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

自19世纪末以来，绝食抗议一直被用作一种激进的抗议手段，有效地吸引了公众的注意。从跨国的角度来看，该项目侧重于在美国采用、应用和接受绝食抗议。该研究涵盖了从19世纪末到20世纪60年代末的时期，从而确保可以近距离观察19世纪末美国演员绝食抗议的第一次媒体报道，1914年开始由政治犯确定使用这种形式的抗议，以及20世纪60年代社会运动中的绝食抗议。核心问题是：在什么情况下，拒绝进食被有效地使用并被视为一种抗议形式，以及绝食是如何成为政治抗议的新工具的？由此产生了四个一般性问题。首先，那些参与绝食抗议的人与什么样的社会环境有关，他们针对哪些公众？第二，绝食可以被理解为紧急状态下特有的一种抗议形式吗？第三，拒绝食物的做法对演员本身意味着什么，尤其是当这种抗议可能以牺牲自己的生命告终时？第四，在哪些政治辩论中，演员诉诸绝食抗议，这些抗议在媒体和学术工作中是如何被理解和解释的？此外，该项目旨在以跨国视角打开美国的社会和文化历史，以重建来自俄罗斯、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.