Gary McDonogh. Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture

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Early Catholic immigrants in the US faced religious persecution from the Protestant

and nativist populations, though, with time, Catholic numbers afforded them a measure o

security against prejudice. They built schools and initiated strong mutual support

systems, including

parochial schools

and religious colleges. As they worked towards

assimilation

into US culture, tensions with Rome arose over the extent of interaction the

Church might have with this rapidly modernizing culture. The Papal condemnation o

this assimilation in 1890 suppressed attempts at change for nearly seventy years.

Ultimately however, the ghetto mentality of the Church in the US was fractured by the

election of John XXIII as Pope in 1958 and his calling of the Second Vatican Council

(1962–5), a watershed in the life of the Roman Catholic Church.

The Second Vatican Council had a dramatic effect on the lives of the faithful in the

United States. Among the changes instigated by the council, three stand out. The first is

the emphasis on the importance of the laity in the Church. As an increasingly affluent and

educated group of believers, Catholic laity in America desired a larger role in influencing

Church governance and in determining how their donations might be spent.

The second is the change in the language of the liturgy from Latin to English.

Previously, many congregants were unable to follow the Latin Tridentine liturgy and

would often be occupied in practices such as praying the Rosary during the Mass. With

the use of English, and with the priest now facing the people rather than with his back to

them, the laity were expected to participate actively in the Mass. This change resulted in

the expectation of many of the laity that they might take larger roles in the liturgy. These

expectations have been fulfilled to some extent, with lay people assisting in the

roclamation of the scripture and in the distribution of communion during the Mass as

well as, in many parishes, acting in advisory capacities in the decision-making of the

parish.

A third result of the council is the affirmation of the goodness in other faith traditions,

Christian and otherwise. In the time before the council, the Church taught that salvation

was available only through the Catholic Church and emphasized this point through the

discipline of the parish setting with its close-knit communities. Other Christians and

eople of other faiths could not receive the salvation of Jesus Christ, according to Church

teaching. In relation to other Christians, the council stated that the ideal for Christianity

was the restoration of Christian unity rather than the return of non-Catholic Christians to

the Roman Catholic Church. In relation to people of other faiths, the Council also

effectively conceded the possibility of revelation outside the Christian faith, a concession

unique among Christian denominations. Thus, the RCC no longer considers itself the

unique path to salvation, only the pre-eminent one. This position is a remarkable

turnaround for the Church and one that has led to continued tension and confusion among

some of the faithful as it has called into question the centrality of the Church for

community and for the faith of the laity

In reaction to these changes in the selfunderstanding of the Church, groups espousing

the older teachings of the Church have arisen since the council. Some groups have

lobbied for the return to the Latin Tridentine Mass, others have emphasized more

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traditional pieties, such as the Rosary and novenas, and others have emphasized a more

rigorous following of the magisterium, or teaching authority of the Church. This authority

is often equated with the pronouncements of the headquarters of the Church, the Roman

Curia, though traditionally it has also rested in the work of theologians.

Other movements in the Church include an increased emphasis on the social teaching

of the Church, especially in regard to the rights of the poor and homeless, to the

environment,

to nuclear armaments and to the economy. The United States bishops have

released pastoral letters addressing these issues and suggesting an appropriate, faith-

ased response to them. These teachings have not been without controversy, as socially

and politically conservative Catholics have taken issue with most of them and publicly

attacked the bishops’

osition. At the same time, Pope John Paul II, with his socially

rogressive and theologically conservative agenda, has appointed increasing percentages

of theologically conservative but socially progressive bishops in US dioceses.

Developing from the Second Vatican Council and its emphasis on personal moral

decisionmaking, the heightened role of the laity has called into question the central role

of the clergy and of religious men and women. Far fewer men enter seminaries and

religious orders than prior to the Council, while most women’s orders have only a

fraction of previous numbers. Those seminaries that do attract larger numbers o

candidates often espouse a more traditional religious sensibility. Where priests, brothers

and sisters once worked, now lay people do much the same work of teaching and

administering parishes. Other issues with which the Church has struggled are charges o

sexual abuse by the clergy the role of women and the possibility of married priests.

Further reading

Bokenkotter, T.S. (1990)

A Concise History of the Catholic Church,

New York: Image

Books.

McBrien, R. (1994)

Catholicism,

San Francisco: Harper.

Morris, C.R. (1997)

American Catholic,

New York: Times Books—ndom House.

Greeley, A. (1990)

The Catholic Myth,

New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.

ERIC A.ZIMMER

romance novels

These bestselling, serially produced novels of love and happiness target female readers

who may devour dozens per month, purchased in drugstores and supermarket check-out

lines as well as bookstores. While often scorned for formulaic plots and patriarchal

ideologies, they inspire intense readcr loyalty while working out fundamental questions

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gender and sexuality

. This has led to reevaluations of the genre in cultural studies and

feminist readings like Janice Radway’s (1992)

Reading the Romance

The romance has its roots in fictions of love and fantasy that have been staples o

American book and magazine

publishing

as well as

Hollywood

. The romance also

derives its accessibility from paperback production and mass marketing (even

libraries

uy paperback romances to keep up with reader demand). Romances have also created

alternative modes of circulation and discussion through clubs and book trading and stores

that buy and sell used copies in bulk.

While similar genres cater to readers in other cultures, this has become a major

henomenon in American publishing for imprints like Harlequin, Avon, Fawcett and

Pinnacle who create multiple lines to facilitate

niche marketing;

they have also moved

into

cable

television.

BET

and others have produced series for African Americans;

Hispanic and Asian consumers draw on materials produced outside the US as well.

Among the different romance series available are those that promote varying degrees

of sexual intimacy from chastity to explicit involvement. Others use special historical

settings (Victorian America, the

West,

Regency England) or exotic locales. Still other

series deal with family issues like engagement, pregnancy,

divorce

and paternal

responsibility. Some may also intersect with Gothic horror and mysteries. In general,

however, all offer a satisfying solution to travails and setbacks, generally enshrining

heterosexual

marriage

and

family

as ideals.

Among authors especially associated with the romance are Nora Roberts, Elizabeth

Lowell, Catherine Coulter and Kathleen Eagle (names are invariably

WASP

ish albeit

sometimes pseudonymous). Others slide over into wider mass marketing, like Danielle

Steele

. Elements of the romance as literature have also been explored in more innovative

works by Joyce Carol

Oates,

among others.

Mass-market romances are also known for their distinctive cover art, usually showing a

couple in an embrace in which the young, lovely yet vulnerable heroine perhaps struggles

to escape the strong arms and piercing gaze of the dark, mysterious hero. The model

Fabio, in fact, constructed his

celebrity

from his appearance on bodice-ripper covers.

Further reading

Radway J. (1992)

Reading the Romance,

Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina.

GARY McDONOGH

CINDY WONG

Romanian Americans

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 978

Romanian

immigration

to the US began in the 1880s. Following independence from the

Ottoman empire, the government of King Carol I ruled with a heavy hand, and worsening

economic conditions meant that work was scarce. Most of the immigrants to America

were landless young males, though some families went as well. Many Romanian Jews

also fled to escape persecution, settling into the larger Jewish community in

New York

City, NY; other Romanians moved west to centers like

Chicago, IL

and

Detroit, MI,

search of work. Romanian refugees also came to America during the

Cold War,

and

others fled following the collapse of the Ceaucescu regime in 1991. The most famous

Romanian American is probably the Olympian gymnast Nadia Comeneci, who emigrated

in the early 1990s.

MORGEN WITZEL

Roosevelt, (Anna) Eleanor

b. 1884; d. 1962

Patrician by birth and

marriage,

Roosevelt became loved—and hated—on her own for

her stands on

race

and human rights. Niece of President Theodore Roosevelt, she began a

tumultuous marriage with her cousin Franklin

Roosevelt

in 1905. Increasingly active

after his bout with

polio,

Roosevelt became (and continued to be, even after his death) a

leading figure in the New Deal and liberal Democratic politics. Her commitment to

integration had been made more public by her dramatic resignation from the Daughters o

the American Revolution when that group barred Marian Anderson from Constitution

Hall. In 1946 she founded the Americans for Democratic Action to support liberal voices

within the

Democratic Party,

while from 1945 to 1953 she served as US delegate to the

United Nations, chairing the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In

1961 President John F.

Kennedy

re-appointed her to the UN as well as to his

Commission on the Status of Women; decades later, Hillary

Clinton

has identified her as

a vital presence in the redefinition of the role of

First Lady

GARY McDONOGH

Roosevelt, Franklin Delano

President

from 1933 until his death in 1945, Roosevelt was the architect of the New Deal

and the leader who guided the United States to victory over

Japan

and Germany in the

Second World War. His legacy remained great through much of the second half of the

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twentieth century

Elected to the presidency in 1932, Roosevelt and the

Democratic Party

benefited from

Herbert Hoover’s failure to respond to the plight of many Americans suffering the

economic consequences of the Great Depression. In fact, Roosevelt’s own response to the

Depression was neither radical nor systematic. Many of his policy initiatives were ones

that Hoover had tried unsuccessfully to implement. Roosevelt was not an ideologue

committed to the idea of a welfare state. Instead, he was a pragmatist who moved with

the times and carried out different policies as conditions warranted. Unlike Hoover, he

realized that Americans wanted action, if only to give the appearance that something was

being done. As he said during the 1932 campaign, “the country demands bold, persistent

experimentation.”

In March 1933, therefore, when inaugurated, Roosevelt immediately set about

establishing what he called a New Deal for the American people, including a plethora o

acts establishing different bodies to administer the economy (e.g. the National Recovery,

Social Security, Agricultural, and Works Progress Administrations). While both liberals

and conservatives at the time proclaimed its revolutionary character, more revisionist

views have recognized there was very little that was systematic about the New Deal. It

included many ad hoc initiatives to deal with particular problems, some of which

cancelled out or undermined others. Marked by the pragmatic and reactive politics o

which Roosevelt was the master, the reforms were essentially conservative in nature,

endeavoring to re-establish stability for corporate capitalism in the United States.

This lack of an ideological justification for welfare was both a strength and a weakness

in the reforms. The New Deal actually failed to accomplish its major goal (re-establishing

economic health for the country), but this was achieved by wartime prosperity. However,

its apparent success and Roosevelt’s obvious popularity gave some of the programs a

longevity that they might not have had, had they been more ideologically grounded.

Consequently following the Second World War, presidents from

Truman

Carter

remained committed to the New Deal. By the same token, when the prosperity of the

ostwar years was threatened during the 1970s, there was no ideological commitment to

welfare that might safeguard it from the onslaught of a

Reagan,

who argued that it was a

millstone weighing down American capitalism.

As the president who guided the United States through the Second World War,

Roosevelt was able to enshrine Wilsonian internationalism at the heart of American

foreign policy. However, while he was able to secure American support for the United

Nations, his internationalism was also more prag-matic than ideological. Bringing

together a wartime coalition to defeat Hitler, he was unable to guide this alliance towards

a new relationship with the Soviet Union that could survive their postwar competition.

Consequently, his repudiation of isolationism fed into a greater commitment to

engagement abroad to counteract the Soviets rather than to a philosophical commitment

to internationalism.

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 980

Further reading

Fraser, S. and Gerstle, G. (eds) (1989)

The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order,

Princeton: Princeton University Press.

ROBERT GREGG

Roth, Philip

b. 1933

Jewish American novelist, whose novels have focused primarily on the experiences o

being a person who has grown up

middle class,

male and Jewish in the early 1950s. His

first publication was the novella and short stories

Goodbye, Columbus

(1959). Ten years

later he published his most notorious work,

Portnoy’s Complaint

(1969), which found the

central character seeking relief from insecurity through masturbation and sex with

shiksas

. The series of Zuckerman novels followed (

My Life as a Man, The Ghost Writer,

Zuckerman Unbound, The Anatomy Lesson

and

The Counterlife

ROBERT GREGG

rowing

Central to many

colleges and universities’

sports programs since the nineteenth century,

especially the

Ivy League

universities, crew is an expensive sport (racing shells cost as

much as $20,000) and is generally available only to wealthier Americans at university or

Olympic levels. Rowers along

rivers

Boston

’s Charles and

Philadelphia

’s

Schuylkill (immortalized in Thomas Eakin’s paintings) thus have drawn ire from

residents of surrounding communities. Hence, Philadelphia administrators have

occasionally suggested that the city’s boathouses (used for equipment and social

activities) should provide camps or other low-cost facilities to disadvantaged kids.

Visibility of women in the sport grew dramatically after the passage of

Title IX

. Since

colleges already had the necessary equipment, rowing easily served to move towards

funding parity. By 1997, 96

NCAA

schools had women’s varsity rowing teams.

Reaching parity was made easier still in 1997 when the NCAA made women’s rowing a

sanctioned sport, while men’s rowing remained a varsity or club sport. Consequently in

many schools women rowers outnumber men.

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This has had increasing impact on gender conventions beyond the crews. Bodybuilding

sports, before Title IX at least, generally had been considered unfeminine. Now these

constitute the backbone of many women’s sporting programs.

ROBERT GREGG

running

The “loneliness of the long-distance runner” is a phenomenon of the past. A sport earlier

in the century associated in many people’s minds with alienation and escape has become

in the new century a pastime marked by conformity and

fashion

. By 1998 an estimated

32 million Americans engaged in running, and, instead of finding deserted paths to run

down, they did so down busy thoroughfares and on health-club treadmills dressed in the

trendiest sports outfits. In George Sheehan’s

Running and Being

(1978) the sport found

its answer to existentialism; in Jimmy

Carter

it found its own president.

The running craze took off in the 1970s, following the publication of works like

Kenneth Cooper’s

Aerobics

(1968), which highlighted the relationship between exercise

and the prevention of heart disease. During the 1970s several runners brought attention to

the sport. Frank Shorter won the gold medal at the 1972

Olympics,

while Bill Rodgers

was a four-time

Boston

and

New York

marathon winner between 1975 and 1980. In

1977 Jim Fixx published his bestselling

Complete Book of Running,

though his death

from a heart attack seven years later led many to question the sport’s curative qualities.

The sport also attracted women in great numbers, whether for purposes of competition,

training, overall

physical fitness,

or losing weight. The Olympics originally had no track

and field for women. In 1928 women were allowed to compete only in races shorter than

800 meters. By the late 1960s many women wanted to begin competing in road races. A

showdown occurred in 1967 at the Boston Marathon, where Katherine Switzer, using just

her first initial and last name to register, received a number and finished the race. Within

two years women could officially enter into both the Boston and New York marathons,

and, in 1970, fifty-five women finished in the New York Marathon. Longer races were

gradually added to the Olympic Games after 1972. Currently 32 percent of finishers in

road races are women, about 50 percent in 5K races, and about 28 percent in marathons.

Joan Benoit was the winner of the first women’s marathon at the 1984 Olympics bringing

the same attention to women’s running that Shorter had brought to the sport in the 1970s.

ROBERT GREGG

Russell, Richard

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 982

b. 1897; d. 1971

Richard Russell, a long-serving US senator from Georgia and a conservative

Democrat,

was Chairperson of the Senate Armed Services Committee from 1951 to 1952

and from 1955 to 1968, where he oversaw government defense and intelligence

operations. A mentor to Senator, then President, Lyndon

Johnson,

Russell was a

confirmed segregationist and resisted Johnson’s efforts to pass the comprehensive

Civil

Rights Act

of 1964. Johnson forcefully persuaded Russell to serve on the

Warren

Commission,

but Russell refused to sign the Commission’s report until a clause was

added that a conspiracy to assassinate President John

Kennedy

was still a possibility

MELINDA SCHWENK

Russia

Since 1917, relations between Russia (or the Soviet Union) and the United States have

been marked by extraordinary hostility occasionally tempered by periods of cooperation.

The US refused to recognize the new Bolshevik government when it assumed power in

1917, and even contributed several thousand troops to an international military force

intended to dislodge the new regime from power from 1918 to 1920. These actions left a

legacy of hostility on the part of the Soviets who treated the invasion as proof of the

determination of capitalist countries to subvert the Soviet Republic. The United States

withheld diplomatic recognition of the USSR until 1933.

Relations between the two countries remained tense until the United States entered the

Second World War, at which time they became allied against the Axis powers. In the US,

sympathy and affection for “Mother Russia” and “Uncle Joe”Z Stalin developed. From

the Soviet perspective, however, American unwillingness to open a second front in

continental Europe until 1944, after the Red Army had been combating Nazi armies for

three years at the cost of nearly 20 million Soviet lives, left the impression that the US

was willing to let Soviet citizens fight Hitler alone in order to spare American casualties.

Resentment helped to fuel Soviet suspicion of American postwar intentions at the outset

of the

Cold War

Any lingering benevolent wartime feelings between the two countries evaporated

during the Cold War, which periodically flared into “hot” wars, on the Korean peninsula

and in Vietnam, and nearly over the

Cuban missile crisis

(1962) and the Berlin Crisis

(1958–62). American suspicion of an expansionist, aggressive and Marxist Soviet Union

exporting revolution and instability to capitalist nations friendly to the United States was

a foundation of American foreign and domestic policy until the late 1980s.

The 1970s were largely a period of détente, a warming of relations highlighted by

increased cultural and student exchanges and

tourism

. In light of an essential parity o

nuclear weapons arsenals, arms-control treaties limited, but by no means stopped, the

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arms race. Nevertheless, much of the American media continued to depict the Soviet

Union as a ruthless and cunning enemy, as did most of

Congress,

which in 1979 refused

to ratify the SALT II arms-control treaty negotiated by President

Carter

The first half of the

Reagan

presidency (1981–9) brought renewed rhetorical battles

and a reheated Cold War. Reagan coined the term “Evil Empire” to describe the Soviet

Union, and effectively ended the 1970s détente. American spending on the development

of new missile systems (and anti-missile systems) increased dramatically and the Soviets

attempted, unsuccessfully to match American capabilities.

Only the unexpected ascension of the reformer Mikhail Gorbachev to the post o

General Secretary of the Communist Party in 1985 created the conditions for a new thaw

in Soviet—American relations. Gorbachev, with his commitment to reducing Soviet

expenditures on defense, which were severely damaging an already weakening Soviet

economy to increased “openness” (glasnost) in the press, and his rhetoric of liberalizing

the socialist system, eventually became enormously popular among

Washington

elites

and the American public, softening anti-Soviet attitudes. His efforts to introduce

“socialism with a human face” to the USSR met with an extraordinary enthusiasm in the

US, not matched in his own country. His refusal to crush with force the Eastern European

revolutions in 1989–91 also met with approval and raised him—and the Soviet Union—

in the eyes of many Americans.

Gorbachev’s downfall, made inevitable with the failed right-wing putsch of August

1991, and the subsequent dissolution of the Communist Party by Russian President Boris

Yeltsin, marked the end of Soviet—American relations.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian—American relations temporarily

improved but have since cooled significantly. Many Russians blamed American

economists for imposing upon Russia “shock-therapy” measures. These measures,

including the privatization of state-owned property, the end to price subsidies and foreign

investment, have been blamed for the sharp decline in living standards for the majority o

Russians, while a small minority have quickly accumulated enormous wealth. More

recently, America’s support for the expansion of the

NATO

military alliance into the

countries of the former Eastern bloc, followed by the 1999 war with Serbia, provoked the

worst American—Russian relations since the end of the Cold War. Many Russian leaders

and citizens have accused America and its European allies of “aggression” in an attempt

to isolate and humiliate Russia during this period of internal turmoil and economic

collapse.

Further reading

Boyle, P.G. (1993)

American-Soviet Relations,

London: Routledge.

Crockett, R. (1995)

The Fifty Years War: The United States and the Soviet Union in

World Politics,

London: Routledge.

Gaddis, J.L. (1987)

The Long Peace,

New York: Oxford University Press.

The Cold War International History Project website: http://cwihp.si.edu/.

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 984

JAMES HEINZEN

Russian Americans

Immigrants came to the United States from

Russia

and the Soviet Union in several waves

during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Evading the Russian draft, 5,000

pacifist sectarians emigrated to

California

between 1904 and 1912. A much larger surge

of approximately 90,000, composed mainly of poor Jewish agriculturalists, fleeing

ogroms and famine in Tsarist Russia, fled between 1890 and 1910 and particularly after

the Russian Revolution of 1905. They settled mostly in large northeastern

cities

and in

nearby industrial settlements. Many Russians were involved in socialist political parties

efore 1920, and the Red scare particularly targeted the Russian American community in

search of revolutionaries. Thousands of arrests ensued. The stereotyping of Russians as

communists, anarchists, or otherwise un-American blossomed in this period.

Another large

immigration

flowed out of Soviet Russia in the years following the

Bolshevik Revolution of November 1917 and subsequent Civil War (1918–21). These

people were mostly deeply anti-Soviet former members of the nobility, merchants,

academics and members of the

rofessions. The majority settled in European capitals

such as Prague, Berlin and Paris, but approximately 20,000 continued on to the United

States. Many of them ended up in American universities, establishing some of the first

courses in Russian language, literature, culture and history in the United States.

Post-Second World War

refugees

comprised the second post-revolutionary wave. A

mish-mash of national and social groups, they settled in many cities, often after lengthy

stays in displaced-

ersons camps in Europe and South America. After a period of pride

among Russian Americans during the Second World War alliance between the US and

the Soviet Union, the

McCarthyism

of the late 1940s and 1950s again encouraged many

Russians to keep a low profile.

The third wave of immigrants from the Soviet Union mainly comprised Jews who were

allowed to join family members in Israel and the United States. About 300,000 Jews left

the USSR between 1970 and 1989, most of them going to Israel. Jewish immigration was

subject to the vicissitudes of

Cold War

antagonisms and was interrupted periodically.

After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, for example, Jewish immigration was

temporarily suspended. In 1977, approximately 500,000 first-generation Russian

immigrants and their descendants were living in the United States, though that figure has

since jumped higher.

The latest wave of immigration is ongoing and very large, beginning after the collapse

of the Soviet communist government in 1991 and intensifying with the subsequent

economic and political instability in Russia. Tens of thousands of people of all ethnicities

have left the territory of the former Soviet Union and settled in the United States. They

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