Lady Astronauts, Lady Engineers, and Naked Ladies

Lady Astronauts, Lady Engineers, and Naked Ladies
Author: Karin Hilck
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 637
Release: 2019-07-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 3110626187

The book Lady Astronauts, Lady Engineers, and Naked Ladies is a gender history of the American space community and by extension a social history of American society in the twentieth century during the Cold War. In order to expand and differentiate the prevalent postwar narrative about gender relations and cultural structures in the United States, the book analyzes several different groups of women interacting in different social spaces within the space community. It therewith grants insight into the several layers of female participation and agency in the community and the gender and race based obstacles and hurdles the female (prospective) astronauts, scientists, engineers, artists, administrators, writers, hostesses, secretaries, and wives were faced with at NASA and in the space industry. In each chapter a different social space within the space community is analyzed. The spaces where the women lived and worked are researched from a media, individual, and institutional angle, ultimately revealing the differing gender philosophies communicated in the public sphere and the space community workplaces by government and space community officials. While women were publicly encouraged to participate in the American space effort to beat the Soviet Union in the race to the moon, women had to deal with gender based barriers which were integral to the structures of the space community; just as they were an intrinsic component of all societal structures in the United States in the 1960s. The female space workers, who were often perceived as disrupters of the prevalent social order in the space community and discriminated by some of their male colleagues and bosses on a personal basis, still managed to assert themselves. They molded pockets of agency in the space community workspaces without the facilitation of regulations on the part of NASA that might have provided them with easier access or more agency. Thus, the space community, a place of technological innovation, was not necessarily also a place of social innovation, but a community with a government agency at its center that mainly mirrored the current (changing) social order, conventions, and policies in the 1960s as well as in the 1970s and 1980s. Nevertheless, the women presented in this book were instrumental in advancing and consolidating the social transformation that happened within the space community and the United States and therefore make intriguing subjects of research. Thus, this systematic analysis of the connection between gender, space, and the Cold War adds a new dimension to space history as well as expands the discourse in American history about gender relations and the opportunities of women in the twentieth century.

Lady Astronauts, Lady Engineers, and Naked Ladies

Lady Astronauts, Lady Engineers, and Naked Ladies
Author: Karin Hilck
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 476
Release: 2019-07-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 3110629828

The book Lady Astronauts, Lady Engineers, and Naked Ladies is a gender history of the American space community and by extension a social history of American society in the twentieth century during the Cold War. In order to expand and differentiate the prevalent postwar narrative about gender relations and cultural structures in the United States, the book analyzes several different groups of women interacting in different social spaces within the space community. It therewith grants insight into the several layers of female participation and agency in the community and the gender and race based obstacles and hurdles the female (prospective) astronauts, scientists, engineers, artists, administrators, writers, hostesses, secretaries, and wives were faced with at NASA and in the space industry. In each chapter a different social space within the space community is analyzed. The spaces where the women lived and worked are researched from a media, individual, and institutional angle, ultimately revealing the differing gender philosophies communicated in the public sphere and the space community workplaces by government and space community officials. While women were publicly encouraged to participate in the American space effort to beat the Soviet Union in the race to the moon, women had to deal with gender based barriers which were integral to the structures of the space community; just as they were an intrinsic component of all societal structures in the United States in the 1960s. The female space workers, who were often perceived as disrupters of the prevalent social order in the space community and discriminated by some of their male colleagues and bosses on a personal basis, still managed to assert themselves. They molded pockets of agency in the space community workspaces without the facilitation of regulations on the part of NASA that might have provided them with easier access or more agency. Thus, the space community, a place of technological innovation, was not necessarily also a place of social innovation, but a community with a government agency at its center that mainly mirrored the current (changing) social order, conventions, and policies in the 1960s as well as in the 1970s and 1980s. Nevertheless, the women presented in this book were instrumental in advancing and consolidating the social transformation that happened within the space community and the United States and therefore make intriguing subjects of research. Thus, this systematic analysis of the connection between gender, space, and the Cold War adds a new dimension to space history as well as expands the discourse in American history about gender relations and the opportunities of women in the twentieth century.

The Routledge Handbook of Social Studies of Outer Space

The Routledge Handbook of Social Studies of Outer Space
Author: Juan Francisco Salazar
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 778
Release: 2023-07-10
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000890643

The Routledge Handbook of Social Studies of Outer Space offers state-of-the-art overview of contemporary social and cultural research on outer space. International in scope, the thirty-eight contributions by over fifty leading researchers and artists across a variety of disciplines and fields of knowledge, present a range of debates and pose key questions about the crafting of futures in relation to outer space. The Handbook is a call to attend more carefully to engagements with outer space, empirically, affectively, and theoretically, while characterizing current research practices and outlining future research agendas. This recalibration opens profound questions of intersectional politics, race, equity, and environmental justice around the contested topics of space exploration and life off-Earth. Among the many themes included in the volume are the various infrastructures, networks and systems that enable and sustain space exploration; space heritage; the ethics of outer space; social and environmental justice; fundamental debates about life in outer space as it pertains to both astrobiology and SETI; the study of scientific communities; the human body and consciousness; Indigenous astronomical systems of Knowledge; contemporary space art; and ongoing critical interventions to overcome the legacies of colonialism and dismantle hegemonic narratives of outer space.

Dangerous Music? – ‘Explicit’ Lyrics in the United States of America

Dangerous Music? – ‘Explicit’ Lyrics in the United States of America
Author: Julian Weller
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 346
Release: 2024-07-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 3111336379

This book discusses the history of music warning labels, specifically the Parental Advisory Label (PAL), and the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC). It aims to answer these questions: How could the PMRC trigger a debate on music lyrics as a negative influence on children that led to the introduction of the PAL in the long run? What did the implementation of the PAL warning mean for musicians and how had the perception of music changed so that the advisory label was deemed necessary? The central thesis is that through the discourse on explicit lyrics, certain music was marked as an actual threat to children and society and consequently started to be perceived as such. By the way in which the discourse evolved, and how other actors conducted themselves in the debates, this understanding of certain music was repeatedly (re-)negotiated and connected to other current discourses, such as discourses on family values, sexuality, youth culture, generational conflicts and social problems. Through this, the understanding of certain music as a threat to children and society was constantly renewed. The book analyses the PMRC’s campaign on explicit lyrics and provides insights into their strategy and success from a historical perspective.

Rise of the Rocket Girls

Rise of the Rocket Girls
Author: Nathalia Holt
Publisher: Little, Brown
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2016-04-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 0316338915

The riveting true story of the women who launched America into space. In the 1940s and 50s, when the newly minted Jet Propulsion Laboratory needed quick-thinking mathematicians to calculate velocities and plot trajectories, they didn't turn to male graduates. Rather, they recruited an elite group of young women who, with only pencil, paper, and mathematical prowess, transformed rocket design, helped bring about the first American satellites, and made the exploration of the solar system possible. For the first time, Rise of the Rocket Girls tells the stories of these women -- known as "human computers" -- who broke the boundaries of both gender and science. Based on extensive research and interviews with all the living members of the team, Rise of the Rocket Girls offers a unique perspective on the role of women in science: both where we've been, and the far reaches of space to which we're heading. "If Hidden Figures has you itching to learn more about the women who worked in the space program, pick up Nathalia Holt's lively, immensely readable history, Rise of the Rocket Girls." -- Entertainment Weekly

Almost Heaven

Almost Heaven
Author: Bettyann Kevles
Publisher: Mit Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2006
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780262612135

Told for the first time in colorful detail, "Almost Heaven" is the fascinating tale of 40 space-faring women, from Valentina Tereshkova to Kalpana Chawla. 8-page photo insert.

The Earth Gazers

The Earth Gazers
Author: Christopher Potter
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 546
Release: 2017-09-07
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1784974242

The most beautiful and influential photographs ever made were of the whole earth seen from space. They were taken from the moon, almost as an afterthought, by the astronauts of the Apollo space programme. They inspired a generation to think more seriously about our responsibility for this tiny oasis in space, the 'blue marble' falling through empty darkness. This is a book about the long road to the capture of those unforgettable images. It is a history of the space programme and of the ways in which it transformed our view of the earth and changed the lives of the astronauts who walked in space and on the moon. It is the story of the often blemished visionaries who inspired that journey into space: Charles Lindbergh, Robert Goddard and Wernher Von Braun, and of the courageous pilots who were the first humans to escape the Earth's orbit.