Read and Download eBook Full
Author: Mark Christopher Carnes
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 1989-01-01
Total Pages: 244
ISBN-13: 0300051468
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn this study of American 19th-century secret orders, the author argues that religious practices and gender roles became increasingly feminized in Victorian America and that secret societies, such as the Freemasons, offered men and boys an alternative, male counterculture.
Author: Gilbert Herdt
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Published: 2003-06-02
Total Pages: 288
ISBN-13: 047209761X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKPublisher Description
Author: Amy S. Greenberg
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2005-06-06
Total Pages: 352
ISBN-13: 9780521840965
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book documents the potency of Manifest destiny in the antebellum era.
Author: Kathleen M. Brown
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2009-01-01
Total Pages: 465
ISBN-13: 0300160275
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn colonial times few Americans bathed regularly; by the mid-1800s, a cleanliness “revolution” had begun. Why this change, and what did it signify? A nation’s standards of private cleanliness reveal much about its ideals of civilization, fears of disease, and expectations for public life, says Kathleen Brown in this unusual cultural history. Starting with the shake-up of European practices that coincided with Atlantic expansion, she traces attitudes toward “dirt” through the mid-nineteenth century, demonstrating that cleanliness—and the lack of it—had moral, religious, and often sexual implications. Brown contends that care of the body is not simply a private matter but an expression of cultural ideals that reflect the fundamental values of a society.The book explores early America’s evolving perceptions of cleanliness, along the way analyzing the connections between changing public expectations for appearance and manners, and the backstage work of grooming, laundering, and housecleaning performed by women. Brown provides an intimate view of cleanliness practices and how such forces as urbanization, immigration, market conditions, and concerns about social mobility influenced them. Broad in historical scope and imaginative in its insights, this book expands the topic of cleanliness to encompass much larger issues, including religion, health, gender, class, and race relations.
Author: Katherine V. Snyder
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 1999-09-02
Total Pages: 299
ISBN-13: 1139426249
DOWNLOAD EBOOKKatherine Snyder's study explores the significance of the bachelor narrator, a prevalent but little-recognised figure in premodernist and modernist fiction by male authors, including Hawthorne, James, Conrad, Ford and Fitzgerald. Snyder demonstrates that bachelors functioned in cultural and literary discourse as threshold figures who, by crossing the shifting, permeable boundaries of bourgeois domesticity, highlighted the limits of conventional masculinity. The very marginality of the figure, Snyder argues, effects a critique of gendered norms of manhood, while the symbolic function of marriage as a means of plot resolution is also made more complex by the presence of the single man. Bachelor figures made, moreover, an ideal narrative device for male authors who themselves occupied vexed cultural positions. By attending to the gendered identities and relations at issue in these narratives, Snyder's study discloses the aesthetic and political underpinnings of the traditional canon of English and American male modernism.
Author: Samuel Wagar
Publisher:
Published: 2016-04-07
Total Pages: 74
ISBN-13: 9781633913226
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe Adelphon Kruptos is the secret ritual manual of the Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor, a working class secret society which grew into the first mass trade union in North America. Founded in 1869, it grew to 800,000 members, 20% of all the workers in America, by its height in 1886. It was notable for including women and men, black, brown and white workers (although, to its lasting shame, not Asian-origin workers). Advancing a co-operative socialism, an ethical and cultural approach rather than a Marxist or class-conflict approach, it was unable to cope with the intensification of class conflict after the depression of the 1880s and collapsed. The ritual manual shows the crossover of the secret societies, which were a prominent feature of late, Victorian America, an alternative ethics, with the organizations of the working class. Its celebration of the nobility of labor and the power of solidarity continues to inspire. Samuel Wagar's Masters' thesis work on the intersection between the socialist movement and the Theosophical Society in the 1920s came from long standing interest in working class organization, the occult and metaphysical subcultures, and social change. He is a Wiccan priest and chaplain at the University of Alberta as well as a Doctor of Ministry student at St. Stephen's College in Edmonton. He has four other books out, and continues to be excited by scholarship. [email protected]
Author: Clyde R. Forsberg
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2004
Total Pages: 353
ISBN-13: 0231126409
DOWNLOAD EBOOKBoth the Prophet Joseph Smith and his Book of Mormon have been characterized as ardently, indeed evangelically, anti-Masonic. Yet in this sweeping social, cultural, and religious history of nineteenth-century Mormonism and its milieu, Clyde Forsberg argues that masonry, like evangelical Christianity, was an essential component of Smith's vision. Smith's ability to imaginatively conjoin the two into a powerful and evocative defense of Christian, or Primitive, Freemasonry was, Forsberg shows, more than anything else responsible for the meteoric rise of Mormonism in the nineteenth century. This was to have significant repercussions for the development of Mormonism, particularly in the articulation of specifically Mormon gender roles. Mormonism's unique contribution to the Masonic tradition was its inclusion of women as active and equal participants in Masonic rituals. Early Mormon dreams of empire in the Book of Mormon were motivated by a strong desire to end social and racial discord, lest the country fall into the grips of civil war. Forsberg demonstrates that by seeking to bring women into previously male-exclusive ceremonies, Mormonism offered an alternative to the male-dominated sphere of the Master Mason. By taking a median and mediating position between Masonry and Evangelicism, Mormonism positioned itself as a religion of the people, going on to become a world religion. But the original intent of the Book of Mormon gave way as Mormonism moved west, and the temple and polygamy (indeed, the quest for empire) became more prevalent. The murder of Smith by Masonic vigilantes and the move to Utah coincided with a new imperialism--and a new polygamy. Forsberg argues that Masonic artifacts from Smith's life reveal important clues to the precise nature of his early Masonic thought that include no less than a vision of redemption and racial concord.
Author: Nina Mjagkij
Publisher: NYU Press
Published: 1997-07
Total Pages: 331
ISBN-13: 0814755429
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe YMCA and the YWCA have been an integral part of America's urban landscape since their emergence almost 150 years ago. Yet the significant influence these organizations had on American society has been largely overlooked. Men and Women Adrift explores the role of the YMCA and YWCA in shaping the identities of America's urban population. Examining the urban experiences of the single young men and women who came to the cities in search of employment and personal freedom, these essays trace the role of the YMCA and the YWCA in urban America from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. The contributors detail the YMCA's early competition with churches and other urban institutions, the associations' unique architectural style, their services for members of the working class, African Americans, and immigrants, and their role in defining gender and sexual identities. The volume includes contributions by Michelle Busby, Jessica Elfenbein, Sarah Heath, Adrienne Lash Jones, Paula Lupkin, Raymond A. Mohl, Elizabeth Norris, Cliff Putney, Nancy Robertson, Thomas Winter, and John D. Wrathall.
Author: Karen V. Hansen
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Published: 1996-11-29
Total Pages: 307
ISBN-13: 0520205618
DOWNLOAD EBOOK"Based on an extraordinarily rich and varied collection of diaries, letters, and autobiographies of European Americans and African Americans, this book presents the voices and views of unpropertied, unprivileged people and sensitively probes the commonalities and differences in their experiences and perspectives. Hansen persuasively argues that recognizing the 'social' domain illuminates the agency of working people and dissolves the stereotypically gendered public/private dichotomy."—Nancy Grey Osterud, author of Bonds of Community "It is a pleasure to welcome Karen Hansen into the first rank of historical sociologists. In this superb model of scholarship, she leads us on an illuminating tour of the social life of literate working people in antebellum New England. Her arena is 'the social'—the territory that overlaps with private and public, where the dynamics of friendship, visiting, gossip, and collective worship combine to fashion many of life's great joys and sorrows. Best of all, she tells her story through the experiences of the people themselves. In a clear and honest way, Hansen manages to raise fundamental questions about perceived conceptions of gender, class, and the public-private dichotomy."—Neil J. Smelser, University of California, Berkeley "This wonderful book makes a real contribution to our understanding of the lives of women and men in antebellum New England. With its focus on people of modest means and its meticulous and insightful exploration of friendship, visiting, gossip, and church-going, Hansen's work refines and concretizes how we conceive the 'social.'"—Mary Ann Clawson, Wesleyan University "How refreshing it is to see someone address the big issues in sociology based on the experience of real people. Karen Hansen has valuable things to say about the limits of the public/private distinction and the importance of the social. Her book moves the discussion of these issues to a new level."—Alan Wolfe, author of The Human Difference
Author: Amy S. Greenberg
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2014-07-14
Total Pages: 244
ISBN-13: 1400864925
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThough central to the social, political, and cultural life of the nineteenth-century city, the urban volunteer fire department has nevertheless been largely ignored by historians. Redressing this neglect, Amy Greenberg reveals the meaning of this central institution by comparing the fire departments of Baltimore, St. Louis, and San Francisco from the late eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century. Volunteer fire companies protected highly flammable cities from fire and provided many men with friendship, brotherhood, and a way to prove their civic virtue. While other scholars have claimed that fire companies were primarily working class, Greenberg shows that they were actually mixed social groups: merchants and working men, immigrants and native-born--all found a common identity as firemen. Cause for Alarm presents a new vision of urban culture, one defined not by class but by gender. Volunteer firefighting united men in a shared masculine celebration of strength and bravery, skill and appearance. In an otherwise alienating environment, fire companies provided men from all walks of life with status, community, and an outlet for competition, which sometimes even led to elaborate brawls. While this culture was fully respected in the early nineteenth century, changing social norms eventually demonized the firemen's vision of masculinity. Greenberg assesses the legitimacy of accusations of violence and political corruption against the firemen in each city, and places the municipalization of firefighting in the context of urban social change, new ideals of citizenship, the rapid spread of fire insurance, and new firefighting technologies. Originally published in 1998. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
