Ambivalent Nation

In Ambivalent Nation, Hugh Dubrulle explores how Britons envisioned the American Civil War and how these conceptions influenced their discussions about race, politics, society, military affairs, and nationalism. Contributing new research that expands upon previous scholarship focused on establishing British public opinion toward the war, Dubrulle offers a methodical dissection of the ideological forces that shaped that opinion, many of which arose from the complex Anglo-American postcolonial relationship. Britain’s lingering feeling of ownership over its former colony contributed heavily to its discussions of the American Civil War. Because Britain continued to have a substantial material interest in the United States, its writers maintained a position of superiority and authority in respect to American affairs. British commentators tended to see the United States as divided by two distinct civilizations, even before the onset of war: a Yankee bourgeois democracy and a southern oligarchy supported by slavery. They invariably articulated mixed feelings toward both sections, and shortly before the Civil War, the expression of these feelings was magnified by the sudden emergence of inexpensive newspapers, periodicals, and books. The conflicted nature of British attitudes toward the United States during the antebellum years anticipates the ambivalence with which the British reacted to the American crisis in 1861. Britons used prewar stereotypes of northerners and southerners to help explain the course and significance of the conflict. Seen in this fashion, the war seemed particularly relevant to a number of questions that occupied British conversations during this period: the characteristics and capacities of people of African descent, the proper role of democracy in society and politics, the future of armed conflict, and the composition of a durable nation. These questions helped shape Britain’s stance toward the war and, in turn, the war informed British attitudes on these subjects. Dubrulle draws from numerous primary sources to explore the rhetoric and beliefs of British public figures during these years, including government papers, manuscripts from press archives, private correspondence, and samplings from a variety of dailies, weeklies, monthlies, and quarterlies. The first book to examine closely the forces that shaped British public opinion about the Civil War, Ambivalent Nation contextualizes and expands our understanding of British attitudes during this tumultuous period.

In Ambivalent Nation, Hugh Dubrulle explores how Britons envisioned the American Civil War and how these conceptions influenced their discussions about race, politics, society, military affairs, and nationalism. Contributing new research that expands upon previous scholarship focused on establishing British public opinion toward the war, Dubrulle offers a methodical dissection of the ideological forces that shaped that opinion, many of which arose from the complex Anglo-American postcolonial relationship. Britain’s lingering feeling of ownership over its former colony contributed heavily to its discussions of the American Civil War. Because Britain continued to have a substantial material interest in the United States, its writers maintained a position of superiority and authority in respect to American affairs. British commentators tended to see the United States as divided by two distinct civilizations, even before the onset of war: a Yankee bourgeois democracy and a southern oligarchy supported by slavery. They invariably articulated mixed feelings toward both sections, and shortly before the Civil War, the expression of these feelings was magnified by the sudden emergence of inexpensive newspapers, periodicals, and books. The conflicted nature of British attitudes toward the United States during the antebellum years anticipates the ambivalence with which the British reacted to the American crisis in 1861. Britons used prewar stereotypes of northerners and southerners to help explain the course and significance of the conflict. Seen in this fashion, the war seemed particularly relevant to a number of questions that occupied British conversations during this period: the characteristics and capacities of people of African descent, the proper role of democracy in society and politics, the future of armed conflict, and the composition of a durable nation. These questions helped shape Britain’s stance toward the war and, in turn, the war informed British attitudes on these subjects. Dubrulle draws from numerous primary sources to explore the rhetoric and beliefs of British public figures during these years, including government papers, manuscripts from press archives, private correspondence, and samplings from a variety of dailies, weeklies, monthlies, and quarterlies. The first book to examine closely the forces that shaped British public opinion about the Civil War, Ambivalent Nation contextualizes and expands our understanding of British attitudes during this tumultuous period.

Ambivalent Transnational Belonging in American Literature discusses the extent to which transnational concepts of identity and community are cast within nationalist frameworks. It analyzes how the different narrative perspectives in texts by Olaudah Equiano, Catharina Maria Sedgwick, Henry James, Jamaica Kincaid, and Mohsin Hamid shape protagonists’ complex transnational subjectivities, which exist between or outside national frameworks but are nevertheless interpellated through the nation-state and through particular myths about liberal, sentimental, or cosmopolitan subjects. The notion of ambivalent transnational belonging yields insights into the affective appeal of the transnational as a category of analysis, as an aesthetic experience, and as an idea of belonging. This means bringing the transnational into conversation with the aesthetic and the affective so we may fully address the new conceptual challenges faced by literary studies due to the transnational turn in American studies.

Ambivalent Desires: Representations of Modernity and Private Life in Colombia (1890s-1950s) is a literary and cultural study of the reception of modernity in Colombia. Unlike previous studies of Latin American modernization, which have usually focused on the public aspect of the process, this book discusses the intersection between modernity and the private sphere. It analyzes canonical and non-canonical works that reflect the existing ambivalence toward the modernizing project being implemented in the country at the time, and it discusses how the texts in question reinterpret, adapt, and even reject the ideology of modernity. The focus of the study is how the understanding of the relationship between modernity and private life relates to the project of constructing a modern nation, and the discontinuities and contradictions that appear in the process. The question of what modernity is, its implications for everyday life, and its desirability or undesirability as a new cultural paradigm were central issues in Colombian texts from the end of the nineteenth century through the first half of the twentieth. At stake was the definition of the nation's identity and the project of breaking away from the cultural patterns of the colonial past. Considering that the apparently peaceful process of modernization in Colombia was interrupted in the 1950s by the eruption of political violence across the country, this study situates itself on the eve of a crisis and asks how representations of modernity in texts from the period evidence the social fragmentation that may have led to it. The book begins with an analysis of the theme of the private collection in the work of JosZ Asunci-n Silva, and how it is used to propose a specific notion of personal and cultural identity. It continues with an analysis of the modernizing ideology of the popular magazine El GrOfico during the period of economic prosperity of the 1920s known as the 'Dance of the Millions,' focusing on the publication's advertisements and the section devoted to women and the home. Subsequently, the canonical writings of TomOs Rueda Vargas are analyzed in the context of the relation between autobiographical writing and public life, emphasizing the contradiction between the author's public liberalism and his private conservatism, and highlighting his critique of modern life. The works of previously neglected women writers Manuela Mallarino Isaacs, Juana SOnchez Lafaurie, and Fabiola Aguirre are studied in the context of women's relationship to modernity and their conflict between traditional roles that relegated them to the private sphere, and their desire to accept modern standards. The book concludes with an analysis of the novels of Ignacio G-mez DOvila, which have received scant attention to this date, as it discusses his critique of the upper classes' flight into the private and what the author sees as their alienation from a society on the verge of a crisis.

A comparative examination of the ambivalence provoked, especially in East and Southeast Asia, by the global spread of "American" consumer culture.

Ambivalent Europeans examines the implications of living on the fringes of Europe. In Malta, public debate is dominated by the question of Europe, both at a policy level - whether or not to join the EU - and at the level of national identity - whether or not the Maltese are 'European'. Jon Mitchell identifies a profound ambivalence towards Europe, and also more broadly to the key processes of 'modernisation'. He traces this tendency through a number of key areas of social life - gender, the family, community, politics, religion and ritual.

Elia Kazan first made a name for himself on the Broadway stage, directing productions of such classics as The Skin of Our Teeth, Death of Salesman, and A Streetcar Named Desire. His venture to Hollywood was no less successful. He won an Oscar for only his second film, Gentleman’s Agreement, and his screen version of Streetcar has been hailed as one of the great film adaptations of a staged work. But in 1952, Kazan’s stature was compromised when he was called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Kazan’s decision to name names allowed him to continue his filmmaking career, but at what price to him and the Hollywood community? In The Ambivalent Legacy of Elia Kazan: The Politics of the Post HUAC Films, Ron Briley looks at the work of this unquestionable master of cinema whose testimony against former friends and associates influenced his body of work. By closely examining the films Kazan helmed between 1953 and 1976, Briley suggests that the director’s work during this period reflected his ongoing leftist and progressive political orientation. The films scrutinized in this book include Viva Zapata!, East of Eden, A Face in the Crowd, Splendor in the Grass, America America, The Last Tycoon, and most notably, On the Waterfront, which many critics interpret as an effort to justify his HUAC testimony. In 1999, Kazan was awarded an honorary Oscar that caused considerable division within the Hollywood community, highlighting the lingering effects of the director’s testimony. The blacklist had a lasting impact on those who were named and those who did the naming, and the controversy of the HUAC hearings still resonates today. The Ambivalent Legacy of Elia Kazan will be of interest to historians of postwar America, cinema scholars, and movie fans who want to revisit some of the director’s most significant films in a new light.