American Studies
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Item Roger Williams Park: Providence, Rhode Island's Response to the American Urban Parks Movement, 1868-1892(1988) Barbeau, Laura Jo; Caughry, John; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, MD)As a result of industrialization and growth, early nineteenth century urbanites began to lose accessible natural environments. Concern among the middle classes and social elite gave birth to the Rural Cemetery Movement in 1831, which spurred the creation of New York's Central Park in 1858. Designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, it was the nation's first example of what became t he Urban Parks Movement. The movement embraced a new landscape aesthetic and philosophy focusing on man's relation to nature and the moral and social benefits of this relationship. Vital to this framework was a belief in the park's ability to improve the social behavior and artistic sensitivities of the lower and working classes. This case study examines how Providence, Rhode Island experienced the Urban Parks Movement from 1868 to 1892. During a three-phase process of implementation , conflict arose over issues of moral improvement, civic boosterism, and real estate speculation. After public debate concerning its location, Providence's first substantial public park, Roger Williams Park, was officially approved by the city government in 1872. Six years later the park was designed by Horace Cleveland in accordance with the landscape aesthetic of the Urban Parks Movement. Cleveland was an associate of Olmsted and one of the nation's few noteworthy nineteenth century landscape architects. This study has utilized primary sources such as mayoral correspondence , public addresses , annual reports, real estate deeds, and plot maps to trace Providence's park-making process. My study of Roger Williams Park concludes in 1892 with the completion of Cleveland's plan and the addition of three hundred acres to the park. This thesis shows how the development of an urban park is the product of particular social and cultural forces.Item Marguerite Higgins: Journalist 1920-1966(1983) Keeshen, Kathleen Kearney; Lounsbury, Myron O.; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, MD)The purpose of this dissertation is to explore the journalistic c areer of Marguerite Higgins from 1940 to 1966, to analyze her notions of news and news writing and of the duties of a journalist, and to assess her contributions to the field of American journalism. Marguerite Higgins was the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize in journalism for international reporting. Her award recognized her war correspondence from Korea, where she firmly established the acceptance of women covering the news from the battlefield. Higgins contributed to mid-twentieth century journalism in signficant ways: she wrote hundred of articles for newspapers and periodicals over the twenty-five years of her career. Her work ranged from cub reporting on the Vallejo (California) Times-Herald, to a twenty-one year career with the New York Herald Tribune, to the rank of syndicated columnist with the Newsday Syndicate in the early Sixties. A graduate of the University of California at Berke ley and of Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism in 1942, Higgins demonstrated that a woman could handle the professional demands and responsibilities of fast-paced and often danger-filled journalism. In addition to her front-page newspaper stories, Higgins described events of the times in scores of periodicals and in a number of books that include War in Korea: Report of a Woman Combat Correspondent (1951); News Is a Singular Thing (1955); Red Plush and Black Bread (1956); and Our Vietnam Nightmare (1965). In addition in 1962, she wrote a juvenile, Jessie Benton Fremont, and with Peter Lisagor, in 1963, described experiences of some State Department representatives in a collection called Overtime in Heaven: Tales of the Foreign Service.Item Defining American Design: A History of the Index of American Design, 1935-1942(1982) Allyn, Nancy E.; Kelly, Gordon; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)The Index of American Design was created in the fall of 1935, as one unit of the Works Progress Administration's Federal Art Project. Although government-sponsored art projects of the New Deal era, and in particular, the Federal Art Project, have been examined extensively by historians of American art and culture, the Index of American Design has received very little attention. Yet, the Index is important because it existed during the 1930s as a popular and well-known endeavor. On however small or conservative a scale, it reflects a constellation of thought and activity which was the result of the specific circumstances of that decade. In the following thesis I will outline a history of the Index project as it was part of the Federal Art Project, and as it was part of the growing movements of decorative arts and folk arts collecting during the 1930s. I will examine the ideas of three Index administrators: Holger Cahill, director of the Federal Art Project, Constance Rourke, Editor of the Index, and Ruth Reeves, field supervisor of the Index, in order to identify some of the underlying ideals which shaped the project. In addition, an examination of how the Index interacted with two specific audiences: collectors of decorative arts and the artists themselves, will reveal how the Index idea was turned into reality.Item Frances R. Donovan and The Chicago School of Sociology: A Case Study in Marginality(1982) Kurent, Heather Paul; Wise, Gene; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)This work examines the Chicago School's contribution to sociological analysis using the life and works of one of its marginal figures, Frances R. Donovan. A "reflexive" approach to the history of sociology turns the early Chicago School's study of "the other" upon itself. Frances Donovan, an English teacher in the Chicago Public Schools, wrote three studies of working women: The Woman Who Waits (1920); The Saleslady (1929) and The School Ma'am (1939). The Saleslady was part of The Chicago Sociology Series. Edited by Robert E. Park and Ernest Burgess, this series included The Hobo, The Ghetto and The Gold Coast and The Slum, among other publications now regarded as early classics in urban ethnography. These studies also are known for their middle class preoccupation with marginal "types" and deviant subcultures, as well as a neglect of studies on women. Therefore, Frances Donovan's own marginal status and unique research interests offer a different perspective on the Chicago School's treatment of other outsiders. Chapter One traces the development of the concept of marginality within the Chicago School from its founding in 1892 until the late 1930's, Georg Simmel's role theory, specifically that of "the stranger," maverick personalities in the department and women's isolated status in academics are included as evidence. Chapter Two is a biographical sketch of Frances Donovan, drawing on unpublished manuscripts and contacts with those who knew her before her death in 1968. Given the dearth of information on early women in sociology, the life of Frances Donovan gives evidence of a kind of woman who worked independently with no credentials, network, or funding to do her research. Chapter Three places Donovan's studies in the context of other works of the Sociology Series. Finally, Chapter Four explores her unique methodology of "disguised" participant-observation. As a waitress, saleswoman and teacher-critic, Donovan raises an important question regarding the relationship between the observer and the observed in social science. Furthermore, Donovan's motivations and personal rewards for doing her own brand of sociology are located in a larger participant-observation tradition including the anthropologists Ruth Benedict and Hortense Powdermaker. The studies of "muckrakers" of the Progressive period also provide a historical context for women's role-playing. Besides marginality, this last chapter emphasizes a second major theme of this inquiry: the transformative nature of the fieldwork experience.Item The Vietnam Veteran: A Victim of the War's Rhetorical Failure(1988-02-22) Hollihan, Thomas A.; Klumpp, James F.Argues that from defense and media coverage of the Vietnam War, an image of the character and activities of those fighting the war emerged. Within the defense of the war two justifications fought for dominance: a romantic call to idealism and a pragmatic materialist call to complete a task started. These contradictory motivations for the war colored the image of the soldier who fought the war as he became a concrete symbols caught in the contradiction. After the war, survivors had to then struggle with this image produced to defend the war.