Cultural History Commons^™

The Young White Faces Of Slavery, Mary Niall Mitchell

Mary Niall Mitchell

No abstract provided.

Yellowstone, The World's Wonderland, Tamsen Hert

Tamsen Hert

Established in 1872, Yellowstone National Park was the first national park in the world. This encyclopedia article reviews the history of the creation of the park in portions of Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho.

The Golden Age Of Comic Books: Representations Of American Culture From The Great Depression To The Cold War, Mark Kelley

Mark Kelley

No abstract provided.

Secular Damnation: Thomas Jefferson And The Imperative Of Race, Robert Forbes

Robert P Forbes

Race, we are told, is a “social construction.” If this is so, Thomas Jefferson was its principal architect. Jefferson consciously framed his only published book, Notes on the State of Virginia, to check the rising status of Africans and to combat growing critiques of slavery from America’s European friends. Jefferson did this by importing the slaveholder’s sense of slaves as chattel into an Enlightenment world view, providing a metaphysical foundation for prejudice by transmuting the traditional Christian concept of the saved vs. the damned into material and aesthetic terms. Recasting in quasi-scientific language the ancient doctrine of the mark …

Violence, Statecraft, And Statehood In The Early Republic : The State Of Franklin, 1784–1788, Kevin Barksdale

Kevin T. Barksdale

In December 1784, a small contingent of upper Tennessee Valley political leaders met in Washington County, North Carolina's rustic courthouse to discuss the uncertain postrevolutionary political climate that they believed threatened their regional political hegemony, prosperity and families. The Jonesboro delegates fatefully decided that their backcountry communities could no longer remain part of their parent state and that North Carolina's westernmost counties (at the time Washington, Sullivan and Greene counties) must unite and form America's fourteenth state.

Review Of Next To Godliness: Confronting Dirt And Despair In Progressive Era New York City, Mark Tebeau

Mark Tebeau

Review of Next to Godliness: Confronting Dirt and Despair in Progressive Era New York City by Burnstein, Daniel Eli.

Redeeming The Time: Protestant Missionaries And The Social And Cultural Development Of Territorial Nebraska, Robert Voss

Robert J. Voss

The passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in May of 1854 formally opened a new region of the United States to settlers. Hundreds came with news of the creation of Nebraska Territory, but not in comparable numbers to the major western migrations that would follow after the Civil War. Instead, the initial small waves of Nebraska settlers would cling to the Missouri River and its settlements establishing communities on the eastern edges in the newly opened territory. These first settlers set the foundations for culture and society in Nebraska. From 1854 until 1860, pioneers claimed lands near the Missouri, with few …

Examining America’S Urban Landscape: From Social Reform To Social History, Steven Corey, Lisa Boehm

Steven H. Corey

The American Urban Reader brings together the most exciting work on the evolution of the American city, from colonial settlement and western expansion to post-industrial cities and the growth of the suburbs. Each of the chronologically and thematically organized chapters includes thoughtfully selected scholarly essays from historians, social scientists and journalists, which are supplemented by relevant primary documents that offer more nuanced perspectives and convey the diversity and interdisciplinary nature of the study of the urban condition. A comprehensive companion website offers valuable further reading, compelling supplementary links, slideshows of additional images, and a dialogue opening blog written by one …

Polish Immigrants And Industrial Chicago, Dominic Pacyga

Dominic Pacyga

How did working-class immigrants from Poland create new communities in Chicago during the industrial age? This book explores the lives of immigrants in two iconic Polish neighborhoods—the Back of the Yards and South Chicago—and the stockyards and steel mills in which they made their living.

Pacyga shows how Poles forged communities on the South Side in an attempt to preserve the customs of their homeland—how through the development of churches, the building of schools, the founding of street gangs, and the opening of saloons they tried to recreate the feel of an Eastern European village. Through such institutions, Poles also …

Teaching Urban Planning And Public Policy: Developing A "City As Classroom" Model At Two New England Colleges, Steven Corey, Mark Motte

Steven H. Corey

Emerging trends in teaching urban geography, city planning, and public policy studies resonate with calls from think tanks, research associations, and most recently the Carnegie Foundation, for undergraduate education to be "reinvented" as interdisciplinary, inquiry-based, and experiential. This paper outlines a model that offers some success with inquiry-based learning strategies in the geography program at Rhode Island College and the urban studies program at Worcester State College. In grappling with the knotty problems of contemporary urban development/redevelopment policies in Providence and Worcester (downtown revitalization, infrastructure improvements, retail/commercial strategies, industrial restructuring, shifting labor markets, neighborhood planning, housing development, etc.), our students …

"Nothing Done!”: The Poet In Early Nineteenth-Century American Culture, Jill Anderson

Jill E. Anderson

In this dissertation, I argue that early nineteenth-century American poets’ and readers’ interpretations of Romanticism shaped their understanding of the role poetry and its producers could play in a developing national culture. By examining the public careers and private sentiments of four male poets — William Cullen Bryant, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Edgar Allan Poe, and Jones Very — I analyze how each reconciled poetic vocation with the moral and economic obligations associated with the attainment of manhood. I locate these poets and their critics within specific historical discourses of aesthetic reception and production, focusing on the tensions and overlaps between …

Chicago's Southeast Side, Dominic Pacyga, Rod Sellers

Dominic Pacyga

Steel and the steel industry are the backbone of Chicago's southeast side, an often overlooked neighborhood with a rich ethnic heritage. Bolstered by the prosperous steel industry, the community attracted numerous, strong-willed people with a desire to work from distinct cultural backgrounds. In recent years, the vitality of the steel industry has diminished. Chicago's Southeast Side displays many rare and interesting pictures that capture the spirit of the community when the steel industry was a vibrant force. Although annexed in 1889 by the city of Chicago, the community has maintained its own identity through the years. In an attempt to …

Chicago, City Of Neighborhoods: Histories And Tours, Dominic Pacyga, Ellen Skerrett

Dominic Pacyga

No abstract provided.