Hristova, Elena (2013) Imagining brotherhood: the comics of the American Jewish Committee, 1941 - 1948. Masters thesis (MPhil), University of Sussex.

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Abstract

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.

Item Type:	Thesis (Masters)
Schools and Departments:	School of Media, Arts and Humanities > American Studies
Subjects:	E History America > E151 United States (General) > E0184 Elements in the population N Fine Arts > NC Drawing. Design. Illustration > NC1300 Pictorial humour, caricature, etc.
Depositing User:	Library Cataloguing
Date Deposited:	19 Apr 2013 11:49
Last Modified:	16 Mar 2022 15:37
URI:	http://srodev.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/44211

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