Gary McDonogh. Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture

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though, as Oliver

North

took the fall, it did not come close to

dislodging the “teflon president.” Relations with Iran have been normalized with the

emergence of Iraq, Iran’s enemy throughout the 1980s, as the main threat to stability in

the region.

ROBERT GREGG

Iran-Contra affair

The most serious scandal in the administration of President Ronald

Reagan,

the affair

involved two linked, arguably illegal, covert US government operations that became

ublic knowledge in November 1986. In the first operation, the government sold arms to

Iran in an effort to secure the release of seven hostages who had been held in Lebanon

since 1984 by terrorists allied with Iran. The arms sales contradicted the stated

government policy of refusing to negotiate with terrorists, and of isolating Iran, and at

least some of the sales may have violated federal law. In the second operation, the

government used the proceeds from the arms sales to supply arms to a group of rebels,

known as the contras, who were trying to overthrow the left-wing government in

icaragua, known as the Sandinistas. The operation violated a federal law that had

banned US aid to the contras. The scandal led to investigations by both

Congress

and an

independent special counsel,

but only a few relatively minor figures were convicted o

any crimes, and in 1992 President George

Bush

pardoned all those charged or convicted

because of the scandal.

DAVID GOLDSTON

Ireland

The American people and government have enjoyed amicable and supportive relations

with the Republic of Ireland, an independent nationstate, and the smaller Northern

Ireland, an integral part of the United Kingdom, since Ireland’s division in 1920.

However, relations were strained during the Second World War when the Irish state, then

known as Éire, remained neutral. Northern Ireland, on the other hand, was the site o

bases for US forces staging for the invasion of western Europe. Since the war, US—Irish

relations improved greatly during the

Kennedy

administration, while US—

orthern Irish

relations were muted after the return of “the Troubles” in 1969 due to British insistence

that they were strictly an internal affair. Since that time, however, the US, through the

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 596

International Fund for Ireland, has provided capital for economic development in

Northern Ireland, and the

Clinton

administration has played an important role in the

peace initiatives of the late 1990s.

The US continues to welcome Irish immigrants, in what is part of the special

relationship between the two lands, while

Irish Americans,

the second-largest group o

European ancestry in the US, sustain wide social and cultural ties with families and

friends in the “Zold country.” Today Ireland, North and South, has become a favorite

location for American corporations (particularly in the fields of services, software and

communications) that want access to the European Union, which both Irelands joined in

1973.

THOMAS M.WILSON

Irish Americans

Immigrants from Ireland and their descendants. The Irish who came to America from the

seventeenth to the early nineteenth centuries were Presbyterian Scotch-Irish from Ulster,

the northern province of Northern Ireland, who later wished to be distinguished from the

mostly Catholic, rural and poor immigrants who, because of the great famines in Ireland

in the late 1840s, began the first wave of mass

immigration

to the US. In the hundred

years after 1820, almost 5 million Irish entered America. In the 1840s, the Irish made up

45 percent of immigrants to America. While the numbers of new arrivals have declined

since, they have continued to be an important thread in the American tapestry Some

estimates have 40 million Americans claiming Irish ancestry

While the majority of Scotch-Irish settled in the Middle Atlantic states, the Irish

Americans who hailed from the southern parts of Ireland settled throughout the US in

oth rural and urban communities. Initially discriminated against in the nineteenth

century because of their

religion

and culture, in an era where many employers displayed

signs of “No Irish Need Apply”

y the twentieth century the Irish had assimilated into the

American mainstream. In the cities many Irishmen found employment in the construction

trade and in the civil service, principally in the

police

and fire departments, where their

literacy and fluency in English gave them an advantage over other immigrant groups,

while many Irish women worked as servants and seamstresses for the growing urban

middle class

. Found in every American

community,

the Irish have become particularly

associated with the politics, culture, religion and economy of

New York

City,

Chicago,

IL, Boston, MA,

Philadelphia, PA

and

San Francisco, CA,

which along with most

major American cities have sported at least one “Irishtown.” These cities continue to hold

parades on St. Patrick’s Day (March 17) to celebrate Irish American accomplishments

and identity.

Irish Americans are mostly followers of the Roman Catholic faith, and they have

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helped to sustain that church in America since their arrival. Patronage systems among the

Irish in politics had an impact on party organizations in every major city where many o

the Irish working class supported the

Democratic Party

. The Irish have made

remarkable contributions to all forms of elite and popular American culture. In

contemporary America, the Irish have made great achievements in politics (the

Kennedys,

Tip

O’Neill,

Paul O’Dwyer, Richard J.

Daley,

Eugene

McCarthy

), cinema

(John

Ford,

James Cagney Grace

Kelly,

Spencer Tracy), religion (Francis Cardinal

Spellman, John Cardinal O’Connor), drama (Eugene O’

eill, winner of the Nobel prize),

literature (F. Scott Fitzgerald, Mary McCarthy, James T.Farrell) and journalism (Jimmy

Breslin, Pete Hamill). Since the 1980s there has been a resurgence in immigration from

Ireland, inspiring a revival in interest in traditional Irish culture, best represented in the

success of the staged musical

Riverdance

Further reading

McCaffrey L.J. (1992)

Textures of Irish America,

Syracuse: Syracuse University Press.

Thernstrom, S. (1980)

Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups,

Cambridge,

MA: Harvard University Press.

THOMAS M.WILSON

IRS (Internal Revenue Service)

taxes

Irving, John

b. 1942

Autobiographical novelist, whose first works,

Setting Free the Bears

(1968),

The

Water Method Man

(1972) and

The 158-Pound Marriage

(1974), developed themes that

reached fruition in

The World According to Garp

(1978) and

Hotel New Hampshire

(1981).

Garp,

in particular, brought Irving considerable public attention, with its

irreverence, its blending of absurdity and realism and its engagement with issues of sex

and violence, which the author suggested were the embodiment of American culture.

More recent works include

A Prayer for Owen Meany

(1989) and

The Son of the Circus

(1994), in which an aging, Indian-

orn Garp works among film stars, dwarfs and a

murderer in Bombay.

ROBERT GREGG

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 598

Islam

Muslims came to America as slaves in the early days of the Republic; later immigrants

from the Middle East established permanent communities by the late nineteenth century

Yet claims to an Islamic citizenship have been controverted by the continual dominance

of a Judaeo-Christian civil tradition and the orientalist identification of Islam with distant

and savage others, especially in the global political climate of the late twentieth and early

twenty-first centuries. Moreover, the separatist claims of the

Nation of Islam,

promoting

African American

nationalism on the basis of a non-orthodox racial reinterpretation o

Islam, have made the

religion

seem anti-American to many in the cauldron of the

Civil

Rights movement

. Nonetheless, flourishing Muslim communities have sprung up

throughout the US, bringing together established African and

Arab Americans

with

diverse immigrants from South Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Albania. Like other

immigrants, these Muslims confront the dilemmas of maintaining the rituals and practices

of their religion in a diverse society as well as the intersection of very different

interpretations and cultures of Islam. Still, 4–5 million Muslims live in the United States,

ut mosques remain unfamiliar and suspect landmarks. Islam is read more often as a

symbol of fanaticism than as part of a religious dialogue within a polyglot discussion.

Moreover, Islam lacks the

Hollywood

conversion cachet of Buddhism:

mass media

have

tended to separate rather than integrate Islamic practice and “Americanism.”

Arab Americans established the first US mosques, especially in Midwestern cities, in

the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Communities generally remained small,

incorporating Sunni, Shia, Alawis and Druze; the Federation of Islamic Associations

acted as an umbrella group. An influx of Arab, Iranian and South Asian students and

professionals after the Second World War expanded this

community

as a transnational

faith.

Meanwhile, the Nation of Islam had claimed titles and symbols of Muslim orthodoxy

(mosques, naming, etc.) since its foundation in the 1930s, although its messages and

practices diverged from global traditions, as

Malcolm X

observed in his

Autobiography

(1965). This division shifted radically in 1975 when Warith Dean Muhammed, son o

lack Muslim leader Elijah Mohammed, pushed his group towards Sunni Islam and

doubled the Muslim community in the US. The intersection of “Orthodox” Islam and

Muslims coming out of African American traditions remains extremely complex, even i

these groups are conflated in American imagery.

New

immigration

laws also facilitated even more diversity with the arrival o

Muslims from Africa, Southeast Asia, China, the West Indies and other areas. These

shifts have separated “Arab” (which also includes Christians) and “Muslim” as

communities, although many Americans again confuse the two. In the early twenty-first

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century American Muslims, with over 1,000 mosques, are united by Islam, but divided by

interpretations of Islam, language, origins,

class, race, ethnicity

and gender.

These diverse Muslims have confronted rejection as outsiders, as well as pressures

towards

assimilation

and adaptation in the formation of American Islam. Limitations in

observing Islamic law have been imposed by the small communities (absence of halal

meat). Work and school settings and rules have failed to recognize ritual needs, although

these have been changed through court action as well as increasing social recognition

that, for example, limits academic exigencies during Ramadan. Even here, these

questions are decided within American institutions (courts, agencies dealing with

discrimination, universities, etc.) rather than Islamic forums.

Women have been seen as a particular crucible for Muslim identity in terms of both

observance of rules and transmission of the faith to

children,

especially in the frequent

absence of schools. Diversity complicates gender roles—some Muslim women may come

from cultures or classes that have not experienced veiling (pre-revolutionary Iranians and

contemporary North Africans), yet these same Muslims may be shocked by the lack o

Koranic knowledge, behavior (smoking) or assimilation of other Muslims, including

taking Christmas as a national

holiday

. Identification of Muslim women abroad as

oppressed also makes it difficult for American Muslims to defend their freedom of life

choices, much less present Islamic feminism as an alternative. In other cases, women

have also taken on leadership roles in mosques and Muslim organizations beyond those

they would occupy in other Islamic societies worldwide.

American Islam, despite its strengthened foundations and participation in American

life, is profoundly affected by the transnational connections of geo-

olitics, immigrant

ties and

mass-media

imagery Arab-Israeli conflicts, the Iranian Revolution, which cut

off large communities of immigrants in areas like

Los Angeles,

the

Gulf War,

fundamentalist revivals and the specter of terrorism have identified Muslims to many

Americans as enemies rather than potential or actual fellow citizens. Whether in

theological dialogues, orientalist visions from

Hollywood

(

Raiders of the Lost Ark,

1981;

The Siege,

1999;

The Mummy,

1999) or in everyday interactions among neighbors and

colleagues, this distance imposes special burdens on those for whom Muslim and

American are central identities.

Further reading

Lopreato, J. (1970)

Italian Americans,

New York: Random House.

Agnelli, F.G. (1980)

The Italian-Americans,

Torino: The Foundation.

ROBERT GREGG

Ivy League

Seven Eastern universities—Harvard (Cambridge, Massachusetts), Yale (New Haven,

Connecticut), Princeton (Princeton, New Jersey), Dartmouth (Hanover, New Hampshire),

Brown (Providence, Rhode Island), Cornell (Ithaca, New York), Columbia (New York

City) and the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia)—constitute America’s oldest and

most prestigious

college

association. Harvard, with an endowment of $13 billion, was

founded in 1636, with Yale following in 1702, both with religious support. The

University of Pennsylvania, was founded later by Benjamin Franklin. Mainly male until

the 1960s, all are now co-educational.

The name evokes an elite style of academic life, with ivy-covered halls and gentlemen

scholars, embodied in a

football

association that grouped these schools together in 1898.

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 602

Although athletics continues to be a unifying feature, the schools are more likely to be

characterized today by their wealth as private institutions (Cornell also includes some

state programs). The renown of their faculties and the selectivity of their student body

within the US and the world matches the importance of their libraries and laboratories as

national resource centers.

All these schools include both undergraduate programs and well-known graduate and

professional schools which have produced recent American leaders like John F.

Kennedy

(Harvard), Al

Gore

(Harvard), George

Bush

(Yale) and Bill and Hillary

Clinton

(Yale

Law), as well as world figures like Benazir Bhutto (Harvard) and stars like Brooke

Shields (Princeton) and Jodie Foster (Yale). All these schools have organized and active

alumni networks.

In general, despite a widening student body since the 1960s, they appear in popular

culture as shorthand for a social and economic elite (for example, “preppie” or Ivy

League clothes in the 1950s and 1960s).

GARY McDONOGH

Jackson, Rev. Jesse

b. 1941

Born in Greenville, South Carolina, Jackson became a member of Martin Luther

King,

Jr.’s inner-circle of advisers just prior to the latter’s

assassination

in 1968. Taking on the

mantle of the

Civil Rights movement

and shifting it towards the economic and urban

issues King had begun to embrace, he became executive director of Operation

Breadbasket (1996–71), and then founder and national president of People United to Save

Humanity (PUSH) from 1971–83. Popularizing the phrase “rainbow coalition” to

describe his multi-ethnic and racial supporters, he ran for the

Democratic

presidential

nomination in 1984, and then more successfully against Michael Dukakis in 1988,

gaining significant influence at the Democratic Convention. During the

Clinton

presidency he was a key supporter of the administration during the

impeachment

crisis,

was involved in diplomatic missions and has been one of the District of Columbia’s

elected but non-voting “shadow” senators.

ROBERT GREGG

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Jackson, Michael

b. 1958

After leading the Jackson 5 to many successful singles as a child, music videos

(MTV)

recreated Jackson’s tremendous solo career by showcasing his incredible talent for dance.

“Thriller,” “Beat It” and “Billy Jean,” among other videos, gained effusive critical and

opular acclaim. Later, though, Jackson ignited controversy over dramatic changes in his

hysical appearance, suggesting excessive plastic surgery. He also was accused o

molesting one or more of the

children

who regularly came to visit his home. While the

alleged misconduct—and many reclusive traits—made Jackson fodder for media jokes

and gossip, he remains the “King of Pop.”

JAMES DAVID

Jackson, Shirley

b. 1919; d. 1965

Haunted explorer of the dark recesses of American life, Jackson discovered horrific

dimensions of

family, marriage

and

community

in novels like

We Have Always Lived in

the Castle

(1953). She provides a chilling rearrangement of American values o

individual responsibility collective identity and

freedom

in her classic story “The

Lottery” (1949), read by generations of American students. Personal reminiscence and a

selection of her unpublished stories were made available under the editorship of her

children, L.Hyman and S. Stewart, in the 1995 collection

Just an Ordinary Day

GARY McDONOGH

Jameson, Fredric

b. 1934

One of America’s most prominent leftist

intellectuals

and cultural critics. Most widely

cited for his 1991 book

Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism,

which

situated him as the leading theorist on

postmodernism

as a cultural condition and an

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 604

aesthetic style undertaken by visual artists and writers. The term that Jameson used as

being indicative of postmodernism was “pastiche.” Jameson teaches at Duke University

and is an editor of the controversial journal

Social Text

. He has written fourteen

influential books in literary film and cultural studies.

EDWARD MILLER

Japan, relations with

Japanese—American relations are often described through starkest conflict or

cooperation. Prior to and during the Second World War, hostility prevailed. Yet, after the

defeat of Japan, the relationship was envisioned by the US in terms of the cooperation

needed to ensure Japan as a bulwark against Communist expansion in East Asia.

onetheless, once the Japanese economy recovered from the war, a growing sense o

competition returned, with many Americans feeling threatened by Japanese economic

ascendancy even while believing that emulation of Japanese business methods and

strategies was crucial. The 1990s recession, devastating economies like that of Japan and

the Asian “tigers,” reduced many tensions between the US and Japan, although struggles

over market access and control continue. However, Japanese—American relations have

been more complex than these depictions suggest.

In the years leading up to 1941, Americans did not necessarily believe that the

modernizing Japanese threatened their interests. Theodore Roosevelt even promoted

Japanese interests in the region in 1907, supporting them in negotiations against Russia,

and secretly agreeing to allow Japan control of Korea in exchange for limiting Japanese

immigration

to the US. Woodrow Wilson gave Japan the Chinese territory of Shantung

(formerly controlled by Germany) in 1919, but refused to insert Japanese language

supporting racial equality into his League of Nations Covenant. In addition, the two

nations’ economies were intertwined, with Japan relying on exports to the United States

(where the “Made in Japan” label was becoming common. The Depression in America,

thus helped eradicate Japan’s export market, hastening the collapse of its liberal

government, and the turn to military expansionism). And, in the war, Americans vilified

and punished both Japanese and

Japanese Americans

Following the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 and the

American agreement to allow the Emperor Hirohito to remain in place (though with

altered powers), American regional interests, confronted by growing nationalist and

communist insurgencies, seemed to warrant the rebuilding of Japan under US occupation

(1945–52). The US retained military bases like Okinawa as staging posts for operations

in Korea and as escapes for Vietnam “R&R” (“Rest and Recreation”). With America’s

strict limiting of Japan’s military the Japanese were able to develop their export economy

gaining ascendancy in global auto production and electronics, while seemingly limiting

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