Citizen Bachelors

In 1755 Benjamin Franklin observed "a man without a wife is but half a man" and since then historians have taken Franklin at his word. In Citizen Bachelors, John Gilbert McCurdy demonstrates that Franklin's comment was only one side of a much larger conversation. Early Americans vigorously debated the status of unmarried men and this debate was instrumental in the creation of American citizenship. In a sweeping examination of the bachelor in early America, McCurdy fleshes out a largely unexamined aspect of the history of gender. Single men were instrumental to the settlement of the United States and for most of the seventeenth century their presence was not particularly problematic. However, as the colonies matured, Americans began to worry about those who stood outside the family. Lawmakers began to limit the freedoms of single men with laws requiring bachelors to pay higher taxes and face harsher penalties for crimes than married men, while moralists began to decry the sexual immorality of unmarried men. But many resisted these new tactics, including single men who reveled in their hedonistic reputations by delighting in sexual horseplay without marital consequences. At the time of the Revolution, these conflicting views were confronted head-on. As the incipient American state needed men to stand at the forefront of the fight for independence, the bachelor came to be seen as possessing just the sort of political, social, and economic agency associated with citizenship in a democratic society. When the war was won, these men demanded an end to their unequal treatment, sometimes grudgingly, and the citizen bachelor was welcomed into American society. Drawing on sources as varied as laws, diaries, political manifestos, and newspapers, McCurdy shows that in the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the bachelor was a simultaneously suspicious and desirable figure: suspicious because he was not tethered to family and household obligations yet desirable because he was free to study, devote himself to political office, and fight and die in battle. He suggests that this dichotomy remains with us to this day and thus it is in early America that we find the origins of the modern-day identity of the bachelor as a symbol of masculine independence. McCurdy also observes that by extending citizenship to bachelors, the founders affirmed their commitment to individual freedom, a commitment that has subsequently come to define the very essence of American citizenship.

Deals with doctoral students, the institutions that provided their education, and the factors--intellectual, scientific, social, political, and economic--that effected change during the most significant and tumultuous period in U.S. doctoral education from its beginnings in 1861 through 1999. Detailed tables and figures provide historical trend data for 20th century periods. Data since 1958 are from the Survey of Earned Doctorates; earlier data are from public records and the Department of Education. The report covers doctorate recipients' demographic characteristics; study fields and institutions for bachelor's, master's, and doctorate degrees; financial support; indebtedness; time from baccalaureate to doctorate; and postgraduation plans.

Individuals and systems are rife with prejudices, leading to discrimination and inequities. Examples of this include rejection of stigmatized groups (e.g., Black Americans, Indigenous people in Canada, Roma peoples in Europe), structural racism (e.g., inequitable distribution of resources for public schools), disenfranchisement of women employees (e.g., the “glass ceiling”), barriers to higher education (e.g., biased admissions requirements), heterosexism, economic oppression, and colonization. When we take a closer look, we find the core of the problem is imbalance in the distribution of power and its misuse.

This is a collection of theses completed to fulfill B.S. requirements in the College of Engineering, University of Wisconsin from 1895 to 1962.

Prior to the atrocities of September 11, 2001, the inhumane treatment of women by the Taliban received sporadic media and academic coverage. After the disintegration of the Taliban and al-Qaeda alliance, Afghanistan has been on the forefront of international headlines. The Taliban removal has also opened the venue for academic studies in Afghanistan. However, Afghanistan's urban and rural social structures and in particular the role of women remains an understudied topic. In Women from Afghanistan in Diaspora, Langary embarks on the task of describing the social structures of Afghanistan, precisely, the role of women within the Afghan social fabric. This study covers the various policies aimed at women, marriage, and emancipation from the ascendency of Amir Aman Allah Khan to the Kabul throne in 1919 until the establishment of President Hamid Karzai's representative government. This study sheds light on the lives of the Afghan women who have migrated to the United States through means of marriage. The fieldwork was conducted in various cities across California. These women share their marriage experiences, life in the United States, and resiliency of overcoming challenges. This qualitative research is now integrated with the broader phenomena of “arranged marriages,” “consanguineous marriages,” “mail-order bride,” and “patriarchal family structures.”

How did marriage come to be seen as the foundation and guarantee of social stability in Third Republic France? In Sexing the Citizen, Judith Surkis shows how masculine sexuality became central to the making of a republican social order. Marriage, Surkis argues, affirmed the citizen's masculinity, while also containing and controlling his desires. This ideal offered a specific response to the problems—individualism, democratization, and rapid technological and social change—associated with France's modernity. This rich, wide-ranging cultural and intellectual history provides important new insights into how concerns about sexuality shaped the Third Republic's pedagogical projects. Educators, political reformers, novelists, academics, and medical professionals enshrined marriage as the key to eliminating the risks of social and sexual deviance posed by men-especially adolescents, bachelors, bureaucrats, soldiers, and colonial subjects. Debates on education reform and venereal disease reveal how seriously the social policies of the Third Republic took the need to control the unstable aspects of male sexuality. Surkis's compelling analyses of republican moral philosophy and Emile Durkheim's sociology illustrate the cultural weight of these concerns and provide an original account of modern French thinking about society. More broadly, Sexing the Citizen illuminates how sexual norms continue to shape the meaning of citizenship.