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3 books match the query 'Not Just'

cover of Not Just a Housewife: Women Strike for Peace and the Cold War Women's Peace Movement

Not Just a Housewife

Women Strike for Peace and the Cold War Women's Peace Movement

Jon Coburn

University of Massachusetts Press, 2025

Illuminating a powerful yet underappreciated force in the American peace and women’s movements

On November 1, 1961, thousands of middle-class white women took to the streets throughout the United States to demonstrate against atomic weapons. They were brought together by the group Women Strike for Peace (WSP), which grew from modest beginnings at a Georgetown cocktail party to become one of the most effective peace organizations in American history. Under the stewardship of children’s book illustrator Dagmar Wilson, and with indispensable support from figures such as Bella Abzug, a lawyer who would later help found the National Women’s Political Caucus and serve as US Representative for New York, WSP branches spread to cities and towns across the country, and the group influenced major arms-control treaties and successful antiwar efforts of the Cold War period. Single-handedly, WSP dismantled the McCarthyite House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), catalysed public support for the 1963 Nuclear Weapons Test Ban Treaty, and brokered unprecedented exchanges between American and Vietnamese women during the American War in Vietnam. WSP accomplished their political wins , in part, through a public image that stressed the inherent moral authority and sanctity of motherhood.

In Not Just a Housewife, Jon Coburn explores the fascinating story of WSP to argue that the group’s historic significance was much more complex than the maternal activism for which it is often remembered. He traces activists’ evolution through the Cold War’s cultural upheavals, uncovering the significance of forgotten episodes, such as the extraordinary self-immolation of 82-year-old Detroit activist Alice Herz and WSP’s unheralded contributions to the 1977 National Women’s Conference. In so doing, Coburn recovers WSP’s revolutionary politics and militant protests and contends that the organization fused this radical activism with the seeming respectability of motherhood. Through unprecedented access to organizational archives and oral histories, Not Just a Housewife details how WSP’s unique fusion of radicalism and respectability significantly shaped Cold War-era women’s peace movement history, as well as the broader American culture.
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cover of Not Just a Pretty Face: Dolls and Human Figurines in Alaska Native Cultures

Not Just a Pretty Face

Dolls and Human Figurines in Alaska Native Cultures

Molly Lee

University of Alaska Press, 2006

Now in a full-color second edition, Not Just a Pretty Face is an engaging exploration of the role of dolls and doll making in Alaska Native cultures. From ancient ivory carvings to the thriving tourist market, dolls and human figurines have played integral parts in the ritual, economic, and social lives of Native Alaskans. Dolls served as children’s playthings, represented absent community members at ceremonies, and predicted the movements of game animals for shamans. Not Just a Pretty Face surveys these and other uses of dolls and figurines, illustrating in beautiful color photographs the diversity of the doll-making tradition in Eskimo, Athabaskan, and Northwest Coast Native communities.
Authors explore the ethnographic literature, twentieth-century oral histories, and photographic documentation of dolls and the doll-making process. Contemporary doll makers explain, in their own words, how they learned to make dolls and what doll making means to them. The second edition features a photo essay on Rosalie Paniyak of Chevak, one of the most influential doll makers in Alaska today.
Not Just a Pretty Face provides a panoramic view of an ancient tradition and situates the art of doll making within a contemporary context. Scholarly, yet accessible, Not Just a Pretty Face is a lively contribution to the literature on dolls, anthropology, and Native studies.
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cover of Sovereign Traces, Volume 1: Not (Just) (An)Other

Sovereign Traces, Volume 1

Not (Just) (An)Other

Gordon D. Henry Jr.

Michigan State University Press, 2018

By merging works of contemporary North American Indian literature with imaginative illustrations by U.S. and Canadian artists, Sovereign Traces, Volume 1: Not (Just) (An)Other provides a unique, extended possibility for audiences to engage with works by prominent authors such as Stephen Graham Jones, Gordon Henry Jr., Gerald Vizenor, Warren Cariou, Niigaanwewidam James Sinclair, Louise Erdrich, Joy Harjo, Richard Van Camp, and Gwen Westerman. Through this exciting medium, Sovereign Traces beckons to audiences that are both new to and familiar with Native writing, allowing for possibilities for reimagined readings along the way. Readers will find works of graphic literature, uniquely including both poetry and fiction, newly adapted from writing by American Indians and First Peoples.
 
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