Download or read book The Most American Thing in America written by Charlotte Canning and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2005-09 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2006 Barnard Hewitt Award for Excellence in Theatre History Between 1904 and the Great Depression, Circuit Chautauquas toured the rural United States, reflecting and reinforcing its citizens’ ideas, attitudes, and politics every summer through music (the Jubilee Singers, an African American group, were not always welcome in a time when millions of Americans belonged to the KKK), lectures (“Civic Revivalist” Charles Zueblin speaking on “Militancy and Morals”), elocutionary readers (Lucille Adams reading from Little Lord Fauntleroy), dramas (the Ben Greet Players’ cleaned-up version of She Stoops to Conquer), orations (William Jennings Bryan speaking about the dangers of greed), and special programs for children (parades and mock weddings). Theatre historians have largely ignored Circuit Chautauquas since they did not meet the conventional conditions of theatrical performance: they were not urban; they produced no innovative performance techniques, stage material, design effects, or dramatic literature. In this beautifully written and illustrated book, Charlotte Canning establishes an analytical framework to reveal the Circuit Chautauquas as unique performances that both created and unified small-town America. One of the last strongholds of the American traditions of rhetoric and oratory, the Circuits created complex intersections of community, American democracy, and performance. Canning does not celebrate the Circuit Chautauquas wholeheartedly, nor does she describe them with the same cynicism offered by Sinclair Lewis. She acknowledges their goals of community support, informed public thinking, and popular education but also focuses on the reactionary and regressive ideals they sometimes embraced. In the true interdisciplinary spirit of Circuit Chautauquas, she reveals the Circuit platforms as places where Americans performed what it meant to be American.
Download or read book The Most American Thing in America written by John M. Coski and published by . This book was released on 1981 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Silent Shore written by Charles L. Chavis Jr. and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2022-01-11 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The definitive account of the lynching of twenty-three-year-old Matthew Williams in Maryland, the subsequent investigation, and the legacy of "modern-day" lynchings. On December 4, 1931, a mob of white men in Salisbury, Maryland, lynched and set ablaze a twenty-three-year-old Black man named Matthew Williams. His gruesome murder was part of a wave of silent white terrorism in the wake of the stock market crash of 1929, which exposed Black laborers to white rage in response to economic anxieties. For nearly a century, the lynching of Matthew Williams has lived in the shadows of the more well-known incidents of racial terror in the deep South, haunting both the Eastern Shore and the state of Maryland as a whole. In The Silent Shore, author Charles L. Chavis Jr. draws on his discovery of previously unreleased investigative documents to meticulously reconstruct the full story of one of the last lynchings in Maryland. Bringing the painful truth of anti-Black violence to light, Chavis breaks the silence that surrounded Williams's death. Though Maryland lacked the notoriety for racial violence of Alabama or Mississippi, he writes, it nonetheless was the site of at least 40 spectacle lynchings after the abolition of slavery in 1864. Families of lynching victims rarely obtained any form of actual justice, but Williams's death would have a curious afterlife: Maryland's politically ambitious governor Albert C. Ritchie would, in an attempt to position himself as a viable challenger to FDR, become one of the first governors in the United States to investigate the lynching death of a Black person. Ritchie tasked Patsy Johnson, a member of the Pinkerton detective agency and a former prizefighter, with going undercover in Salisbury and infiltrating the mob that murdered Williams. Johnson would eventually befriend a young local who admitted to participating in the lynching and who also named several local law enforcement officers as ringleaders. Despite this, a grand jury, after hearing 124 witness statements, declined to indict the perpetrators. But this denial of justice galvanized Governor Ritchie's Interracial Commission, which would become one of the pioneering forces in the early civil rights movement in Maryland. Complicating historical narratives associated with the history of lynching in the city of Salisbury, The Silent Shore explores the immediate and lingering effect of Williams's death on the politics of racism in the United States, the Black community in Salisbury, the broader Eastern Shore, the state of Maryland, and the legacy of "modern-day lynchings."
Download or read book Seeking Common Ground written by David B. Tyack and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The American republic will survive only if its citizens are educated--this was an article of faith of its founders. But seeking common civic ground in public schools has never been easy in a society where schoolchildren followed different religions, adhered to different cultural traditions, spoke many languages, and were identified as members of different "races." In this wise and enlightening book, filled with vivid characters and memorable incidents that make history but don't always make history books, David Tyack describes how each American generation grappled with the knotty task of creating political unity and social diversity. Seeking Common Ground illuminates puzzles about democracy in education and chronic conflicts that continue to make news. Americans mistrusted government, yet they entrusted the civic education of their children to public schools. American history textbooks were notoriously dull, but they were also highly controversial. Although the people liked local control of schools, educational experts called it "democracy gone to seed" and campaigned to "take the schools out of politics." Reformers argued about whether it was more democratic to teach all students the same subjects or to tailor curriculum to individuals. And what was the best way to "Americanize" immigrants, asked educators: by forced-fed assimilation or by honoring their ethnic heritages? With a broad perspective and an eye for telling detail, Tyack lets us see that debates about the civic purposes of schools are an essential part of a democratic culture, and integral to its future.
Download or read book The President Electric written by Timothy Raphael and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2011-03-15 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In this illuminating, multi-pronged cultural and performance history of such phenomena as Chautauqua and radio, movies, and electrical technology, Timothy Raphael puts together a compelling and sometimes revelatory narrative of how commandingly Reagan mastered the matrix of performance, technology, media, celebrity, and the 'republic of consumption' he came of age in." ---Dana Nelson, Vanderbilt University "Garry Wills and others have written well on the phenomenon of Ronald Reagan, the actor-president, but this is the first book by a real authority---trained in performance and fully reflective about it from the inside . . . unquestionably an important contribution to the disciplinary fields of American studies and performance studies, and an important contribution to public affairs." ---Joseph Roach, Yale University When Ronald Reagan first entered politics in 1965, his public profile as a performer in radio, film, television, and advertising and his experience in public relations proved invaluable political assets. By the time he left office in 1989, the media in which he trained had become the primary source for generating and wielding political power. The President Electric: Ronald Reagan and the Politics of Performance reveals how the systematic employment of the techniques and technologies of mass-media performance contributed to Reagan’s rise to power and defined his style of governance. The President Electric stands out among books on Reagan as the first to bring the rich insights of the field of performance studies to an understanding of the Reagan phenomenon, connecting Reagan's training in electronic media to the nineteenth-century notion of the "fiat of electricity"---the emerging sociopolitical power of three entities (mechanical science, corporate capitalism, and mass culture) that electric technology made possible. The book describes how this new regime of cultural and political representation shaped the development of the electronic mass media that transformed American culture and politics and educated Ronald Reagan for his future role as president. Timothy Raphael is Assistant Professor of Visual and Performing Arts and Director of the Center for Immigration at Rutgers University, Newark. Photo: © David H. Wells/Corbis
Download or read book America and the Great War written by Margaret E. Wagner and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2017-05-30 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Choice Magazine Outstanding Academic Titles of the Year for 2017 "A uniquely colorful chronicle of this dramatic and convulsive chapter in American--and world--history. It's an epic tale, and here it is wondrously well told." --David M. Kennedy, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and author of FREEDOM FROM FEAR From August 1914 through March 1917, Americans were increasingly horrified at the unprecedented destruction of the First World War. While sending massive assistance to the conflict's victims, most Americans opposed direct involvement. Their country was immersed in its own internal struggles, including attempts to curb the power of business monopolies, reform labor practices, secure proper treatment for millions of recent immigrants, and expand American democracy. Yet from the first, the war deeply affected American emotions and the nation's commercial, financial, and political interests. The menace from German U-boats and failure of U.S. attempts at mediation finally led to a declaration of war, signed by President Wilson on April 6, 1917. America and the Great War commemorates the centennial of that turning point in American history. Chronicling the United States in neutrality and in conflict, it presents events and arguments, political and military battles, bitter tragedies and epic achievements that marked U.S. involvement in the first modern war. Drawing on the matchless resources of the Library of Congress, the book includes many eyewitness accounts and more than 250 color and black-and-white images, many never before published. With an introduction by Pulitzer Prize–winning historian David M. Kennedy, America and the Great War brings to life the tempestuous era from which the United States emerged as a major world power.
Download or read book Forgotten Americans written by Isabel Sawhill and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-25 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sobering account of a disenfranchised American working class and important policy solutions to the nation’s economic inequalities One of the country’s leading scholars on economics and social policy, Isabel Sawhill addresses the enormous divisions in American society—economic, cultural, and political—and what might be done to bridge them. Widening inequality and the loss of jobs to trade and technology has left a significant portion of the American workforce disenfranchised and skeptical of governments and corporations alike. And yet both have a role to play in improving the country for all. Sawhill argues for a policy agenda based on mainstream values, such as family, education, and work. While many have lost faith in government programs designed to help them, there are still trusted institutions on both the local and federal level that can deliver better job opportunities and higher wages to those who have been left behind. At the same time, the private sector needs to reexamine how it trains and rewards employees. This book provides a clear-headed and middle-way path to a better-functioning society in which personal responsibility is honored and inclusive capitalism and more broadly shared growth are once more the norm.
Download or read book She Hath Been Reading written by Katherine West Scheil and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2012-05-08 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the late nineteenth century hundreds of clubs formed across the United States devoted to the reading of Shakespeare. From Pasadena, California, to the seaside town of Camden, Maine; from the isolated farm town of Ottumwa, Iowa, to Mobile, Alabama, on the Gulf coast, Americans were reading Shakespeare in astonishing numbers and in surprising places. Composed mainly of women, these clubs offered the opportunity for members not only to read and study Shakespeare but also to participate in public and civic activities outside the home. In She Hath Been Reading, Katherine West Scheil uncovers this hidden layer of intellectual activity that flourished in American society well into the twentieth century. Shakespeare clubs were crucial for women's intellectual development because they provided a consistent intellectual stimulus (more so than was the case with most general women's clubs) and because women discovered a world of possibilities, both public and private, inspired by their reading of Shakespeare. Indeed, gathering to read and discuss Shakespeare often led women to actively improve their lot in life and make their society a better place. Many clubs took action on larger social issues such as women's suffrage, philanthropy, and civil rights. At the same time, these efforts served to embed Shakespeare into American culture as a marker for learning, self-improvement, civilization, and entertainment for a broad array of populations, varying in age, race, location, and social standing. Based on extensive research in the archives of the Folger Shakespeare Library and in dozens of local archives and private collections across America, She Hath Been Reading shows the important role that literature can play in the lives of ordinary people. As testament to this fact, the book includes an appendix listing more than five hundred Shakespeare clubs across America.
Download or read book Theatre Society and the Nation written by S. E. Wilmer and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2002-09-23 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Theatre has often served as a touchstone for moments of political change or national definition and as a way of exploring cultural and ethnic identity. In this book Steve Wilmer selects key historical moments in American history and examines how the theatre, in formal and informal settings, responded to these events. The book moves from the Colonial fight for independence, through Native American struggles, the Socialist Worker play, the Civil Rights Movement, and up to works of the last decade, including Tony Kushner's Angels in America. In addition to examining theatrical events and play texts, Wilmer also considers audience reception and critical response.
Download or read book Land scape theater written by Elinor Fuchs and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essays by leading theater scholars and theorists exploring the "turn to landscape" in modern and contemporary theater
Download or read book American Chaucers written by C. Barrington and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-04-30 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study provides extensive readings of overlooked American reconstructions of Chaucer and The Canterbury Tales from the colonial to postmodern periods, demonstrating how these repackagings convey uniquely American ideas.
Download or read book The World s Work written by and published by . This book was released on 1924 with total page 888 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Defining a Nation written by David Halberstam and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2006-05-16 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essays by historians, commentators, and writers--including Stan Katz, Sam Roberts, Anna Quindlen--in a celebration of America that combines more than 300 exquisite photos and illustrations with unsurpassed prose.
Download or read book The Elocutionists written by Marian Wilson Kimber and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2017-01-19 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Emerging in the 1850s, elocutionists recited poetry or drama with music to create a new type of performance. The genre--dominated by women--achieved remarkable popularity. Yet the elocutionists and their art fell into total obscurity during the twentieth century. Marian Wilson Kimber restores elocution with music to its rightful place in performance history. Gazing through the lenses of gender and genre, Wilson Kimber argues that these female artists transgressed the previous boundaries between private and public domains. Their performances advocated for female agency while also contributing to a new social construction of gender. Elocutionists, proud purveyors of wholesome entertainment, pointedly contrasted their "acceptable" feminine attributes against those of morally suspect actresses. As Wilson Kimber shows, their influence far outlived their heyday. Women, the primary composers of melodramatic compositions, did nothing less than create a tradition that helped shape the history of American music.
Download or read book Reforming America 2 volumes written by Jeffrey A. Johnson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2017-03-20 with total page 853 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presenting a detailed look at the individuals, themes, and moments that shaped this important Progressive Era in American history, this valuable reference spans 25 years of reform and provides multidisciplinary insights into the period. During the Progressive Era, influential thinkers and activists made efforts to improve U.S. society through reforms, both legislative and social, on issues of the day such as working conditions of laborers, business monopolies, political corruption, and vast concentrations of wealth in the hands of a few. Many Progressives hoped for and tirelessly worked toward a day when all Americans could take full advantage of the economic and social opportunities promised by U.S. society. This two-volume work traces the issues, events, and individuals of the Progressive Era from approximately 1893 to 1920. The entries and primary sources in this set are grouped thematically and cover a broad range of topics regarding reform and innovation across the period, with special attention paid to important topics of race, class, and gender reform and reformers. The volumes are helpfully organized under five categories: work and economic life; social and political life; cultural and religious life; science, literature, and the arts; and sports and popular culture.
Download or read book Bring the World to the Child written by Katie Day Good and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2020-02-11 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How, long before the advent of computers and the internet, educators used technology to help students become media-literate, future-ready, and world-minded citizens. Today, educators, technology leaders, and policy makers promote the importance of “global,” “wired,” and “multimodal” learning; efforts to teach young people to become engaged global citizens and skilled users of media often go hand in hand. But the use of technology to bring students into closer contact with the outside world did not begin with the first computer in a classroom. In this book, Katie Day Good traces the roots of the digital era's “connected learning” and “global classrooms” to the first half of the twentieth century, when educators adopted a range of media and materials—including lantern slides, bulletin boards, radios, and film projectors—as what she terms “technologies of global citizenship.” Good describes how progressive reformers in the early twentieth century made a case for deploying diverse media technologies in the classroom to promote cosmopolitanism and civic-minded learning. To “bring the world to the child,” these reformers praised not only new mechanical media—including stereoscopes, photography, and educational films—but also humbler forms of media, created by teachers and children, including scrapbooks, peace pageants, and pen pal correspondence. The goal was a “mediated cosmopolitanism,” teaching children to look outward onto a fast-changing world—and inward, at their own national greatness. Good argues that the public school system became a fraught site of global media reception, production, and exchange in American life, teaching children to engage with cultural differences while reinforcing hegemonic ideas about race, citizenship, and US-world relations.
Download or read book Local Glories written by Ann Satterthwaite and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-02-23 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To most people, the term "opera house" conjures up images of mink-coated dowagers accompanied by tuxedo-clad men in the gilded interiors of opulent buildings like the Met in New York or La Scala in Milan. However, the opera house in the United States has a far more varied-and far more interesting-history than that stereotype implies. In Local Glories, Ann Satterthwaite explores the creative, social, and communal roles of the thousands of opera houses that flourished in small towns across the country. By 1900, opera houses were everywhere: on second floors over hardware stores, in grand independent buildings, in the back rooms of New England town halls, and even in the bowels of a Mississippi department store. With travel made easier by the newly expanded rail lines, Sarah Bernhardt, Mark Twain, and John Philip Sousa entertained thousands of townspeople, as did countless actors, theater and opera companies, innumerable minor league magicians, circuses, and lecturers, and even 500 troupes that performed nothing but Uncle Tom's Cabin. Often the town's only large space for public assembly, the local opera house served as a place for local activities such as school graduations, recitations, sports, town meetings, elections, political rallies, and even social dances and roller skating parties. Considered local landmarks, often in distinctive architect-designed buildings, they aroused considerable pride and reinforced town identity. By considering states with distinctly different histories--principally Maine, Nebraska, Vermont, New York, and Colorado--Satterthwaite describes the diversity of opera houses, programs, audiences, buildings, promoters, and supporters--and their hopes, dreams, and ambitions. In the twentieth century, radio and movies, and later television and changing tastes made these opera houses seem obsolete. Some were demolished, while others languished for decades until stalwart revivers discovered them again in the 1970s. The resuscitation of these opera houses today, an example of historic preservation and creative reuse, reflects the timeless quest for cultural inspiration and for local engagement to counter the anonymity of the larger world. These "local glories" are where art and community meet, forging connections and making communities today, just as they did in the nineteenth century.
