This week’s readings had a common theme of identifying issues of race and gender through the study of material culture. All four authors use materials—including quilts, baskets, and architecture—to examine their social and ideological functions in their contemporary culture.
In her book The Age of Homespun, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich examines domestic items from colonial America to investigate gender, social, and racial relations during the time these items were produced. Her book is helpful in describing processes of conserving these particular items, as well as in giving insight to the best way in which to display them. In chapter ten, she studies an Indian woodsplint basket from Rutland, Vermont after 1821. Ulrich explains the development of the art of basketry among Indians as a way to earn a living after suffering through wars and disease. Ulrich makes an educated guess at both the date and the place that an Indian probably produced the basket. The owner of the specific basket she studied lined it with pages of the Rutland Herald from the end of 1821. In this chapter, she describes the process of creating the basket, the lifestyle that the individual who made it probably would have lived, and social, gender, and racial ideas within the society it was created. From the pages of the Rutland Herald and other primary sources, Ulrich uses numerous examples of both Indians and white colonists living in the area and tells in depth stories about their lives. While the chapter was extremely interesting, the number of examples she uses becomes overwhelming and seem scattered when trying to grasp her main point.
Jane Przybysz’s article "Quilts, Old Kitchens, and the Social Geography of Gender in Nineteenth-Century Sanitary Fairs" also examined fancywork. She discusses the significance of quilting on gender roles in colonial America, and more modern Americans’ flawed view of this practice. Przybysz discusses how quilting parties could have been a place where women challenged feminine behavior and desire, which of course led me to consider the corset. Przybysz uses narrative literature and diaries as her primary sources and caused me to consider my corset within these sources. A corset is such an intimate garment that letters and diaries are unlikely to mention details, but there is a possibility they are discussed in literature.
In both Dell Upton and Robert Weyeneth’s articles, the authors examine the architecture of race. In "White and Black Landscapes in Eighteenth-Century Virginia," Upton focuses on the black and white landscapes on Southern plantations, while Weyeneth discusses the architecture of segregation and analyzes the responses to this. In Upton’s article describing plantation houses, I thought back to Ames’s article about Victorian halls, and how much can be deciphered about a society’s social relations through the study of architecture. Weyeneth’s article "The Architecture of Racial Segregation: The Challenges of Preserving the Problematical Past" was certainly my favorite reading of the week. It caused me to consider the idea of segregation in a new context. I was surprised to find that I had a greater emotional response to his article than I did to Ulrich’s heavily detailed accounts of specific individuals throughout her book. I assume this is because Weyeneth’s article focuses on a much more recent troubling time in our nation’s history.
In her book The Age of Homespun, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich examines domestic items from colonial America to investigate gender, social, and racial relations during the time these items were produced. Her book is helpful in describing processes of conserving these particular items, as well as in giving insight to the best way in which to display them. In chapter ten, she studies an Indian woodsplint basket from Rutland, Vermont after 1821. Ulrich explains the development of the art of basketry among Indians as a way to earn a living after suffering through wars and disease. Ulrich makes an educated guess at both the date and the place that an Indian probably produced the basket. The owner of the specific basket she studied lined it with pages of the Rutland Herald from the end of 1821. In this chapter, she describes the process of creating the basket, the lifestyle that the individual who made it probably would have lived, and social, gender, and racial ideas within the society it was created. From the pages of the Rutland Herald and other primary sources, Ulrich uses numerous examples of both Indians and white colonists living in the area and tells in depth stories about their lives. While the chapter was extremely interesting, the number of examples she uses becomes overwhelming and seem scattered when trying to grasp her main point.
Jane Przybysz’s article "Quilts, Old Kitchens, and the Social Geography of Gender in Nineteenth-Century Sanitary Fairs" also examined fancywork. She discusses the significance of quilting on gender roles in colonial America, and more modern Americans’ flawed view of this practice. Przybysz discusses how quilting parties could have been a place where women challenged feminine behavior and desire, which of course led me to consider the corset. Przybysz uses narrative literature and diaries as her primary sources and caused me to consider my corset within these sources. A corset is such an intimate garment that letters and diaries are unlikely to mention details, but there is a possibility they are discussed in literature.
In both Dell Upton and Robert Weyeneth’s articles, the authors examine the architecture of race. In "White and Black Landscapes in Eighteenth-Century Virginia," Upton focuses on the black and white landscapes on Southern plantations, while Weyeneth discusses the architecture of segregation and analyzes the responses to this. In Upton’s article describing plantation houses, I thought back to Ames’s article about Victorian halls, and how much can be deciphered about a society’s social relations through the study of architecture. Weyeneth’s article "The Architecture of Racial Segregation: The Challenges of Preserving the Problematical Past" was certainly my favorite reading of the week. It caused me to consider the idea of segregation in a new context. I was surprised to find that I had a greater emotional response to his article than I did to Ulrich’s heavily detailed accounts of specific individuals throughout her book. I assume this is because Weyeneth’s article focuses on a much more recent troubling time in our nation’s history.
No comments:
Post a Comment