front cover of The Art of Staying Neutral
The Art of Staying Neutral
The Netherlands in the First World War, 1914-1918
Maartje Abbenhuis
Amsterdam University Press, 2006
An insightful account of the challenges of neutrality in an era of total war, The Art of Staying Neutral shows how the Netherlands remained peaceful throughout World War I. This sustained neutrality, Maartje Abbenhuis demonstrates, was the result of many factors, including masterly diplomacy, careful adherence to international laws and a decisive measure of good fortune. Neutrality, however, did not come without considerable costs to the nation’s economy and security. 

This book is a major contribution both to the study of neutrality and the domestic history of the Netherlands.

[more]

front cover of Caught in the Middle
Caught in the Middle
Neutrals, Neutrality and the First World War
Edited by Johan Den Hertog and Samuel Kruizinga
Amsterdam University Press, 2011

During World War I, aggressive countries infringed on the rights and privileges of neutral nations such as the Netherlands and Switzerland as they had been defined in prior international agreements. The essays in this critical collection provide comparisons of the history of neutrality in several countries involved in World War I and analyze the concept of neutrality from multiple perspectives: political, economic, cultural, and legal.

[more]

front cover of Emergency Writing
Emergency Writing
Irish Literature, Neutrality, and the Second World War
Anna Teekell
Northwestern University Press, 2018

Taking seriously Ireland’s euphemism for World War II, “the Emergency,” Anna Teekell’s Emergency Writing asks both what happens to literature written during a state of emergency and what it means for writing to be a response to an emergency.
 
Anchored in close textual analysis of works by Samuel Beckett, Elizabeth Bowen, Flann O’Brien, Louis MacNeice, Denis Devlin, and Patrick Kavanagh, and supported by archival material and historical research, Emergency Writing shows how Irish late modernism was a response to the sociopolitical conditions of a newly independent Irish Free State and to a fully emerged modernism in literature and art. What emerges in Irish writing in the wake of Independence, of the Gaelic Revival, of Yeats and of Joyce, is a body of work that invokes modernism as a set of discursive practices with which to counter the Free State’s political pieties.
 
Emergency Writing provides a new approach to literary modernism and to the literature of conflict, considering the ethical dilemma of performing neutrality—emotionally, politically, and rhetorically—in a world at war.

[more]

front cover of India as Kingmaker
India as Kingmaker
Status Quo or Revisionist Power
Michael O. Slobodchikoff and Aakriti A. Tandon
University of Michigan Press, 2022

As India finds itself in the envious position of kingmaker, both the status quo and revisionist major powers are jockeying for India’s support for either upholding or revising the current world order. Using India’s bilateral treaties as a proxy measure of the strength of its relationship with other major powers, Slobodchikoff and Tandon determine whether India will remain neutral in its foreign policy approach or adopt a more assertive role in shaping the future global order. This book provides an in-depth analysis of India’s bilateral ties with major powers that include the United States, Russia, China, Japan, as well as the European Union (including the United Kingdom, France, and Germany) and uses network analysis to study India’s foreign policy positions with other major powers.

[more]

front cover of J. Edgar Hoover and the Anti-interventionists
J. Edgar Hoover and the Anti-interventionists
FBI Political Surveillance and the Rise of the Domestic Security State, 1939–1945
Douglas M. Charles
The Ohio State University Press, 2007

front cover of The Missing Link
The Missing Link
West European Neutrals and Regional Security
Richard E. Bissell and Curt Gasteyger, eds.
Duke University Press, 1990
The Missing Link brings together the views on the defense of the continent of the five principal neutral nations in Europe—Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, Yugoslavia, and Austria—and examines the evolution and current status of the security threats faced by them. The analyses presented here were commissioned by the Programme for Strategic and International Security Studies at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva.
[more]

logo for Rutgers University Press
Performing the News
Identity, Authority, and the Myth of Neutrality
Elia Powers
Rutgers University Press, 2024

Performing the News: Identity, Authority, and the Myth of Neutrality explores a problem that is often overlooked in discourse on diversity, equity, and inclusion: Journalists from historically marginalized groups have long felt pressure to conform when performing for audiences. Many speak with a flat, “neutral” accent, modify their delivery to hide distinctive vocal attributes, dress conventionally to appeal to the “average” viewer, and maintain a consistent appearance to avoid unwanted attention. Their aim is what author Elia Powers refers to as performance neutrality—presentation that is deemed unobjectionable, reveals little about journalists’ social identity, and supposedly does not detract from their message. Increasingly, journalists are challenging restrictive, purportedly neutral forms of self-presentation. This book argues that performance neutrality is a myth that reinforces the status quo, limits on-air diversity, and hinders efforts to make newsrooms more inclusive. Through in-depth interviews with journalists in broadcasting and podcasting, and those who shape their performance, the author suggests ways to make journalism more inclusive and representative of diverse audiences.

[more]

front cover of Sign Language Interpreting
Sign Language Interpreting
Deconstructing the Myth of Neutrality
Melanie Metzger
Gallaudet University Press, 1998
As with all professional interpreters, sign language interpreters strive to achieve the proper protocol of complete objectivity and accuracy in their translation without influencing the interaction in any way. Yet, Melanie Metzger's significant work Sign Language Interpreting: Deconstructing the Myth of Neutrality demonstrates clearly that the ideal of an interpreter as a neutral language conduit does not exist. Metzger offers evidence of this disparity by analyzing two videotaped ASL-English interpreted medical interviews, one an interpreter-trainee mock interview session, and the other an actual encounter between a deaf client and a medical professional.

          Sign Language Interpreting relies upon an interactional sociolinguistic approach to ask fundamental questions regarding interpreter neutrality. First, do interpreters influence discourse, and if so, how? Also, what kind of expectations do the participants bring to the event, and what do the interpreters bring to discussions? Finally, how do their remarks affect their alignment with participants in the interaction? Using careful assessments of how these interviews were framed, and also re-interviewing the participants for their perspectives, this penetrating book discloses the ways in which interpreters influence these situations. It also addresses the potential implications of these findings regarding sign language interpretation in medical, educational, and all other general interactions. Interpreter trainers and their students will join certified interpreters and Deaf studies scholars in applauding and benefiting from the fresh ground broken by this provocative study.
[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
That Neutral Island
A Cultural History of Ireland During the Second World War
Clair Wills
Harvard University Press, 2007

When the world descended into war in 1939, few European countries remained neutral; but of those that did, none provoked more controversy than Ireland.

Despite Winston Churchill's best efforts to the contrary, the Irish premier Eamon de Valera stuck determinedly to Ireland's right to remain outside a conflict in which it had no enemies. Accusations of betrayal and hypocrisy poisoned the media; legends of Nazi spies roaming the country depicted Ireland as a haven for Hitler's friends. Where previous histories of Ireland in the war years have focused on high politics, That Neutral Island mines deeper layers of experience. Sean O'Faolain, Kate O'Brien, Elizabeth Bowen, Flann O'Brien and Louis MacNeice are a handful of writers whose stories, letters, and diaries illuminate this small country as it suffered rationing, censorship, the threat of invasion, and a strange detachment from the war.

Clair Wills brings to life the atmosphere of a country forced largely to do without modern technology. She describes the work of those who recovered the bodies of British sailors and airmen from the sea. She unearths the motivations of thousands who left to join the British forces. And she shows how ordinary people struggled to make sense of the Nazi threat through the lens of antagonism to Britain, the former colonial power. She acutely targets the sleight-of-hand that hovers around the Irish definition of "neutrality."

[more]

front cover of Women of the Far Right
Women of the Far Right
The Mothers' Movement and World War II
Glen Jeansonne
University of Chicago Press, 1996
The majority of American women supported the Allied cause during World War II. and made sacrifices on the home front to benefit the war effort. But U.S. intervention was opposed by a movement led by ultraright women whose professed desire to keep their sons out of combat was mixed with militant Christianity, anticommunism, and anti-Semitism. This book is the first history of the self-styled "mothers' movement," so called because among its component groups were the National Legion of Mothers of America, the Mothers of Sons Forum, and the National Blue Star Mothers.

Unlike leftist antiwar movements, the mothers' movement was not pacifist; its members opposed the war on Germany because they regarded Hitler as an ally against the spread of atheistic communism. They also differed from leftist women in their endorsement of patriarchy and nationalism. God, they believed, wanted them to fight the New Deal liberalism that imperiled their values and the internationalists, communists, and Jews, whom they saw as subjugating Christian America.

Jeansonne examines the motivations of these women, the political and social impact of their movement, and their collaborations with men of the far right and also with mainstream isolationists such as Charles Lindbergh. Drawing on files kept by the FBI and other confidential documents, this book sheds light on the history of the war era and on women's place within the far right.
[more]


Send via email Share on Facebook Share on Twitter