Information Studies
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Item A BAROMETER OF SCIENTIFIC CULTURE: THE DEBATED ROLE OF AMERICAN SCIENCE AT THE 1850’S SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION(2023) Buser, Allison; Woods, Colleen; History/Library & Information Systems; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)During the initial decade of the Smithsonian Institution’s existence, its first secretary, Joseph Henry, sought to establish an institution for the advancement of science that defied popular understandings of scientific work in the United States. From the end of the eighteenth century and into the nineteenth century, American science was infused with republican ideology and was widely expected to prioritize practical results that would directly benefit society at large. At the Smithsonian, Henry sought to establish a boundary between professional, theoretical science, conducted and distributed more selectively among experts, and wider public influence and demand for utilitarian scientific work. Examination of discourse in popular publications reveals that Henry’s plan created an ongoing public debate in the 1850s regarding the Smithsonian’s legitimate scientific mission. This included criticism of the Smithsonian publications program’s inaccessibility and lack of utility to the public as well as many alternative proposals for how the institution might be of better scientific use to Americans. Such expectations that Smithsonian research and resources would serve the general American population were also expressed throughout the correspondence of the Smithsonian Meteorology Project—the Institution’s first major scientific research initiative. Although Henry sought to create a boundary between theInstitution’s work and the public, the utilitarian demands of many of the project’s volunteer observers ensured that the practical goals of the public remained intertwined with Henry’s own goals to promote theoretical science in the development of the Smithsonian. The influential work of this extended scientific community was often made possible through the contributions of additional members of households. Close reading of the meteorological project correspondence reveals an extensive, although often officially unacknowledged, contribution from women and other individuals whose labor was often more fixed to the household. While the public volunteers of the project shaped the trajectory of the Smithsonian, the devalued labor of peripheral contributors to the Institution’s large-scale data work set important precedent for professional scientific frameworks at the end of the century. Overall, the relationship between the early Smithsonian and the public in the 1850s demonstrates that the process of establishing borders defining a professional/amateur dichotomy in American science was uneven. The Institution contended with republican expectations of the scientific public and its projects continued to rely upon contributors without formal or elite credentials who in turn demanded accessible and practical research and shaped scientific institutions. Despite Joseph Henry's contribution to the professionalization and specialization of science, the boundaries of science and who could participate in scientific research remained fluid through the mid-nineteenth century.Item NEGOTIATED TASTES: A STUDY OF THE AMERICANIZATION OF SOUTHERN AND EASTERN EUROPEAN IMMIGRANTS BY SOCIAL WORKERS, REFORMERS AND NUTRITIONAL SCIENTISTS.(2014) Fronk-Giordano, Catharine Annemarie; Freund, David; History/Library & Information Systems; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This thesis aims to prove that the efforts of settlement workers, immigrant aid organization workers, home economists, reformers and nutritional scientists to Americanize the foodways of the southern and eastern European immigrants between the 1890s and the 1920s was not a systematic and homogenous enterprise motivated by a single idea and driven by a single goal, but a far more nuanced and contested process in which social workers with various backgrounds and beliefs mediated between American identity, science and immigrant food culture. Far outnumbered by the new immigrants, the social workers concentrated on alleviating immediate needs of the poor in the industrial centers, focusing on increasing their buying power and improving the nutritional value of their diets. Servicing all immigrants as well as Americans, the social workers often adapted their teachings to respect the immigrant food cultures and tastes, some even praising ethnic cuisines over the American diet.Item Cultivated Landscape: British Gardens in America(2013) Krueger, Meghan Elizabeth; Ridgway, Whitman; History/Library & Information Systems; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)"Cultivated Landscapes: British Gardens in America" analyzes six American gardens (Monticello, Mount Vernon, Westover, the Woodlands, Middleton Place, and the Paca house in Annapolis) for the presence of the English landscape style garden. I argue that the presence of English landscape style characteristics proves that the British cultural legacy had maintained a strong grip on American culture and aesthetics in the post-Revolution period.Item A CONSUMING HERITAGE: BALTIMORE'S EASTERN EUROPEAN JEWISH IMMIGRANT COMMUNITY AND THEIR EVOLVING FOODWAYS, 1880-1939(2013) Sturm, Charlotte Louise; Mar, Lisa R; History/Library & Information Systems; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study explores how Baltimore's Eastern European Jewish immigrants and their American-born children engaged with American foodways during the period 1880-1939. Food-related charitable aid and food education were used as tools of Americanization and moral uplift by public health officials, middle-class charitable workers, and social reformers between 1880 and 1920. The home economics classrooms of Baltimore's public schools continued this work in the early twentieth century, teaching the immigrants' American-born children lessons about food and middle-class domesticity. Although somewhat influential in reshaping the immigrants' food habits, the Eastern European Jewish immigrants and their children largely retained their traditional foodways, making their own choices about how to adopt American foodways. Interconnected issues of food, health, economics, middle-class domesticity, citizenship, and identity are evident in this study. Using sources such as cookbooks and oral histories, this study demonstrates how foodways expressed and continue to express Jewish, American, and Jewish American identities.