Current Installment

When the “Jungle” Met the Forest: Public Work, Civil Defense, and Prison Camps in Postwar California

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After World War II, California’s forest labor camps offered prisoners unusual liberties and community respect in return for often dangerous public works labor. But the Golden State’s fast-changing urban and rural landscapes eventually soured residents on this popular prison rehabilitation experiment and turned the conservation camp program into a catalyst for today’s prison geography. Volker Janssen draws on research in the correspondence of the California Department of Corrections to highlight the role of Cold War military culture in prison reform. Exploring the racial, urban-rural, and political conflicts sparked by the conservation camp program, Janssen argues that prisons and incarceration policies are central to understanding the connection between America’s urban crisis and law-and-order conservatism.

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“Teaching the JAH” uses online tools to bridge the gap between the latest scholarly research in U.S. history and the practice of classroom teaching. JAH authors demonstrate how featured articles might be taught in a U.S. history survey course.

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Other Recent Installments

June 2009
“The Specter of Environmentalism”: Wilderness, Environmental Politics, and the Evolution of the New Right
—James Morton Turner

December 2008
“Worth a Lot of Negro Votes”: Black Voters, Africa, and the 1960 Presidential Campaign
—James H. Meriwether

June 2008
Reconfiguring the Old South: “Solving the Problem of Slavery,” 1787–1838
—Lacy Ford

September 2007
Houses Divided: Lincoln, Douglas, and the Political Landscape of 1858
—Allen C. Guelzo

June 2007
The Army in the Marketplace: Recruiting an All-Volunteer Force
—Beth Bailey

Migrant Mother December 2006
Dorothea Lange: The Photographer as Agricultural Sociologist
—Linda Gordon

200603 S March 2006
Demobilizing Chicago, 1943–1953
—Laura McEnnaney

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