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Imagining brotherhood: the comics of the American Jewish Committee, 1941 - 1948

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posted on 2023-06-08, 14:41 authored by Elena Hristova
This thesis argues that the comics produced by the American Jewish Committee during and immediately after the Second World War are significant cultural artifacts that visualized complex political messages to millions of American workers and soldiers. The comics Three Pals and Extra Effort claimed patriotic citizenship for American Jewish men participating in the war effort at home and on the front. They formulated a powerful American individual and social body, a brotherhood, capable of winning the war. The comics There Are No Master Races! and They Got the Blame employed scientific advances in the understandings of cultural development and race to argue that racial and religious brotherhood was the natural way of human existence. Simultaneously, they defined those who opposed racial and religious brotherhood as psychologically disturbed individuals who threatened the stability of the American social mind and American democracy. The comics The Story of Labor and Joe Worker labored the fight for brotherhood by unifying it with the post-war goals of the national labor unions. Ultimately, in these comics the AJC defined the meaning of Americanism, claimed a place for American Jews in national culture and politics, and constructed American capitalist democracy as the only system capable of securing domestic economic stability and world peace.

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File Version

  • Published version

Pages

154.0

Department affiliated with

  • American Studies Theses

Qualification level

  • masters

Qualification name

  • mphil

Language

  • eng

Institution

University of Sussex

Full text available

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2013-04-19

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