper, 12 x 21 1/2 inches [from photographic copy by Lance Burgharrdt]

Minnesota History Center Competition, St. Paul, Minnesota, 1984-1986 (unbuilt project)

[Facade Study], untitled. Pencil and purple pencil drawing on vellum, 13 3/4 x 24 inches [from photographic copy by Lance Burgharrdt]

Minnesota History Center Competition, St. Paul, Minnesota, 1984-1986 (unbuilt project)

[Facade Study and Section], untitled. Pencil and red pencil drawing on vellum, 17 1/4 x 23 inches [from photographic copy by Lance Burgharrdt]

Major documents in American economic history.

v. 1. From an agrarian to an industrial economy (1785-1900)--v. 2. The problems of a world power (the 20th century)

Mad Men, The Sopranos and The American Way of Life. The history of the capital in two times

Don Draper (Mad Men, Matthew Weiner, AMC: 2007-2015) actively colaborates in the birth and consolidationof a model of consumer society without realizing the enormous lie he is telling himself. Tony Soprano(The Sopranos, David Chase, HBO: 1999-2007) desperately grasps the wreckage of that ideal imageof effort and self-improvement which is not only disappearing but was actually never coherent or real.This article does a comparative textual, sociological, and discursive analysis these two characters as arepresentation of the evolution of the discourse of capitalism in the second half of the 20th century, that is,the artificiality of the hegemonic discourse of “pursuit of happiness” as the main myth in post-war NorthAmerican neoliberalism.

Women’s football. Notes for a social history of women’s sport in Spain, 1900-1936

In the context of demands by the European feminist movement at the beginning of the 20th century, in Spain women’s sport flagged up aspirations to what were considered to be male practices. The first experiences of women in football stand out because of their use of the media to appear as a symbol of social transformation to modernity in the 20th century. It was not in vain that women’s football highlighted the demands of the feminist movements, although it did come up against male disapproval from an opposing group. The research sets out from a bibliographical and media review of specialist press and sports news of the time. Other current studies have also been considered in order to place it in a social and historical focus on sport. This has enabled us to highlight that football in Spain was established as an unequivocal space for (re) producing male hegemony where women were relegated to the representation of a symbolic ritual in a scenario of accessory and condescension.

L'Asse Tripartito Italia-Germania- Giappone e la Cina

Germany, Italy and Japan were engaged in China from the turn of the 20th century to WWII. However, they formed an anti-Chinese alliance only at the final stage of their presence there, when Japan assumed an undisputed role of leader in the region. Despite its alliance with the Axis powers, Japan never implemented racial laws against the Jews in China. All of them took part in the Boxer Upraising suppression and received as a consequence extraterritorial rights and concessions. Moreover, Japan won the war against China in 1895 and transformed itself from a tributary country of China into an imperialistic power. It took possession of Taiwan and in the 1930s established a puppet government in Manchuria.Germany followed different route obtaining as indemnity for the murders of two missionaries the control of the Shandong province, which was later expanded thanks to the anti-Boxer coalition's victory. However, Germany lost all possessions when China entered WWI. The issue of Shandong was finally resolved at the Conference for Disarmament hold in Washington in 1921-2. Japan failed to gain ex-Germany territories. Finally, Italy arrived in the Far East at the turn of the century but was not very interested in the oriental colonialism to the same extent it was interested in Africa. Tianjin was its only concession in China, and it took almost a decade before a subvention to arrive from the Italian government for its development.In the 1920s and 1930s Germany and Italy engaged in successful diplomatic, commercial and military relationships with China. In fact, both were considered China's partners thanks to their experts at the service of the Chinese government. On the other hand, Japan position was opposite to them, because of its plans of aggression towards China which was to be transformed into “the natural extension” of the mainland. In 1935 Italy declared war on Ethiopia and abandoned the seat at the League of Nations. China interpreted the Italian aggression as the endorsement of Japan's politics towards China in Manchuria, and the relations between the two countries were broken off. After that Italy supported Wang Jingwei's puppet government during the Japanese occupation of China. Germany followed the same path in 1937, when it was evident that the Japanese were playing the leading role in the region, and decided to ally with Wang Jingwei too. Both Italy and Germany decided also to recognise the Manzhuguo and established diplomatic relations, definitively turning their backs on the old Chinese ally.The Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis sealed the alliance among the three countries, and it confirmed Japan as the leading power in the region. Nevertheless Japan did not apply the racial law against the Jews in China.

HOG CHAINS AND MARK TWAINS: A STUDY OF LABOR HISTORY, ARCHAEOLOGY, AND INDUSTRIAL ETHNOGRAPHY OF THE STEAMBOAT ERA OF THE MONONGAHELA VALLEY 1811-1950

This dissertation examines a unique working class in the United States, the men and women who worked on the steamboats from the Industrial Revolution until the demise of steam-powered boats in the mid-20th century. The steamboat was the beginning of a technological system that was developed in America and used in such great numbers that it made the rapid population of the Trans-Appalachian West possible. The steamboat was forever romanticized by images of the antebellum South or the quick wit of Samuel Clemens and his sentimental book, Life on the Mississippi. The imagination swirls with thoughts of boats, bleach white, slowly churning the calm waters of some Spanish moss covered river. The reality of the boats and the experience of those who worked on them has been lost in this nostalgic vision. This research details the history of the western steamboat in the Monongahela Valley, the birthplace of the commercial steamboat industry. The first part of this dissertation examines the literature of authors in the field of labor history and Industrial Archaeology to place this work into the larger context of published literature. The second builds a framework for understanding the various eras that the steamboat went through both in terms of technological change, but also the change the workers experienced as their identity as a working class was being shaped. The third part details the excavations of two steamboat captains houses, those of Captain James Gormley and Captain Michael A. Cox. Both men represented a time in which the steamboat was in an era of transition. Excavations at their homes yield clues to their class status and how integrated they were in the local community. The fourth part of this study documents the oral histories of steamboat workers, both men and women, and their experience on the boats and on the river. Their rapidly declining population of those who lived and worked on the boats gives urgency for their lives to be documented. Finally, this study concludes with a synthesis of how worker identity solidified in the face of technological, socio-economic, and ideological change especially during their push for unionization and the introduction of the diesel towboat.

Double trouble: French colonialism in Morocco and the early history of the Pasteur institutes of Tangier and Casablanca (1895-1932)

Morocco was the last North African country in which a Pasteur institute was created, nearly two decades later than in Tunisia and Algeria. In fact, two institutes were opened, the first in Tangier in 1913 and the second in Casablanca in 1932. This duplication, far from being a measure of success, was the material expression of the troubles Pastorians had experienced in getting a solid foothold in the country since the late 19th century. These problems partly derived from the pre-existence of a modest Spanish-Moroccan bacteriological tradition, developed since the late 1880s within the framework of the Sanitary Council and Hygiene Commission of Tangier, and partly from the uncoordinated nature of the initiatives launched from Paris and Algiers. Although a Pasteur Institute was finally established, with Paul Remlinger as director, the failure of France to impose its colonial rule over the whole country, symbolized by the establishment of an international regime in Tangier, resulted in the creation of a second centre in Casablanca. While elucidating many hitherto unclear facts about the entangled origins of both institutes, the author points to the solidity of the previously independent Moroccan state as a major factor behind the troubled translation of Pastorianism to Morocco. Systematically dismissed or downplayed by colonial and postcolonial historiography, this solidity disrupted the French takeover of the country and therefore Pastorian expectations.

Rethinking Le Corbusier: Urban Design and History

It is generally assumed that Le Corbusier’s urban planning made a break with the past, and that the public spaces designed by him had nothing to do with anything that existed before – a conviction fostered by both the innovative character of his proposals and by the proliferation in his manifestos of watchwords that mask any evocation of the past – words like civilisation machiniste, l’esprit nouveau, l’architecture de demain. However, in his writings, Le Corbusier often mentioned the powerful analogy that exists between the architecture of other times and the logic of modern production. Vers une architecture, for example, contains a mixture of photographs showing silos, cars, aeroplanes, ships (i.e. the fruits of 19th and 20th century civil architecture and mechanical engineering) alongside photographs of Greek and Roman buildings. While Le Corbusier, at the end of the 1920s, claimed “I have only one teacher: the past; only one education: the study of the past”, a series of sketches in the first volume of the Œuvre complète, done during his youth at the archaeological sites visited during his Grand Tour, shows that his interest in the past went far beyond a simple reference.

Diagramming the interior

Mark Taylor's new essay assesses the impact of the diagram on interior design from the late 19th century to the present. Taylor identifies the pop-cultural discourse of advice writing in both books and magazines as a starting point for his analysis. Drawing on diverse sources, his analysis focuses on texts relating to the dynamics of use and flexibility by Catherine Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Melusina Fay Peirce, Mary Haweis and Christine Frederick among others. The examples in these texts use the home, domestic housekeeping and kitchens as the sites and practices of intervention through which interior design innovations can be enacted. Taylor's analysis identified the innovations in both the social and the political aspects of space and the critique of static space behind these seemingly amateurish and innocuous texts. Identifying these contributions as early precursors of Modernism's open-plan and flexible, dynamic spaces, Taylor also interprets them with a critical concern for the oppositions and hierarchies that can exist in spatial design, and which are the hallmarks of recent Postmodern, phenomenological approaches to interior design and its theorisations. The progressive and subversive "paradigms for living" implicit in these diagrams can be argued to present a model of greater economic, social and political equality as well as representing a more balanced set of power relations in the home. Progressing through the 20th century to the present, Taylor's analysis shifts byond the dressed body and on to the more intimate rituals of the revealed body to further examine how diagrams of the interior, and the interior as a set of diagrams, are also mediators, sites and grounds for the design of social and sexual intimacy. Through a consideration of the link between design, indentity and intimacy (whether of the invisible, fashioned or sexualised body), the diagrms of interiors are reconfigured as radical and critical tools for an animate, material and emancipatory "redressing" of the balance between the body, identity, sexuality, gender, function, mis(use), aesthetics and the interior.

Health protection

Our understanding of how the environment can impact human health has evolved and expanded over the centuries, with concern and interest dating back to ancient times. For example, over 4000 years ago, a civilisation in northern India tried to protect the health of its citizens by constructing and positioning buildings according to strict building laws, by having bathrooms and drains, and by having paved streets with a sewerage system (Rosen 1993). In more recent times, the ‘industrial revolution’ played a dominant role in shaping the modern world, and with it the modern public health system. This era was signified by rapid progress in technology, the growth of transportation and the expansion of the market economy, which lead to the organisation of industry into a factory system. This meant that labour had to be brought to the factories and by the 1820s, poverty and social distress (including overcrowding and infrequent sewage and garbage disposal) was more widespread than ever. These circumstances, therefore, lead to the rise of the ‘sanitary revolution’ and the birth of modern public health (Rosen 1993). The sanitary revolution has also been described as constituting the beginning of the first wave of environmental concern, which continued until after World War 2 when major advances in engineering and chemistry substantially changed the face of industry, particularly the chemical sector. The second wave of environmental concern came in the mid to late 20th century and was dominated by the environmental or ecology movement. A landmark in this era was the 1962 publication of the book Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. This identified for the first time the dramatic effects on the ecosystem of the widespread use of the organochlorine pesticide, DDT. The third wave of environmental concern commenced in the 1980s and continues today. The accelerated rate of economic development, the substantial increase in the world population and the globalisation of trade have dramatically changed the production methods and demand for goods in both developed and developing countries. This has lead to the rise of ‘sustainable development’ as a key driver in environmental planning and economic development (Yassi et al 2001). The protection of health has, therefore, been a hallmark of human history and is the cornerstone of public health practice. This chapter introduces environmental health and how it is managed in Australia, including a discussion of the key generic management tools. A number of significant environmental health issues and how they are specifically managed are then discussed, and the chapter concludes by discussing sustainable development and its links with environmental health.