American Social History

17. Mon 3/2 – The New Deal and the WPA – cancelled due to snow
We will incorporate Monday’s material into Wednesday’s discussion, including the New Deal and the WPA.


18. Wed 3/4 – Discussion Day, Food & Culture

Read Frederick Douglass Opie’s article in the Journal of Social History, “Eating, Dancing and Courting in New York: Black and Latino Relations, 1930-1970.” We will discuss Opie’s findings, his sources, and what we can learn about twentieth-century New York and race relations. His sources are partly based on one WPA effort, the “America Eats” project. More on that is available here at the Library of Congress and here at NPR. Questions to consider:

19. Fri 3/6 – Exam #1 and Tasting Day – we do an “America Eats” in our own classroom. Study guide for the exam is here and also posted on Blackboard.

14. Mon 2/23 – The New South

Reading: This week’s document is two chapters from the collaborative oral history titled Like A Family. For Monday you should have read “Public Work” (it’s in two parts: Part One is here and Part Two is here). We will be looking at working class culture, work, and workers in a different region of the country, the upcountry South. We will learn about the “New South” between the end of Reconstruction and WW2, including sharecropping, cotton culture, textile mills and Southern industrialization, race and class in the 19th and early 20th century South.


15. Wed 2/25 – Discussion Day of Like a Family

We’ll discuss both “Public Work” and the other chapter, “Cradle to Grave.” That chapter is also in two parts: Part One is here, and Part Two is here.

Questions to consider:

The book’s subtitle is “The Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World.” How and why is this a “world”?
Who peoples this world?
What is life like?
How does it differ (or not) from the northern urban working class life we’ve explored so far?
How did this team of researchers conduct their research?
How do the voices of ordinary workers come through in this text?
What do you learn about the Southern Piedmont as a region?


16. Fri 2/27 – Presentation Day

If you’re presenting this week, you might find some of the following links useful for further research & exploration:

Photos by Lewis Hine & Essays about his work at American Crossroads

Additional Lewis Hine photographs here, at HistoryPlace

Oral histories in the category “Textile” at Documenting the American South

History of Scott’s Run/ Arthurdale – a pet project town of Eleanor Roosevelt during the Depression

A 4-minute silent film from a 1924 Cotton Mill, showing the textile factory process

Radio interview on an NPR station with the authors of The Voice of Southern Labor: Radio, Music and Textile Strikes 1929-1934 (8:00 long)

Presenters are Z. Eddy and S. Finlay

Everyone: thanks for a terrific field trip! I thought it went really well and I want to thank everyone for their cooperation. I hope you enjoyed the trip and the experience of doing primary source research and I hope you have the chance to get back there on your own for research or to see the rest of the museum.

The librarian, Robyn Christensen, has a list of your names and Worcester State College email addresses, and which envelope you worked on. Over the weekend she & her volunteers will scan the cards in your envelope and email them to you as image (jpg) files. (It may be in several emails).

If you took your packet home, you should check to make sure she has emailed you all the fronts & backs of the cards in your envelope. If something is missing, crooked, etc, then reply to HER (not to me) by email and let her know. If it’s complete, also let HER know with a short email, like: “Got everything, it all looked good, thanks.”

If I have your packet, then you can do that on Wednesday in class.

If you wanted her to copy something else in the envelope – a personal letter, a newspaper clipping, a photograph, etc – you also need to let her know with a polite and clear request saying exactly which envelope and which items. The default is, only the cards will be scanned and not the other materials. Scanning the extra materials might take longer – you might not have it by next week, which is okay, just be patient. We made a lot of work for them all in one day and they are being VERY gracious about doing all the scanning and copying for us!

I have uploaded the Word document on which you were taking notes at the museum. It is posted under “Assignments” and is also found by clicking here. Open the Word document, and input the information as a typed transcript. You will make a typed version of the envelope contents. You should save it to your own computer but in such a way that you can open it on Wednesday from a computer in Sullivan. It should be on a flash drive, or emailed to yourself, or saved to your Zspace, or whatever works for you. It will help if you save the document with your last name in the file name.

Any questions? Email me before Wednesday 2/18 and I’ll try to clear up anything muddy, and we will work on this together in class on Wednesday. See you then!

And: if you missed the field trip, you need to come see me in person so we can talk about how to schedule a makeup visit. My office hours are posted on my door (Sullivan 327B) or email me for an appointment ASAP.

In the next 2 weeks we will focus on the social history of Worcester in the Progressive era. We’ll read one outstanding study, and you’ll try your hand at a digital social history project.

Week 4
9. Mon 2/9 – Workers in Worcester
Reading: Rosenzweig, Eight Hours, Parts I and II (“Context” and “Culture”)

Here’s a chance for us to combine our growing knowledge of urban working class life with a well-written, detailed local history of the city right under our nose. Roy Rosenzweig earned his PhD from Harvard in 1978, and was a professor of history at WPI here in Worcester. After writing Eight Hours, he got interested in the possibilities of digital history. He wrote one of the first electronic textbooks, a CD-ROM documenting ordinary Americans’ contributions to US History, called “Who Built America?” and he founded the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. He pioneered digital history both as a way to preserve historical resources, and as a forum for making history more accessible. He died in 2007; more about his life and work here.

On Monday we’ll talk about Worcester as an industrial city 1870-1920. What was made here? Who worked here? Where did they come from? Where did they live?

Read Chapter 1 carefully. You can skim Chapter 2, or focus only on its first 10 pages. For Chapter 3, jot some notes about how there were different “ethnic” Fourths of July – you don’t need to read it too closely.

10. Wed 2/11 – Workers in Worcester, Part II
Reading: Rosenzweig, Eight Hours, Parts III and IV (“Conflict” and “Culture, Conflict and Change”)

Read the rest of the book for our Wednesday discussion. If you don’t have time to read the entire rest of the book, do this: Choose one chapter from Part III (either Chapter 4, 5, or 6) to read more closely than the other two. And choose one chapter from Part IV to read more closely. Discussion will focus specifically on the following questions:

• How did Rosenzweig use sources to construct a portrait of workers in Worcester?
• What changes over time are documented here? What caused these changes?
• What was it like to live in Worcester at this time period? How do we know?
• What is Rosenzweig’s overall argument?
• How will we go about researching Worcester in the same time period?



11. Fri 2/13 – Field Trip to Worcester Historical Museum.

We will be using the Edwards Street Temporary Home and Day Nursery collection. You’ll select one envelope (i.e. one family), digitize and document the envelope’s contents, and prepare to add it to the DigitalWorcester online archive.



Week 5 (No class on Monday the 16th)


12. Wed 2/18 – Digital Project day

We will process and create the metadata for our digital project materials. We will meet in our regular classroom, but then will spend most of the classtime in one of the computer classrooms in Sullivan so we can each work at a computer.



13. Fri 2/20 – Discussion Day & Clean up Loose Ends

We will discuss our digital findings & explore what’s in the DigitalWorcester archive, and finish adding/uploading our new content (no student presentations today).

6. Mon 2/2 – Labor and Gender

Begin reading the Brandeis Brief online. Also, familiarize yourself with the following terms or cases: Muller v. Oregon (1908), Lochner v. New York (1905), liberty of contract, Triangle Shirtwaist Fire of 1911, Louis Brandeis.


7. Wed 2/4 - Discuss “Brandeis Brief in Muller v. Oregon”

What “extra-legal” data did Brandeis use?
Why did he develop this unusual style of legal brief?
What can we social historians learn (maybe by accident) from his information?
Why has this brief become important in legal practice?
How did Brandeis find and compile his information?
What was the effect of his documentation on the case?
On a recent feminist lawyer’s blog, one lawyer criticized this brief for being full of “paternalistic drivel.” Do you agree?


8. Fri 2/6 – Presentation Day #1

If this is your week, start at the sites below early in the week, where you will find useful & juicy information on women and work in the Progressive era (1880-1930).

Discovering American Women’s History Online

Women Working, 1800-1930 – especially the photographs in the Baker Business Library Collection, under “Browse the Collection” –> “By Photographs”

Connecticut Women and Work

Calhoun Industrial School, Alabama Cyanotype Album

Women’s History on InfoPlease (although ignore the ads) –> “Work”

Triangle Shirtwaist Fire Virtual Exhibit (Kheel Center)


Your in-class presentation should be about 5 minutes long. It can introduce us to a wonderful online resource, be a Powerpoint presentation, a group exercise, a game, an activity, a discussion…

We won’t meet today, so we’ll discuss the Gutman essay on Friday. (Part One is here, Part Two is here). The assignment for the response paper is here and that paper is due in class on Friday.

Looking ahead, next week we will discuss the “Brandeis Brief” in the Muller v. Oregon case (1908). It’s long, so plan ahead how to finish it by Wednesday. You can find it online here.

Enjoy your snow day!

3. Mon 1/26 – Social History as history of workers

Begin reading Gutman’s essay – it’s long, so I broke it into 2 parts - Part 1 is here.


4. Wed 1/28 – Document: Herbert Gutman, “Work, Culture and Society in Industrializing America 1815-1919″

The second part of Gutman’s essay is here.

Questions to consider:

What do we learn about industrializing America from 1815-1919? Why those dates?

What does it mean to “industrialize”?

On whom does Gutman focus and why?

Gutman emphasizes continuities as well as changes. Can you find examples of Braudel’s “long duration” idea?


5. Fri 1/30 – Response paper due on Gutman (assignment will be posted by Monday)

Discussion in class is to be based on your papers, ideas from your reading – focusing on Gutman’s scholarly technique and on the importance of this essay in the field of social history. It’s considered “seminal.” Why?

1. Wed 1/21 – course introduction – no assigned reading

2. Fri 1/23 – what is social history? – Discussion Day

Reading: an article from the Journal of Social History & prepare to discuss it in class (see assignment handout).

Issues of the JSH from 1996-2002 are on the library shelves in the periodical section (by journal title)

Or, for online:

Browse the index of the JSH here (note this is not the full article, just an index)

To find an article from the JSH in full-text (1974-present), go to the WSC library homepage –> Articles and Databases –> Academic Search Complete –> log in with your WSC username and password –> Publications (choose from the top tabs) –> Journal of Social History –> select a year from the right-hand list

Be prepared to answer the following questions in our class discussion -

Why did you choose this article? What intrigued you about it?

How does this author define/ explain “social history,” or why would he/she argue that it belongs in the Journal of Social History?

Who are the people being studied? Where/when did they live? Why does their story matter?

What other works of social history scholarship does this article refer to?

What sources does the author use? How are those sources analyzed?

What conclusions does the author draw? Are you convinced? Why or why not?

What questions or suggestions would you have for this author after reading this article?

This course explores the history of ordinary Americans, many of whom left little or no written records of their own. Through those case studies and our class discussion we approach the methodological problem of how to write about “non-famous” people through a series of case studies, and students will develop their own research projects to gain insight into how historians work. The course is suitable for history majors, or anyone interested in American history. It is crosslisted with Women’s Studies. Prereq: one previous history class is recommended.

You will need to purchase three books:

Nancy Walker, Women’s Magazines 1940-1960 (Bedford, ISBN 978-0312102012)

Roy Rosenzweig, Eight Hours for What We Will: Workers and Leisure in an Industrial City 1870-1920 (Cambridge U Press, ISBN 978-0521313971)

Pam Munoz Ryan, Esperanza Rising (Blue Sky Press 2002, ISBN 978-0439120425)

In addition, we will rely on many online materials, including the free US history textbook online at www.digitalhistory.org and the Journal of Social History, available at History Cooperative, or through Academic Search Premier at the WSC library homepage.