Download or read book Domestic Revolutions written by Steven Mintz and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1989-04-03 with total page 603 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of how the concept of “family” has been transformed over the last three centuries in the U.S., from its function as primary social unit to today’s still-evolving model. Based on a wide reading of letters, diaries and other contemporary documents, Mintz, an historian, and Kellogg, an anthropologist, examine the changing definition of “family” in the United States over the course of the last three centuries, beginning with the modified European model of the earliest settlers. From there they survey the changes in the families of whites (working class, immigrants, and middle class) and blacks (slave and free) since the Colonial years, and identify four deep changes in family structure and ideology: the democratic family, the companionate family, the family of the 1950s, and lastly, the family of the '80s, vulnerable to societal changes but still holding together.

Download or read book Becoming America written by Jon Butler and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2001-12-28 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Multinational, profit-driven, materialistic, politically self-conscious, power-hungry, religiously plural: America three hundred years ago -- and today. Here are Britain's mainland American colonies after 1680, in the process of becoming the first modern society -- a society the earliest colonists never imagined, a "new order of the ages" that anticipated the American Revolution. Jon Butler's panoramic view of the colonies in this epoch transforms our customary picture of prerevolutionary America; it reveals a strikingly "modern" character that belies the eighteenth-century quaintness fixed in history. Stressing the middle and late decades (the hitherto "dark ages") of the American colonial experience, and emphasizing the importance of the middle and southern colonies as well as New England, Becoming America shows us transformations before 1776 among an unusually diverse assortment of peoples. Here is a polyglot population of English, Indians, Africans, Scots, Germans, Swiss, Swedes, and French; a society of small colonial cities with enormous urban complexities; an economy of prosperous farmers thrust into international market economies; peoples of immense wealth, a burgeoning middle class, and incredible poverty. Butler depicts settlers pursuing sophisticated provincial politics that ultimately sparked revolution and a new nation; developing new patterns in production, consumption, crafts, and trades that remade commerce at home and abroad; and fashioning a society remarkably pluralistic in religion, whose tolerance nonetheless did not extend to Africans or Indians. Here was a society that turned protest into revolution and remade itself many times during the next centuries -- asociety that, for ninety years before 1776, was becoming America.

Download or read book CRM written by and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 676 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Making Furniture in Preindustrial America written by Edward S. Cooke Jr. and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2020-02-24 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cooke offers a fresh and appealing cross-disciplinary study of the furnituremakers, social structure, household possessions, and surviving pieces of furniture of two neighboring New England communities. Winner of the Decorative Arts Society, Inc.'s Charles F. Montgomery Prize Originally published in 1996. In Making Furniture in Preindustrial America Edward S. Cooke Jr. offers a fresh and appealing cross-disciplinary study of the furnituremakers, social structure, household possessions, and surviving pieces of furniture of two neighboring New England communities. Drawing on both documentary and artifactual sources, Cooke explores the interplay among producer, process, and style in demonstrating why and how the social economies of these two seemingly similar towns differed significantly during the late colonial and early national periods. Throughout the latter half of the eighteenth century, Cooke explains, the yeoman town of Newtown relied on native joiners whose work satisfied the expectations of their fellow townspeople. These traditionalists combined craftwork with farming and made relatively plain, conservative furniture. By contrast, the typical joiner in the neighboring gentry town of Woodbury was the immigrant innovator. Born and raised elsewhere in Connecticut and serving a diverse clientele, these craftsmen were free of the cultural constraints that affected their Newtown contemporaries. Relying almost entirely on furnituremaking for their livelihood, they were free to pay greater attention to stylistically sensitive features than to mere function.

Download or read book In the Looking Glass written by Rebecca K. Shrum and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2017-08-30 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “[An] utterly fascinating reading of the multiple uses and meanings of mirrors among European Americans, African Americans, and Native Americans.” —Journal of Social History What did it mean, Rebecca K. Shrum asks, for people—long-accustomed to associating reflective surfaces with ritual and magic—to became as familiar with how they looked as they were with the appearance of other people? Fragmentary histories tantalize us with how early Americans—people of Native, European, and African descent—interacted with mirrors. Shrum argues that mirrors became objects through which white men asserted their claims to modernity, emphasizing mirrors as fulcrums of truth that enabled them to know and master themselves and their world. In claiming that mirrors revealed and substantiated their own enlightenment and rationality, white men sought to differentiate how they used mirrors from not only white women but also from Native Americans and African Americans, who had long claimed ownership of and the right to determine the meaning of mirrors for themselves. Mirrors thus played an important role in the construction of early American racial and gender hierarchies. Drawing from archival research, as well as archaeological studies, probate inventories, trade records, and visual sources, Shrum also assesses extant mirrors in museum collections through a material culture lens. Focusing on how mirrors were acquired in America and by whom, as well as the profound influence mirrors had, both individually and collectively, on the groups that embraced them, In the Looking Glass is a piece of innovative textual and visual scholarship. “A superb reflection of the many meanings held by an object usually taken for granted. Highly recommended.” —Choice

Download or read book Conversing by Signs written by Robert Blair St. George and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2000-11-09 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The people of colonial New England lived in a densely metaphoric landscape--a world where familiars invaded bodies without warning, witches passed with ease through locked doors, and houses blew down in gusts of angry, providential wind. Meaning, Robert St. George argues, was layered, often indirect, and inextricably intertwined with memory, apprehension, and imagination. By exploring the linkages between such cultural expressions as seventeenth-century farmsteads, witchcraft narratives, eighteenth-century crowd violence, and popular portraits of New England Federalists, St. George demonstrates that in early New England, things mattered as much as words in the shaping of metaphor. These forms of cultural representation--architecture and gravestones, metaphysical poetry and sermons, popular religion and labor politics--are connected through what St. George calls a 'poetics of implication.' Words, objects, and actions, referentially interdependent, demonstrate the continued resilience and power of seventeenth-century popular culture throughout the eighteenth century. Illuminating their interconnectedness, St. George calls into question the actual impact of the so-called Enlightenment, suggesting just how long a shadow the colonial climate of fear and inner instability cast over the warm glow of the early national period.

Download or read book The Invention of Comfort written by John E. Crowley and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2003-05-01 with total page 569 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history and analysis of the development of domestic design in early modern Britain and America. How did our modern ideas of physical well-being originate? As John Crowley demonstrates in The Invention of Comfort, changes in sensible technology owed a great deal to fashion-conscious elites discovering discomfort in surroundings they earlier had felt to be satisfactory. Written in an engaging style that will appeal to historians and material culture specialists as well as to general readers, this pathbreaking work brings together such disparate topics of analysis as climate, fire, food, clothing, the senses, and anxiety—especially about the night. “Riveting. . . . A solid contribution to the literature on the cultural impact of gentility, refinement, and the “baubles of Britain” in England and its colonial possessions.” —Journal of American History “Crowley provides a masterly search and survey that no historian of material culture should miss, and every curious reader should consider.” —Eugen Weber, Phi Beta Kappa Key Reporter “A comprehensive and tight study . . . a valuable contribution to the field, [and] one that is enjoyable to read.” —Emma Hart, English Historical Review “The sheer range of evidence, the interweaving of themes, and the overall strength of the argument mean [this] is an ideal book for specialists and students alike.” —Helen Clifford, Journal of Design History “The Invention of Comfort is an important and thought-provoking book that challenges our understanding of why people live that way they do.” —Marie Morgan, New England Quarterly

Download or read book American Dreams written by Williams College. Museum of Art and published by Hudson Hills. This book was released on 2001 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Williams College, in Williamstown, MA, has collected art since the mid-19th century. In this chronological journey through American art in all media, each of 56 highlighted objects from the museum receives a mini-essay of several hundred words, signed by contributors who frequently are the acknowledged experts on particular artists or works. A full factual entry on each work appears at the back of the book, preceded by extremely brief summaries of the acquisitions histories of the overall collection's painting, drawing, sculpture, Williams portraits, prints, photographs, posters, and decorative arts. College alumni donated many items, including collections on Rube Goldberg, Thomas Nast, and the Prendergasts. This is not the definitive book on American art, but it is an excellent survey with many interesting objects not commonly reproduced. For art history collections. 64 colour & 65 b/w illustrations

Download or read book Women Before the Bar written by Cornelia Hughes Dayton and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2012-12-01 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Women before the Bar is the first study to investigate changing patterns of women's participation in early American courts across a broad range of legal actions--including proceedings related to debt, divorce, illicit sex, rape, and slander. Weaving the stories of individual women together with systematic analysis of gendered litigation patterns, Cornelia Dayton argues that women's relation to the courtroom scene in early New England shifted from one of integration in the mid-seventeenth century to one of marginality by the eve of the Revolution. Using the court records of New Haven, which originally had the most Puritan-dominated legal regime of all the colonies, Dayton argues that Puritanism's insistence on godly behavior and communal modes of disputing initially created unusual opportunities for women's voices to be heard within the legal system. But women's presence in the courts declined significantly over time as Puritan beliefs lost their status as the organizing principles of society, as legal practice began to adhere more closely to English patriarchal models, as the economy became commercialized, and as middle-class families developed an ethic of privacy. By demonstrating that the early eighteenth century was a crucial locus of change in law, economy, and gender ideology, Dayton's findings argue for a reconceptualization of women's status in colonial New England and for a new periodization of women's history.

Download or read book Separated by Their Sex written by Mary Beth Norton and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2011-05-16 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Separated by Their Sex, Mary Beth Norton offers a bold genealogy that shows how gender came to determine the right of access to the Anglo-American public sphere by the middle of the eighteenth century. Earlier, high-status men and women alike had been recognized as appropriate political actors, as exemplified during and after Bacon's Rebellion by the actions of—and reactions to—Lady Frances Berkeley, wife of Virginia's governor. By contrast, when the first ordinary English women to claim a political voice directed group petitions to Parliament during the Civil War of the 1640s, men relentlessly criticized and parodied their efforts. Even so, as late as 1690 Anglo-American women's political interests and opinions were publicly acknowledged. Norton traces the profound shift in attitudes toward women’s participation in public affairs to the age’s cultural arbiters, including John Dunton, editor of the Athenian Mercury, a popular 1690s periodical that promoted women’s links to husband, family, and household. Fittingly, Dunton was the first author known to apply the word "private" to women and their domestic lives. Subsequently, the immensely influential authors Richard Steele and Joseph Addison (in the Tatler and the Spectator) advanced the notion that women’s participation in politics—even in political dialogues—was absurd. They and many imitators on both sides of the Atlantic argued that women should confine themselves to home and family, a position that American women themselves had adopted by the 1760s. Colonial women incorporated the novel ideas into their self-conceptions; during such "private" activities as sitting around a table drinking tea, they worked to define their own lives. On the cusp of the American Revolution, Norton concludes, a newly gendered public-private division was firmly in place.

Download or read book American Furniture written by and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book From Fireplace to Cookstove written by Priscilla J. Brewer and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 2000-09-01 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Priscilla J. Brewer examines the development and history of the first American appliance—the cast iron stove—that created a quiet, but culturally contested transformation of domestic life and sparked many important debates about the role of women, industrialization, the definition of social class, and the development of a consumer economy. Brewer explores the shift from fireplaces to stoves for cooking and heating in American homes, and sheds new light on the supposedly "separate spheres" of home and world of nineteenth- century America. She also considers the changing responses to technological development, the emergence of a consumption ethic, and the attempt to define and preserve distinct Anglo-American middle class culture. There are few works that treat this significant subject, and Brewer covers impressive new ground. Extensively documented—based on letters, diaries, probate inventories, census records, sales figures, advertisements, fiction, and advice literature-this book will be valuable to scholars of American history and women's studies.

Download or read book Entangled Lives written by Marla Miller and published by Johns Hopkins University Press. This book was released on 2019-12-17 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offering an intervention into larger conversations about local history, microhistory, and historical scholarship, Entangled Lives is a revealing journey through early America.

Download or read book Early American Decorative Arts 1620 1860 written by Rosemary Troy Krill and published by Rowman Altamira. This book was released on 2010-08-16 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winterthur Museum is world renowned for its decorative arts collections and its exceptional educational programs. Adapted from the training materials developed at the museum, the revised and enhanced Early American Decorative Arts, 1620-1860: A Handbook for Interpreters is an indispensable guide for anyone involved with interpretation of decorative arts collections. Early American Decorative Arts, 1620-1860 elucidates the principles of public interpretation, explains how to analyze objects, and defines the concept of style. Eighteen chapters provide comprehensive descriptions of decorative arts including furniture, ceramics, textiles, paintings and prints, metalwork, glass, and other objects. Many museums and historic sites display such collections to thousands of visitors annually. Guides, interpreters, educators, and collection managers will find this book a helpful summary and a guide to further research. This enhanced edition includes now includes a CD featuring beautiful color images of the more than 170 black-and-white photographs in the book, bringing the Winterthur collections to life on your computer and in your classroom. Published in cooperation with Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library.

Download or read book In Mixed Company written by Julia Roberts and published by UBC Press. This book was released on 2009-07-01 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Mixed Company explores taverns as colonial public space and how men and women of diverse backgrounds � Native and newcomer, privileged and labouring, white and non-white � negotiated a place for themselves within them. The stories that emerge unsettle comfortable certainties about who belonged where in colonial society. Colonial taverns were places where labourers enjoyed libations with wealthy Aboriginal traders like Captain Thomas, who also treated a Scotsman to a small bowl of punch; where white soldiers rubbed shoulders with black colonists out to celebrate Emancipation Day; where English ladies and their small children sought refuge for a night. The records of the past tell stories of time spent in mixed company but also of the myriad, unequal ways that colonists found room in taverns and a place in Upper Canadian culture and society. Reconstructed from tavern-keepers' accounts, court records, diaries, travelogues, and letters, In Mixed Company is essential reading for tavern aficionados and anyone interested in the history of gender, race, and culture in Canadian or colonial society.

Download or read book Detestable and Wicked Arts written by Paul B. Moyer and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-15 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Detestable and Wicked Arts, Paul B. Moyer places early New England's battle against black magic in a transatlantic perspective. Moyer provides an accessible and comprehensive examination of witch prosecutions in the Puritan colonies that discusses how their English inhabitants understood the crime of witchcraft, why some people ran a greater risk of being accused of occult misdeeds, and how gender intersected with witch-hunting. Focusing on witchcraft cases in New England between roughly 1640 and 1670, Detestable and Wicked Arts highlights ties between witch-hunting in the New and Old Worlds. Informed by studies on witchcraft in early modern Europe, Moyer presents a useful synthesis of scholarship on occult crime in New England and makes new and valuable contributions to the field.

Download or read book From Dependency to Independence written by Margaret Ellen Newell and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 1998-09-17 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Table of Contents