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Browsing by Author "Gumbert, Heather L."

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20,000 Fewer: The Wagner-Rogers Bill and the Jewish Refugee Crisis
Walters, Kathryn Perry (Virginia Tech, 2019-07-11)
In the fall of 1938, Marion Kenworthy, child psychologist, and Clarence Pickett, director of the American Friends Service Committee, began designing a bill that would challenge the United States's government's strict immigration laws and allow persecuted children to come to the United States and live in American homes. The Wagner-Rogers Bill, named for Senator Robert Wagner of New York and Representative Edith Rogers of Massachusetts and introduced in February 1939, sought to allow the entry of 20,000 refugee children from Germany. At the time, multiple domestic factors limited the willingness of American politicians to meet this problem head on: high unemployment rates after the stock market crash in 1929, an isolationist sentiment after the impact of World War I, and xenophobia. These factors discouraged the lawmakers from revising the quota limit set on obtainable visas established by the 1924 Immigration Act and allow outsiders into the United States. These few actors who supported the Wagner-Rogers Bill reflect a hidden minority of the American public and political body that fought to help Jewish refugees by standing up to the majority of citizens and politicians against higher immigration into the United States, and the story of the this Bill demonstrates what might have been possible and illuminates 20th century models of American humanitarianism and its role in creating international refugee protection.
A Catalyst for the Development of Human Rights: German Internment Practices in the First World War,1914-1929
Vick, Alison Marie (Virginia Tech, 2013-06-17)
This thesis is a transnational study of the military actions and responses related to prisoners of war in World War I. Building on the works human rights scholars, I explore the how the collective rights afforded to prisoners of war under the 1906 Geneva Convention and 1907 Hague Convention served as a precursor to the concept of human rights that emerged after World War II. I argue that German military treated prisoners of war according to national interest, rather than international law. Specifically, I explore how the concepts of "military necessity" and "reciprocity" drove German internment practices, and how German internment practices escalated in violence during the last two years of the war. The violent practices committed by the Germans against prisoners of war produced an international demand to hold the perpetrators of wartime atrocities accountable for their actions in the postwar period.
Cold War Theaters: Cosmonaut Titov at the Berlin Wall
Gumbert, Heather L. (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011-11-01)
The Deutschland Series: Cold War Nostalgia for Transnational Audiences
Gumbert, Heather L. (Cambridge University Press, 2021-06-01)
How do you explain the Cold War to a generation who did not live through it? For Jörg and Anna Winger, co-creators and showrunners of the Deutschland series, you bring it to life on television. Part pop culture reference, part spy thriller, and part existential crisis, the Wingers’ Cold War is a fun, fast-paced story, “sunny and slick and full of twenty-something eye candy.” A coproduction of Germany's UFA Fiction and Sundance TV in the United States, the show premiered at the 2015 Berlinale before appearing on American and German television screens later that year. Especially popular in the United Kingdom, it sold widely on the transnational market. It has been touted as a game-changer for the German television industry for breaking new ground for the German television industry abroad and expanding the possibilities of dramatic storytelling in Germany, and is credited with unleashing a new wave of German (historical) dramas including Babylon Berlin, Dark, and a new production of Das Boot.
Envisioning Socialism: Television and the Cold War in the German Democratic Republic
Gumbert, Heather L. (2014-11-06)
The next Visible Scholarship Initiative presentation is by Heather Gumbert (History) speaking on her recent book Envisioning Socialism: Television and the Cold War in the German Democratic Republic. Envisioning Socialism examines television and the power it exercised to define the East Germans’ view of socialism during the first decades of the German Democratic Republic.
News Media Coverage of the Attack on the American Embassy in Saigon During the 1968 Tet Offensive
Riggins, John (Virginia Tech, 2007-05-08)
The 1968 Tet offensive is referred to as the turning point in the Vietnam War. Of the many battles of Tet, the attack on the American Embassy in Saigon stands out. It is neither the battle's size nor its casualties that makes it important. The significance of the embassy attack lay in the way it was conveyed to the American public. I argue that the 1968 attack on the American Embassy in Saigon served as a catalyst for the media to criticize the government's conduct of the Vietnam War and aided in turning the American public against the war. The news media aided this shift in opinion through its coverage and subsequent narrative of the attack on the U.S. Embassy. My goal is to examine the ongoing relationship between the media and the public by examining the major newspapers; the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and the Christian Science Monitor, and the major news magazines, Time, Life, and Newsweek. It is important to observe that the news media is still a business that must appeal to its customers (readers and advertisers). As the public view changed, the media reflected that change in order to appeal to its audience. At the same time the news media's consistency of war coverage and reflection of public sentiment helped further perpetuate the public's disapproval of the conflict and continued this cycle. How did the media report the unexpected attack on the American Embassy and how did it affect public opinion of Vietnam? How does the press coverage of the embassy attack fit in the larger context of media coverage of the Tet Offensive in determining the relationship between the media and the public? Which one influenced the other in creating opinions of the Vietnam War? These questions are important not only because the news media was a major contributor to Americans' knowledge of the war but also because of the role the media plays in the society of the era and how its narrative became the historical narrative. My focus on the U.S. Embassy attack during the Tet Offensive is due to the chaos that surrounded the attack not only from the military's perspective but also from the media's. Since the attack took place in Saigon, headquarters of the media companies' in Vietnam, it was readily accessible to journalists. The attacks surprised the military, government, and the public, and in the midst of the chaos the media was there to report on it all. Reports constantly changed as to what went on and frequently contradicted "official" statements. These are the reasons why the media's involvement in the Vietnam War was filled with misconceptions and controversy.
Reel Guidance: Midcentury Classroom Films and Adolescent Adjustment
MacDonald, Jonathan Richard (Virginia Tech, 2017-06-08)
This thesis examines the cultural and political messages found in "social guidance" films, a genre of films produced for pedagogical purposes in the United States following the Second World War. Educational film producers relied on social science consultants for legitimacy and employed plots that addressed ordinary challenges of daily living encountered by teenagers. Shown in high school classrooms nationwide in the postwar years, these films advertised to young people the usefulness of a psychological understanding of personality adjustment. These films reflected the influence of ideas from both the progressive education movement inspired by John Dewey and the theories of mental hygiene from prewar psychologists. By viewing these films, students encountered advice about improving their individual productivity and they received guidance for developing skills needed in social settings. By parsing the cultural and intellectual messages embedded in these films and relating them to interwar and postwar developments, this thesis shows one way that social experts mobilized to shape the socialization of adolescents. Social guidance films intended to employ the specialized knowledge of the social sciences to promote the production of healthy and successful personalities. More importantly, this thesis shows how social guidance films, in addressing ordinary teenage concerns, also addressed the political needs of American society at the dawn of the Cold War. The practical advice presented in these films showed adolescents how to tread the line between the preservation of individuality and commitment to the group—the essential problem faced by post war political theorists. Educators looked to the confluence of school, psychology, and film to guide the socialization of youths for their future roles as citizens of a democratic society. This thesis argues that the messages of psychological adjustment in social guidance films provided one means of promoting democratic values to counter the postwar threat of totalitarianism.
Should Women Vote?
Ewing, E. Thomas; Gumbert, Heather L.; Hicks, David; Lehr, Jane L.; Nelson, Amy; Stephens, Robert P. (Johns Hopkins Univ Press, 2008)
History Practice: Using Cartoons to Teach the Suffrage Campaign in European History
"Swear this flag to live, for this flag to die": Flag Imagery in Constructing the Narrative of the Civil War and the Transformation of American Nationalism
Vanover, Eric Thomas (Virginia Tech, 2010-04-24)
The Civil War transformed nationalism in American society and created a notion of national identity closely tied to flag iconography. Flag symbolism developed as the prominent visualization of nationalism in American culture during and after the Civil War. The flags of the Civil War - namely the American flag, the Confederate national flag, and the Confederate Battle Cross - grew into iconic images within American communities. Their status as symbols of nationalism, patriotism, and an American historical past often advocated by newspapers, individual citizens, and the soldiers of the war themselves, initiated an American tradition of flag iconography for the purpose of nationalism unforeseen in American culture before the war. After the war, the issues of reconciliation and of what context the war would be placed in American history also became influenced by flag imagery. With the potential for post-war bitterness and lengthened disunity, the American flag offered a symbol that allowed Americans to remember the war as the deeds of patriotic citizens and as part of a continuous American national narrative. In doing so, the American flag became the iconic symbol of American nationalism.
Virginia Tech Undergraduate Historical Review (Vol. 7, full issue)
Hemmingson, Grace; Furrow, Heath A.; Ebersohl, Courtney; Brenner, Talia; Keillor, Genevieve; Chehade, Nala; Mastakas, John Mark; Kapinos, Andrew; Megargee, Andrew (Virginia Tech Department of History, 2018-04-23)
Welcome to the Seventh Volume of the Virginia Tech Undergraduate Historical Review! Our team of undergraduate and graduate editors work to present the best available original undergraduate historical research from Virginia Tech and institutions across the East Coast. The Review seeks to provide undergraduate researchers with opportunities to improve their historical skills, experience the publishing process and, ultimately, to know the joy of seeing their hard work appear in print. Our board of undergraduate editors employs a blind review process, scoring each work according to a standardized rubric which emphasizes the author’s engagement with the secondary literature on their topic, ability to create an argument from their primary source base and ability to clearly articulate their ideas. The excellence of the articles included in this volume stems from our author’s hard work, dedication and willingness to accept and employ constructive feedback, as well as the long hours of analysis, proof-reading and effort on the part of our undergraduate, graduate and faculty editors. For volume Seven we have expanded the scope of the Review in ex-citing new directions. This marks the first year that the Review will include historiographic articles in addition to pieces of original re-search. This represents an exciting opportunity to help undergraduates engage in and write about historical conversations. We have also included the winners of the Department’s awards for Best Paper and Best Digital History Project.
Virginia Tech Undergraduate Historical Review, vol 3, full issue
Aiken, Erica; Seabrook, Tom; Heath, Victoria; Serlin, Devin; Alcorn, Adam; Gipe, Will; Hemmingson, Grace (Virginia Tech Department of History, 2014-05-01)
Virginia Tech Undergraduate Historical Review, vol. 4, full issue
Seabrook, Thomas R.; Skiles, Faith; Ledesma, Andrea; Ingalls, Danielle; Pope, Anna; Cherry, Earl K. Jr.; Gomulkiewicz, Abigail; Sykes, Morgan; Goatley, Rachel (Virginia Tech Department of History, 2015-05-01)
Full issue
Virginia Tech Undergraduate Historical Review, vol. 5, full issue
Boggs, Eleanor; Caprice, Kevin; Cooper, Kelly; Giesy, Beck; Howell, Courtney; Lash, Molly; Litvak, Derek; Snyder, Rachel; Shank, Ian; Skiles, Faith (Virginia Tech Department of History, 2016-04-25)
This edition of the Review contains six outstanding articles, beginning with Tyler Abt’s On Sands Stained Red. Abt takes a bottom-up approach to examining the successes and failures encountered by the American troops on Omaha beach during the Normandy invasion. In his paper, Abt argues that success was jeopardized due to poor planning from top military officials, and victory was only won through the poise and courage of low ranking troops. Next, Virginia Tech Alumnaus Nancy Fowlkes Mason takes us to China in her cross-cultural look at American home economists’ work in the country between the 1920s and 1940s. Fowlkes Mason shows that the home economists she studied prioritized scientific ideas about home economics over the cultural practices of both Chinese and American societies. Ellen Boggs continues our look into history outside of the United States in her article on UNESCO’s involvement in efforts to save the Buddhas at Bamiyan from destruction by the Taliban. Boggs shows that the Taliban’s religious agenda, determination to gain international recognition, and influence from Al-Qaeda blocked the international agency’s efforts. Elyse Sulkey, from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill provides an historical/literary analysis of the transformation of thought in Benedictine monk Guibert of Nogent from anti-Judaic clerical sentiments in his early work to anti-Semitic rhetoric in his later work. Moving us back to American history, Courtney Howell’s Convict Leasing reassesses the convict leasing system in place in the U.S. South in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, arguing that the primary function of the system wassupport and criticism for the system focused on economic, rather than racial, issuescontrol. Last but not least, Rachel Snyder’s Bewitched sheds light on an oft-forgotten murder network that spanned the East Coast in the early twentieth century. Snyder finds that this network, steeped in Italian traditions, used murder and insurance fraud as a strategy for economic survival during the Great Depression.
Virginia Tech Undergraduate Historical Review, vol. 6, full issue
Caprice, Kevin; Hemmingson, Grace; Stewart, Emily; Leep, Parker; Cooper, Kelly; Smith, Bekah; Urquidi, Cristina; Shank, Ian (Virginia Tech Department of History, 2017-10-01)
Volume Six of the Review begins with Emily Stewart’s “Take Cover” which examines the implementation of the National Civic Defense Program in Montgomery County during the Cold War. Next, Cristina Urquidi seeks to explain American media reaction to Hitler’s rise to power in the 1930s through the use of media framing theory in her essay “American Media Coverage of the Rise of Hitler.” Then, in “Roman Corbridge and the Corbridge Hoard,” Parker Leep analyzes how archaeologists and classic historians reconstruct the past through looking at the case of the Roman Corbridge. Afterwards, Bekah Smith, in her article “Freedom in the Night,” reexamines the lives of African American slaves in the Antebellum South and considers how the nighttime impacted slaves’ lives by giving them more freedom. She also questions why slave owners feared the nighttime. Kelly Cooper then looks at art conservation efforts during World War II and why some communities went to great lengths to preserve artwork from the Medieval and Renaissance Periods. Her article “Saving VanEyck and Leonardo Da Vinci” asks how the power of art influenced people to act and save it. Lastly, Ian Shank’s article “Home to Port” reflects on the experiences of Italian soldiers during the African Campaign in World War II.
Visions of Possibilities: (De)Constructing Imperial Narratives in Star Trek: Voyager
McKagen, Elizabeth Leigh (Virginia Tech, 2020-06-19)
In this dissertation, I argue that contemporary cultural narratives are infused with ongoing ideologies of Euro-American imperialism that prioritizes Western bodies and ways of engaging with living and nonliving beings. This restriction severely hinders possible responses to the present environmental crisis of the era often called the 'Anthropocene' through constant creation and recreation of imperial power relations and the presumed superiority of Western approaches to living. Taking inspiration from postcolonial theorist Edward Said and theories of cultural studies and empire, I use interdisciplinary methods of narrative analysis to examine threads of imperial ideologies that are (re)told and glorified in popular American science fiction television series Star Trek: Voyager (1995-2001). Voyager follows the Star Trek tradition of exploring the far reaches of space to advance human knowledge, and in doing so writes Western imperial practices of difference into an idealized future. In chapters 2 through 5, I explore how the series highlights American exceptionalism, Manifest Destiny, a belief in endless linear progress, and the creation of a safe 'home' space amidst the 'wild' spaces of the Delta Quadrant. Each of these narrative features, as presented, rely on Western difference and superiority that were fundamental to past and present Euro-American imperial encounters and endeavors. Through the recreation of these ideologies of empire, Voyager normalizes, legitimizes, and universalizes imperial approaches to engagement with other lifeforms. In order to move away from this intertwined thread of past/present/future imperialism, in my final chapter I propose alternatives for ecofeminist-inspired narrative approaches that offer possibilities for non-imperial futures. As my analysis will demonstrate, Voyager is unable to provide new worlds free of imperial ideas, but the possibility exists through the loss of their entire world, and their need to constantly make and remake their world(s). World making provides opportunity for endless possibilities, and science fiction television has the potential to aid in bringing non-imperial worlds to life. These stories push beyond individual and anthropocentric attitudes toward life on earth, and although such stories will not likely be the immediate cause of change in this era of precarity, stories can prime us for thinking in non-imperial ways.

Browsing by Author "Gumbert, Heather L."

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