Labor History Commons^™

Perceptions And Identity: Poverty In 19th Century Rockingham County, Kayla Heslin

Masters Theses, 2020-current

The historical analysis of poverty has lain silent for nearly two decades, with only recent authors, such as Nancy Isenberg and Kerri Leigh Merritt, broaching the topic. While several others have taken a deep dive into understanding the causes and effects of contemporary poverty, it seems to me a great deal has yet to be written on the identity of those impoverished and their active endeavors to define themselves in economic circumstances largely beyond their control. Until we truly explore the complexity of economic dearth and its relation to collective identity, we cannot fully understand the topic of “poverty.”

In …

In Her Own Hands: How Girls And Women Used The Piano To Chart Their Futures, Expand Women's Roles, And Shape Music In America, 1880–1920, Sarah F. Litvin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

American girls and women used the parlor piano to reshape their lives between 1880 and 1920, the years when the instrument reached the height of its commercial and cultural popularity. Newspapers, memoirs, biographies, women’s magazines, personal papers, and trade publications show that female pianists engaged in public-facing piano play and work in pursuit of artistic expression, economic gain, self-actualization, social mobility, and social change. These motivations drove many to use their piano skills to play beyond the parlor, by studying in conservatory, working as classical and popular music performers and composers, founding and teaching at schools, working as department store …

Wanderers Of Empire: The Tropical Tramp In Latin America, 1870-1930, Jack Werner

Masters Theses

U.S. public and private imperial interests confronted the problem of labor and labor power in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century as the U.S. empire expanded into Latin America and the Caribbean. The question of how to make an empire work spurred the creation of new labor regimes reliant on black West Indians who traveled to work in the Panama Canal Zone and on United Fruit Company (UFCO) banana plantations. Just as importantly, new labor regimes engendered new categories for troublesome laborers. One of these classifications, “tramp,” surfaced in the United States after the U.S. Civil War as a …