Wobblies, Pile Butts, and Other Heroes
Wobblies, Pile Butts, and Other Heroes

Author: Archie Green

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 1993

Total Pages: 586

ISBN-13: 9780252019630

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In this culmination of his half-century of involvement with American workers and their traditions, Archie Green explores occupational expression - stories, songs, customs, beliefs, artifacts - on the job and in institutions such as trade unions. Combining ethnographic description with analysis drawn from folklore, history, literary criticism, art history, linguistics, and philosophy, Green presents ten case studies in which he reflects on single words as social texts ("Wobbly", "fink") and clustered words within anecdotes, tales, and ballads ("John Henry", Homestead's strike songs, job yarns about cuckoldry and sexual impotence, and pile-driving traditions, for example). Drawing on Green's own experience as a shipwright and carpenter, the book will appeal both to workers curious about their history and traditions and to academicians who study the workforce and labor process.

Wobblies!
Wobblies!

Author: Paul Buhle

Publisher: Verso

Published: 2005-04-17

Total Pages: 326

ISBN-13: 9781844675258

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A vibrant history in graphic art of the Wobblies, published for the centenary of the founding of the Industrial Workers of the World.

The American Midwest
The American Midwest

Author: Andrew R. L. Cayton

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2006-11-08

Total Pages: 1918

ISBN-13: 0253003490

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This first-ever encyclopedia of the Midwest seeks to embrace this large and diverse area, to give it voice, and help define its distinctive character. Organized by topic, it encourages readers to reflect upon the region as a whole. Each section moves from the general to the specific, covering broad themes in longer introductory essays, filling in the details in the shorter entries that follow. There are portraits of each of the region's twelve states, followed by entries on society and culture, community and social life, economy and technology, and public life. The book offers a wealth of information about the region's surprising ethnic diversity -- a vast array of foods, languages, styles, religions, and customs -- plus well-informed essays on the region's history, culture and values, and conflicts. A site of ideas and innovations, reforms and revivals, and social and physical extremes, the Midwest emerges as a place of great complexity, signal importance, and continual fascination.

Worker-writer in America
Worker-writer in America

Author: Douglas Wixson

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 724

ISBN-13: 9780252067853

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Conroy, a coal miner's son who apprenticed at age thirteen in a railroad shop, later migrated to factory cities and experienced the privation and labor struggles of the 1930s. As worker and writer he composed The Disinherited, one of the most important working-class novels of the thirties. As editor of a radical literary journal, The Anvil, he nurtured the early careers of Richard Wright, Nelson Algren, and Meridel LeSueur before his own literary work was eclipsed in the cold war years. Douglas Wixson draws upon a wealth of letters and manuscripts made available to him as Conroy's literary executor, as well as numerous interviews with Conroy and his former contributors and colleagues. Wixson explores the origins and development of worker-writing and the numerous "little magazines" it generated. He examines the differences between the midwestern and East Coast literary worlds and the milieu in which Conroy and others like him worked - the Depression, job layoffs, factory closings, homelessness, and migration.

Encyclopedia of American Folklife
Encyclopedia of American Folklife

Author: Simon J Bronner

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-03-04

Total Pages: 2856

ISBN-13: 1317471946

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American folklife is steeped in world cultures, or invented as new culture, always evolving, yet often practiced as it was created many years or even centuries ago. This fascinating encyclopedia explores the rich and varied cultural traditions of folklife in America - from barn raisings to the Internet, tattoos, and Zydeco - through expressions that include ritual, custom, crafts, architecture, food, clothing, and art. Featuring more than 350 A-Z entries, "Encyclopedia of American Folklife" is wide-ranging and inclusive. Entries cover major cities and urban centers; new and established immigrant groups as well as native Americans; American territories, such as Guam and Samoa; major issues, such as education and intellectual property; and expressions of material culture, such as homes, dress, food, and crafts. This encyclopedia covers notable folklife areas as well as general regional categories. It addresses religious groups (reflecting diversity within groups such as the Amish and the Jews), age groups (both old age and youth gangs), and contemporary folk groups (skateboarders and psychobillies) - placing all of them in the vivid tapestry of folklife in America. In addition, this resource offers useful insights on folklife concepts through entries such as "community and group" and "tradition and culture." The set also features complete indexes in each volume, as well as a bibliography for further research.

John Henry: Roark Bradford's Novel and Play
John Henry: Roark Bradford's Novel and Play

Author: Roark Bradford

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2008-10-23

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 0190451602

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Roark Bradford's 1931 novel and 1939 play dealing with the legendary folk-hero John Henry (both titled John Henry) were extremely influential in their own time, but have since then been nearly forgotten. Steven C. Tracy has united these hard-to-find works in a single critical edition that helps contextualize-and revive-both texts. An expansive introduction explores Bradford's life; recounts critical responses to his works; and surveys John Henry's pervasive influence in folk, literary, and popular culture. The volume also features a wide array of supplementary materials including a selected bibliography and discography, transcriptions of folksong texts and recordings available during the 1930s, and a chronology of the lives of both Bradford and Henry. As Tracy's introduction makes clear, such a consideration of Bradford--set in the context of writers, both black and white, drawing upon African American folklore and using dialects along with stereotypical and non-stereotypical portrayals--is long overdue. This new edition is a windfall for scholars and students of folklore and African American literature.

Mining Cultures
Mining Cultures

Author: Mary Murphy

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2023-02-03

Total Pages: 330

ISBN-13: 0252054679

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Butte, Montana, long deserved its reputation as a wide-open town. Mining Cultures shows how the fabled Montana city evolved from a male-dominated mining enclave to a community in which men and women participated on a more equal basis as leisure patterns changed and consumer culture grew. Mary Murphy looks at how women worked and spent their leisure time in a city dominated by the quintessential example of "men's work": mining. Bringing Butte to life, she adds in-depth research on church weeklies, high school yearbooks, holiday rituals, movie plots, and news of local fashion to archival material and interviews. A richly illustrated jaunt through western history, Mining Cultures is the never-told chronicle of how women transformed the richest hill on earth.

Folklore: An Encyclopedia of Beliefs, Customs, Tales, Music, and Art, [3 volumes]
Folklore: An Encyclopedia of Beliefs, Customs, Tales, Music, and Art, [3 volumes]

Author: Charlie T. McCormick Ph.D.

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2010-12-13

Total Pages: 1396

ISBN-13: 1598842420

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Written by an international team of acclaimed folklorists, this reference text provides a cross-cultural survey of the major types and methods of inquiry in folklore. Did you know that the tale of Cinderella is over 1,000 years old, and similar versions of this singular story exist in hundreds of cultures around the globe? Have you heard of "deathlore," a subgenre of folklore involving tombstones, coffins, cemeteries, and roadside memorial shrines? Did you realize that UFO sightings and cyber cultures constitute modern folklore? The broad field of folklore studies, developed over the past two centuries, provides significant insights into many aspects of human culture. While the term "folklore" conjures images of ancient practices and beliefs or folk heroes and traditional stories, it also applies to today's ever-changing cultural landscape. Even certain aspects of modern Internet-based popular culture and contemporary rites of passage represent folklore. This encyclopedia covers all the major genres of both ancient and contemporary folklore. This second edition adds more than 100 entries that examine the folklore practices of major ethnic groups, folk heroes, creatures of myth and legend, and emerging areas of interest in folklore studies.

Space-Time Colonialism
Space-Time Colonialism

Author: Juliana Hu Pegues

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2021-05-11

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 1469656191

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As the enduring "last frontier," Alaska proves an indispensable context for examining the form and function of American colonialism, particularly in the shift from western continental expansion to global empire. In this richly theorized work, Juliana Hu Pegues evaluates four key historical periods in U.S.-Alaskan history: the Alaskan purchase, the Gold Rush, the emergence of salmon canneries, and the World War II era. In each, Hu Pegues recognizes colonial and racial entanglements between Alaska Native peoples and Asian immigrants. In the midst of this complex interplay, the American colonial project advanced by differentially racializing and gendering Indigenous and Asian peoples, constructing Asian immigrants as "out of place" and Alaska Natives as "out of time." Counter to this space-time colonialism, Native and Asian peoples created alternate modes of meaning and belonging through their literature, photography, political organizing, and sociality. Offering an intersectional approach to U.S. empire, Indigenous dispossession, and labor exploitation, Space-Time Colonialism makes clear that Alaska is essential to understanding both U.S. imperial expansion and the machinations of settler colonialism.