Saturday Night Seder by Erich Bergen et al., and: Mishkan HaSeder, A Passover Haggadah ed. by Rabbi Hara E. Person and Jessica Greenbaum (review)

In the wake of 9/11, for instance, the Union for Reform Judaism rapidly posted a "Survivor Tree Planting Ceremony," a memorial service for religious schools, an interfaith dialogue guide, and readings and prayers for congregations and individuals. [...]for many Jewish Americans, the virtual Passover of 2020 was the gateway experience for so many other online forms of Judaism that followed: live-streamed prayer services attended by thousands across time zones, Zoom gatherings for weddings, brisses, baby namings, funerals, and shivas. [...]first I copied down the last stanza of "Passover Love Poem" (147), a poem by Rabbi Person, knowing it was just right to contribute to my second (and hopefully last) Zoom Seder: "This is more than a recipe for nostalgia.

The El Dorado Pandemic

Recent experiences with COVID-19 has been a sobering reminder of how, despite advanced medical knowledge and technology- disease can scramble a society, from its economic trajectory to when and how its citizens should leave their houses. As the coronavirus's qualifying adjective notes, the experience has been novel in one sense, but in a wider context it is not. Microbes and pandemics have shaped the history of the US from its start. Early contagions opened the way to the first colonial settlements by devastating Native peoples along the Atlantic coast. In the 1780s, the smallpox that raged from Boston to the Pacific Northwest helped secure the American Revolution and open the far West to the US exploration and colonization. The global influenza pandemic of 1918 began in Kansas and claimed an estimated hundred million lives worldwide. The nineteenth century saw other pandemics. Arguably, the most dreadful was Asiatic cholera. It originated in India and spread to Europe and the US in three deadly doses--in 1832-34, in 1848-52, and in 1866-68.

Lessons from the Year without Archives

[...]even when contingent scholars can take time away from teaching, they often do so without knowing whether they will have a job when they get back, or what they will be teaching. [...]the archives are always further away for scholars without the security of durable institutional affiliations. Because Covid interrupted so many projects, the argument goes, institutions should grant the affected scholars additional time on the "tenure clock"-the series of reviews that tenure-track faculty undergo in the years leading up to the decision to grant tenure.

Policing Sex in the Sunflower State: The Story of the Kansas State Industrial Farm for Women

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the fractures of our society and of its infrastructure: social inequalities in terms of race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, and class;discrepancies in healthcare structures;the lack of a social safety net;and the discriminating operation of law enforcement structures such as the prison system. Perry pursues questions about the history of female imprisonment, womens legal rights, and the restriction of their sexual behavior through state regulation in Kansas during and after World War I. The author critically analyzes the origins of female incarceration under Chapter 205 at the Kansas State Industrial Farm for Women as the result of the states attempt to respond to the outbreak of venereal diseases in the military. Perry thus provides keen insights in the understanding of gendered law enforcement for women in the Great Plains by interweaving meticulously researched historical facts about the Kansas State Industrial Farm for Women with the analysis of over two thousand interviews with inmates from 1923 to 1933, which chronicle how the state's interference in its citizens' lives reached far beyond the initial period of World War I. Policing Sex in the Sunflower State is a most welcome addition to the scholarship of rural sexuality and gender studies because it centers the untold lived experiences of incarcerated women during the interwar period.

"My Father Died Twice": Family History, Memory, and the Life of a WWII Veteran

In popular culture the generation that lived through the Great Depression and World War II is often mythologized. THE PASSING OF A MYTHOLOGIZED GENERATION According to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA), just 325,574 of more than 16 million World War II veterans remained alive in 2020, before Covid-19 dramatically thinned their ranks. The passing of this generation exacerbates the romanticism attached to those who endured both the Great Depression and world war. [...]films were regularly recycled on television, where my father viewed them numerous times.1 In 1998, he made a rare trip to the cinema to see Saving Private Ryan, although he had been cautioned not to go as he was suffering from heart disease.

Shifting the Narrative of American Medical History: Disorder: A History of Reform, Reaction, and Money in American Medicine. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2021. 584 pp. $35.00 (hardcover), ISBN: 978-0300257403

In many ways, this shift paralleled the decade's larger conservative turn, but when American politics shifted leftward during the Great Depression in the 1930s, the AMA continued to take professional medicine into "ultra-conservative” territory, much to the social disadvantage of Americans. Medicine's reactionary turn brought the profession into questionable relationships with the drug and tobacco industries, which in turn led to profits that the AMA used to lobby politicians and influence public opinion against public health and national health care plans that AMA leadership feared would compromise physicians' influence within the health-care marketplace. According to Swenson, recent developments within medicine, including the AMA support for the Affordable Care Act (signed into law in 2010) and physicians joining together during the COVID epidemic to support public health directives in the face of impassioned conservative opposition, point to how the profession may be on the verge of another pendulum swing back to its progressive roots.

Introduction: Quo Vadis, Latin America? Human Rights, Environmental Governance and the Sustainable Development Goals

As Latin America emerges scathed from the COVID-19 pandemic, the political pendulum appears to turn once again towards its longstanding calls for greater social inclusion. Inequality, inflation and continuous resource extraction without sufficient inclusiveness – in the forms of mining, expanding export-oriented agriculture or, increasingly, exclusionary approaches to sustainable development through renewable energy projects or the bioeconomy – have all driven social discontent. The region saw remarkable socio-economic progress during the 2000s, but those achievements largely relied on extensive natural resource exploitation in a development strategy sometimes dubbed neo-extractivism. Unequal access to decision-making and skewed distribution of benefits and burdens then fostered significant discontent as well as counter-reactions in many Latin American countries. The end of the so-called pink tide of more progressive governments and the emergence of right-wing populism have only made things tenser in the past years. It might be too early to speak of a new tide of socio-economic progress for the region, but rising commodity prices and the election of various left-leaning presidents since 2020 do give out signals reminiscent of the start of the century. However, it remains to be seen what this new political and economic cycle of Latin America entails for the environment, inclusiveness, and human rights.

Introduction: Indigenous Urbanisation in Latin America: Guest Editors: Aiko Ikemura Amaral, Philipp Horne, and DEsiree Poets

As Latin America emerges scathed from the COVID-19 pandemic, the political pendulum appears to turn once again towards its longstanding calls for greater social inclusion. Inequality, inflation and continuous resource extraction without sufficient inclusiveness – in the forms of mining, expanding export-oriented agriculture or, increasingly, exclusionary approaches to sustainable development through renewable energy projects or the bioeconomy – have all driven social discontent. The region saw remarkable socio-economic progress during the 2000s, but those achievements largely relied on extensive natural resource exploitation in a development strategy sometimes dubbed neo-extractivism. Unequal access to decision-making and skewed distribution of benefits and burdens then fostered significant discontent as well as counter-reactions in many Latin American countries. The end of the so-called pink tide of more progressive governments and the emergence of right-wing populism have only made things tenser in the past years. It might be too early to speak of a new tide of socio-economic progress for the region, but rising commodity prices and the election of various left-leaning presidents since 2020 do give out signals reminiscent of the start of the century. However, it remains to be seen what this new political and economic cycle of Latin America entails for the environment, inclusiveness, and human rights.

Introduction: Intersections of Activism and Academia: Guest Editors: Jessica Wax‐Edwards, Giulia Champion and Gabriel Funari

The focus of this Special Section stems from research presented in the 2019 PILAS Conference held at the University of York. The conference theme ‘Communities of Knowledge, Communities of Action’ sought to bridge the gap between scholarly research and Latin American activism. The collegial exchange of ideas between a new generation of engaged and innovative researchers at the conference represented a critical alternative to the traditional isolation of academia – a reality that has since been exacerbated and magnified by the impact of the Coronavirus pandemic. This Special Section of the Bulletin of Latin American Research seeks to offer a platform that will advance these new epistemologies and propel the voices of a new generation of engaged scholars.

Chilean Social Movements and Street Art: The Walls of Santiago: Social Revolution and Political Aesthetics in Contemporary Chile. By Terri Gordon-Zolov, and Eric Zolov,. New York: Berghahn Books, 2022. Pp. 310. 157 color illustrations. 2 maps. $175.00 cloth, $49.95 paper, e-book $49.95

The authors take a holistic approach to the estallido artístico, covering wall art but also music, performance, and other means of creative expression. [...]they make a great case for the profound and organic relationship between art and activism that exists in Chile. [...]Gordon-Zolov and Zolov also tell us that the Piñera government took advantage of the COVID-19 lockdowns of 2020 to cover up much of this artwork. [...]the book does the important work of documenting and archiving an arts and social movement with its 146 full-color illustrations. [...]Gordon-Zolov and Zolov themselves recognize this limitation early on in their book. [...]I have little doubt that the disruption to public transportation caused by el estallido made poblaciones less accessible to them.

Fifty Years of Volunteers

Connolly features the Montana Historical Society's (MHS) volunteer program. In 1982, the Friends of the Society became the official name of the MHS volunteer program, which was restructured into three divisions of volunteers used today: Departmental Assistant Volunteers (DAV), Muses, and Docents. The first curator of education, Jennifer Jeffries Thompson, who served from 1981 to 1988 and again in 1991, oversaw the Friends. Many of the Friends volunteered in two or all three divisions. Docents and DAVs contributed at least two hours of volunteer labor a week and muses each donated eight hours planning and attending receptions four times during the year. The yearly average of time that volunteers devoted to the historical society increased from over 4,000 hours in the 1980s to over 9,500 hours in the mid-2000s, which is the equivalent of three full-time employees. Volunteers consistently averaged these hours of service until the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 limited their activities. The program has slowly regained its stride with the reopening of the museum to guests in the last year.

A Shot to Save the World

[...]it was an awful time to sell shares- the stock market was under pressure, biotech stocks were wilting, and few investors wanted to pay a lot for a German company with few signs of success. A few days later, Şahin rang the bell at the New York Stock Exchange, a wan smile on his face. Moderna was planning its very first phase two clinical study for a vaccine and was nowhere near a late-stage trial for any of its products.

Kwaata-Nihtaawakihk: A Hard Birth

Exhibit Review: Kwaata-Nihtaawakihk: A Hard Birth, Winnipeg Art Gallery, 19 March - 3 September 2022 On 18 March 2022, the Winnipeg Art Gallery hosted its second-largest exhibition opening in its 110-year history, celebrating Kwaata-Nihtaawakihk: A Hard Birth. When entering the gallery, I was immediately struck by its sheer openness, along with the colourful walls which break up the space nicely and move it beyond the sterile white cube popular in many art galleries. The creator of one of my favourite pieces of the show also benefitted from the delay: renowned Metis artist Jennine Krauchi was grateful for the extra two years she had to work on a large, phenomenally beaded picture frame that showcases a prominent 1870 photo of Métis leader Louis Riel's provisional government.

"The Great Divide": Isolation in Willa Cather's O Pioneers! and The Song of the Lark

Unlike some of Cather's other works, such as My Ántonia, which focus more on the negative effects of physical isolation, Cather offers in these novels a more complicated portrait of isolation's value to women who need independence from their communities in order to explore the widely dissimilar fields of agriculture and opera. Stout discusses at some length the "redefinition of women" that Cather undertakes in writing the careers of Alexandra and Thea.5 She also notes the "ambiguity" of Cather's female characters in general, in their ability to step outside gender roles and to pursue their interests in spite of naysayers in their communities.6 In the context of Stout's broad study of Cather's life and career as a modernist, where isolation indirectly impacts the self-discovery of Cather's early heroines, I argue that isolation is in fact the key ingredient in their emotional development and in their successful careers. While this narrative highlights the importance of isolation in order to allow experimentation and self-discovery, Cather also pays close attention to the way that physical isolation, especially in combination with poverty, can discourage people from pursuing their interests and can damage their mental health. While isolation does take a serious toll on their mental health, it also plays a vital role in their success because it allows them to experiment with new ideas unhindered and because it gives them space to recharge away from the demands of difficult relationships.

Book Wars: The Digital Revolution in Publishing

Henrickson reviews Book Wars: The Digital Revolution in Publishing by John B. Thompson.

Past and Present in Teaching about Pandemics

The COVID pandemic has revealed much about our society and will undoubtedly change aspects of it. But when cortisol levels spike, it can be bard to focus on anything other than immediate life concerns. Here, Fredrickson shares how he taught summer class that put COVID in historial perspective.

Historical News and Notices

In cooperation and consultation with the Southern Poverty Law Center, the SHA is building a database of historical experts who can speak to issues relevant to both organizations, including the history of disenfranchisement, hate crimes, and civil rights violations against all legally protected classes in the United States. SHA 2023 CALL FOR PAPERS Over the last few years, we have witnessed the flourishing of a deep conservatism in the South, from the embrace of former U.S. president Donald J. Trump's politics of resentment, to rampant voter suppression, to negative responses to COVID-19 restrictions and vaccine recommendations, to efforts to limit what can be taught in public schools about racism, to the undermining of abortion rights and gay rights. The SHA Program Committee invites proposals that will help us understand the landscape of employment, the rural/urban divide, the state of cultural conservatism, the rise of conservative political movements, and the development of political strategies deployed by conservatives in the region. What have been the relationships between conservatism and environmental transformation (including clearance of forest land to make room for plantation agriculture, the dredging of swamps to facilitate settlement, and environmental disasters such as oil spills)?