Hungerstrike. The History of a Form of Protest in the United States, 1880 to World War II

自世纪末以来，绝食一直被用作一种激进抗议的手段，有效地吸引了公众的注意。从跨国的角度来看，该项目的重点是在美国采用，应用和接收绝食。这项研究涵盖了从19世纪末到1960年代末这一时期，从而确保能够仔细研究媒体对19世纪末美国行动者绝食的首次报道、1914年开始政治犯使用这种抗议形式的既定做法以及1960年代社会运动中的绝食。核心问题是：在哪些情况下拒绝进食被有效地使用并被视为一种抗议形式，绝食是如何成为一种新的政治抗议手段的？由此产生了四个一般性问题。首先，参与绝食的人与什么样的社会环境有关，他们针对的是什么样的公众？第二，绝食是否可以被理解为紧急状态下特有的一种抗议形式？第三，拒绝食物的做法对行为者本身意味着什么，特别是当这种抗议可能以牺牲自己的生命而告终时？第四，在哪些政治辩论中，演员们采取了绝食抗议，媒体和学术著作是如何看待和解释这些罢工的？此外，该项目旨在以一种尖锐的跨国视角打开美国的社会和文化历史，以重建俄罗斯，英国和印度的政治（禁食）实践的重要性。

Since the end of the nineteenth century, hunger strikes have been used as a means of radical protest that effectively attracts publicity. From a transnational perspective, the project focuses on the adoption, application, and reception of hunger strikes in the United States. The study covers the period from the late nineteenth century to the end of the 1960s, thus ensuring that a close look can be taken of the first media coverage of hunger strikes by American actors in the late nineteenth century, the established use of this form of protest by political prisoners starting in 1914, and the hunger strikes in the social movements of the 1960s. The central question is: In which contexts were the refusal to eat effectively used and perceived as a form of protest and how did hunger strikes become established as a new instrument of political protest? From this, four general questions arise. First, to which social environment were those involved in hunger strikes linked and which public did they address? Second, can hunger strikes be understood as a form of protest specific to states of emergency? Third, what does the practice of refusing food mean for the actors themselves, especially when such protest can end in the self-sacrifice of their own lives? And fourth, in which political debates did actors resort to hunger strikes and how were these strikes perceived and interpreted both in the media and in scholarly work? In addition, the project aims to open up the social and cultural history of the United States to a pointedly transnational perspective in order to reconstruct the importance of how political (fasting) practices from Russia, Great Britain, and India were received.