Mark Lawrence

Paula Baker

Natasha Zaretsky

Robert Griffith

Designed to encourage critical thinking about history, the Major Problems in American History series introduces students to both primary sources and analytical essays on important topics in U.S. history. Each volume presents a carefully selected group of readings in a format that asks students to evaluate primary sources, test the interpretations of distinguished historians and others, and draw their own conclusions.

Major Problems in American History Since 1945

Annette Levine

Landscapes of Memory and Impunity, edited by Annette H. Levine and Natasha Zaretsky, chronicles the aftermath of Argentina’s most significant terrorist attack, exploring transformations in Jewish cultural, literary, and political practices that developed in response to violence and impunity.

The Aftermath of the AMIA Bombing in Jewish Argentina

Landscapes of Memory and Impunity

Homeward unbound : prisoners of war, national defeat, and the crisis of male authority -- Getting the house in order : the oil embargo, consumption, and the limits of American power -- "The great male cop-out" : productivity lag and the end of the family wage -- The spirit of '76 : the Bicentennial and Cold War revivalism -- The world as a mirror : narcissism, ("malaise," and the middle-class family) -- The familial roots of republican domination.

The American Family and the Fear of National Decline, 1968-1980

No Direction Home

On March 28, 1979, the worst nuclear reactor accident in U.S. history occurred at the Three Mile Island power plant in Central Pennsylvania. Radiation Nation tells the story of what happened that day and in the months and years that followed, as local residents tried to make sense of the emergency. The near-meltdown occurred at a pivotal moment when the New Deal coalition was unraveling, trust in government was eroding, conservatives were consolidating their power, and the political left was becoming marginalized. Using the accident to explore this turning point, Natasha Zaretsky provides a fresh interpretation of the era by disclosing how atomic and ecological imaginaries shaped the conservative ascendancy. Drawing on the testimony of the men and women who lived in the shadow of the reactor, Radiation Nation shows that the region's citizens, especially its mothers, grew convinced that they had sustained radiological injuries that threatened their reproductive futures. Taking inspiration from the antiwar, environmental, and feminist movements, women at Three Mile Island crafted a homegrown ecological politics that wove together concerns over radiological threats to the body, the struggle over abortion and reproductive rights, and eroding trust in authority. This politics was shaped above all by what Zaretsky calls "biotic nationalism," a new body-centered nationalism that imagined the nation as a living, mortal being and portrayed sickened Americans as evidence of betrayal. The first cultural history of the accident, Radiation Nation reveals the surprising ecological dimensions of post-Vietnam conservatism while showing how growing anxieties surrounding bodily illness infused the political realignment of the 1970s in ways that blurred any easy distinction between left and right.

Three Mile Island and the Political Transformation of the 1970s

Radiation Nation

Acts of Repair explores how ordinary people grapple with political violence in Argentina, a nation home to survivors of multiple genocides and periods of violence, including the Holocaust, the political repression of the 1976-1983 dictatorship, and the 1994 AMIA bombing. Despite efforts for accountability, the terrain of justice has been uneven and, in many cases, impunity remains. How can citizens respond to such ongoing trauma? Within frameworks of transitional justice, what does this tell us about the possibility of recovery and repair? Turning to the lived experience of survivors and family members of victims of genocide and violence, Natasha Zaretsky argues for the ongoing significance of cultural memory as a response to trauma and injustice, as revealed through testimonies and public protests. Even if such repair may be inevitably liminal and incomplete, their acts seeking such repair also yield spaces for transformation and agency critical to personal and political recovery. Author website (www.natashazaretsky.com)

Natasha Zaretsky

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