10.6092/issn.2611-2752/7861
application/pdf
2611-2752
7861
en
Angela Santese
USAbroad – Journal of American History and Politics
America Unfinished
Introduction
Text.Serial.Journal
https://usabroad.unibo.it/
1
Editorial
2018-03-01
2018-02-22
2018-03-01
2018-10-30
USAbroad
Angela Santese
2018/03/01
10.6092/issn.2611-2752/7861
Università di Bologna
2611-2752
America Unfinished
en
Introduction
https://usabroad.unibo.it/article/download/7861/7617
1
Editorial                                              USAbroad – Journal of American History and Politics. Vol. 1 (2018)
https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.2611-2752/7861                                                             ISSN 2611-2752




                                               Introduction


                                               Published: March 1, 2018




    The unique and never-ending process of social and political evolution of the United States held in
the term “unfinished” is the focus of the first issue of USAbroad–Journal of American History and Politics.
The essays in this issue engage with the concept of “America Unfinished” and explore the ability of the
United States to reinvent itself in times of crisis, driven by a traditional optimism in a better future,
but they also critically approach its shadows, exploring issues such as racial discrimination and race
relations, the controversial aspects of its foreign policy, and the debate on the role of the United States
in the post-9/11 global scenario.
    With the aim of further exploring race relations in the 1920s and the crucial role that W.E.B. Du
Bois played in the construction of a positive black public image in the post-WWI years, Martina Mal-
locci argues in “ ‘All Art is Propaganda’: W.E.B. Du Bois’s The Crisis and the Construction of a Black
Public Image” that Du Bois’s views on artistic expressions were an organic part of his program to build
a black public image for political purposes. According to Mallocci’s analysis, Du Bois, the most influ-
ential African-American intellectual of the twentieth century, used the NAACP (National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People) journal, The Crisis, to build an interracial dialogue on civil
and political rights, which was crucial in drawing federal support in favor of black communities in the
United States.
    Two essays, Alice Morin’s “The Fashion of the 1960s. A New Power Shaping the American Image”
and Timothy Nicholson’s “An Empire of Individuals: American Expansion, British Angst, and Tanza-
nian Anger,” focus on a crucial decade of crisis and reinventions for the United States, the 1960s. An
“unfinished” decade itself, the 1960s reshaped the international image of the United States, its role as a
superpower, and its evolving relations with the Third World. Morin argues that in the age of expand-
ing consumerism, with the creation of attractive new styles and cultural models, American fashion
emerged as a power able to intertwine economic, political, social, and cultural stakes. In her essay,
Morin points out that, although fashion was crucial in designing a dominant model of a wealthy, free,
and seductive country, the reality of the decade in the US was far from that idealized image, with the
ferocious public debates that transformed fashion into a national preoccupation able to divide public
opinion. Cultural and transnational influences and connections are also crucial in Nicholson’s essay,
which explores how East African students and the young Americans involved in Teachers for East
Africa and the Peace Corps interacted and collaborated in Tanzania. Nicholson also sheds lights on
the complexities that the volunteers from the US encountered in relating with the new Tanzanian gov-
ernment after the British colonial apparatus left the East African country. Indeed, a stronger American


Copyright © 2018 USAbroad                                                                                     Art. #7861
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons BY License.                                                         p. 1
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Introduction                                                                        USAbroad. Vol. 1 (2018)




presence in Tanzania led to a visceral reaction from Tanzanian leaders, which made the volunteers’
work to forge and maintain connections with the local population a particularly difficult challenge.
    The idea of America “unfinished” clearly reverberates in Andris Banka’s “ ‘Church Lessons’: Re-
visiting America’s Assassination Ban,” which traces a history of the assassination ban in the United
States, focusing in particular on the Church Committee and its investigations on intelligence abuses
in the 1970s. Banka points out that the committee represented a watershed for the public debate
on assassination as an illegitimate and unacceptable means of foreign policy, which ultimately led
to the domestic assassination ban during the Ford administration. Lastly, the author shows how the
ban speaks to contemporary policies, in particular those pursued by presidents George W. Bush and
Barack Obama, who repeatedly violated previously established normative boundaries with the use of
drone strikes and targeted killings.
    The Bush administration and the post-9/11 period is the focus of Alice Ciulla’s essay “After Iraq:
Stanley Hoffmann and the Role of the United States in the International System.” Ciulla analyzes US
foreign policy in the aftermath of 9/11 through a reading of the work of the Austrian political scientist
Stanley Hoffmann. Focusing in particular on the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq in
2003, the author affirms that Hoffmann’s analysis represents a powerful example of how “unfinished”
the debate on American foreign policy is and, as Ciulla argues, will probably always be.




https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.2611-2752/7861                                                     Art. #7861
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