Culture
Traditional Definition:
"Culture is to know the best that has been said and thought in the world" -Matthew Arnold
Modern Definition:
"Culture is invisible" -Marshall McLuhan
Ethnocentrism: judging foreign peoples or groups by the standards and practices o
American Studies Approach
Interdisciplinary: borrowers and thieves of other methods (anthropology, architecture, etc.)
Arts: cultural artifacts interact with formalities
Text
-Read aspects of culture as text
-What does it reveal about society?
Ex: interpreting NYC
-Frank Lloyd Wright (messy, chaotic, and ugly architecturally)
-Jazz Music: all instruments play off a back beat, NYC is like jazz music, Manhattan skyline is the re
Context
-Cultural artifacts and circumstances: the broader surrounding environment context changes over time
-The U.S. changes along with it's culture
Ex: Herman Melville's Moby Dick
-Published in 1851 and he knew it was good
-the reaction was silent because no o
Closing of the Frontier
1890 Census: "The Frontier is Closed"
-All territory in the U.S. was settled or claimed
-63 million people in the U.S. (mostly eastern of the Mississippi)
-Takes 400 years to claim the whole continent
1920 Census: "An Urban Nation"
-First time the U.S. wa
Frederick Jackson Turner
-Said that the frontier defines the American people
-If the frontier is closed, what defines us as Americans?
-Causes concern among Americans because its going to become urban
-Everything claimed, labeled, and settled but not all the way developed
Migrations
Internal Migrations
-Rural to urban
-Within nation, across borders
External Migrations
-Global migration of labor
-NYC and Chicago
Ellis Island
-Arrivals and processing (1890-1924)
-An average of 4,000 people a day are processed
-Takes each person about 4-5 hours
-2% get rejected because of disease, mentally ill, or a communist
-Once processed they're placed in the city
After Ellis Island
-Immigrants packed into tenements
-Hester street in downtown Manhattan
-Dirty, unsanitized, and cramped
-No one can move to walk in the streets
Jacob Riis
-"How the other half lives" picture documented the lives of poor, urban immigrants (1890)
-He was born in Denmark in 1849
-Arrives in NYC in 1870 as an immigrant
-He works in Journalism as a reporter of underside of urban life
-Poor=victims of greedy land
Consequences
-American progress and prosperity challenged
-Riis=progressive and conservative
-Look to middle class reformers
-Riis wants to address the issue before a revolution happens
Jane Addams
-Born in Cedarville, IL (1860)
-Work in social reform and received the Nobel Peace Prize (1930)
-Political democracy=height of progressive society
Hull House
-20 years at Hull House (1910)
-Settlement house for urban poor, immigrants
-1900: every major city has settlement houses
-1910: over 400 houses across the nation
-Idea came from England and they brought it to the major cities
-Reformers were white, middl
1893 Columbian Exposition
-400th anniversary of Columbus in the new world
-The White City: high culture
Grand architecture
Stability, order, and harmony
Over awed and draining
-Midway Plaisance: mass culture
Fair grounds and circus acts
To appeal to the masses
Casual fun
-To make
Coney Island
-The steeplechase park
-An architecture of pleasure
-Loosening the self-restraints and having fun
-An amusement park for adults
-So many races mingle in a common place for a common good
Industrialism
-Industry overtakes agriculture
-1880-1890: American industrial production doubles
-Accompanied by urbanization and growth of the transportation network, particularly railroads
The Dawes Act of 1887
Making Indians American
-Also known as the General Allotment Act
-Indian boarding schools
-Both merge from the idea of the assimilation policy
-They need to drop their culture and traditions and pick up new ones that are considered normal for Americans
-D
Methods of Assimilation
-Native Americans are focused on to reservations and the land is seized and used for settlement
-Standing Bear: arrested for leaving the reservation o bury his child in Nebraska
-Case attracts national attention
-Sarah Winnemucca: "Friends of the Indian
Paternalism
-Means acting like a father to a child (Americans to Indians)
-The great white father in Washington
-Congress decides to stop making treaties
-"Father" knows best
-The U.S. made the best decisions for Indians
Baseball
-The game was predominately urban, not rural
-Not agricultural, industrial
-Not outdoor labor with the hands, but indoor labor with the head (stress is created)
-Not sunup to sundown, but 9 to 5 (8 hours on the job, 8 hours of sleep, 8 hours of leisure)
-
Idealism/Victorian Art
-Idealism:
Training centered in art academies
Rigid rules and conventions for painting and sculpture
Artist is expected to paint idealized images, not realism
-Not free spirited
-Means you don't paint the flaws
-John La Farge painting: about abstractions
Ashcan School
-Emphasis on close observation of real life scenes
-Primary focus: celebrating the lives of ordinary Americans
-Paintings deemed "too vulgar" by the art establishment
-Newspaper reproduction happened by going out and sketching what they see instead of tak
Modernist Art
-Modernists were interested in the environment/city
-Max Weber painting: unrealistic colors, unrecognizable, and chaotic
-He was trying to capture the city changing vastly
-Primary focus: built landscape and new technology (bridges, skyscrapers, electric
The Armory Show
-American and European artists
-High degree of abstraction
-Responses to the show:
Threat to artistic standards
Threat to your sanity
Immoral
Lots of people came out to the show
Marcel Duchamp
Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2"
-Not even recognizable body parts
-Armory show as a whole was pathological
-Duchamp made the body more like a machine as its moving
Department Stores
-Carried absolutely everything
-Uncontested safe public space for women
-4 or 5 stories high
-Included tea rooms
-Elevators and escalators
-Acceptable to be unescorted here
-Men's department right by the door
-First thing that moved women out of the home
Catalogue Shopping
-Rural areas didn't have department stores
-You could buy anything in the sears catalogue, even your house
-Order through the catalogue and have it shipped to your house
The Jungle
1906
-Upton Sinclair: a socialist and believed the consumer is worthy of being protected
-The Jungle: meat packing industry, described graphic conditions, consumer movement, Pure Food and Drug Act, tremendous change in 1906
Henry Ford
-The Model T was originally $600 and went down to $290
-It went from a luxury good to a mass produced good because of the assembly line
-Workers were paid $5 a day and it encouraged them to stay for a while
-Electrification: generators, turbines, creates
New Women
-Started college if they could convince their parents that it wouldn't permanently ruin your health (mental and physical)
-Dress code: hair up, underwear, shift, corset, corset cover, petticoat, stockings, shoes, blouse, and then lady suit
-Given the righ
Moral Regeneration
Before:
-Women and men are more fundamentally different than alike, marriage is economic, called a young matron, women were more moral than men, women don't have sexual feelings of any kind
After:
-Women will vote for the greater good and clean up the mes
Orient and Empire
-Interrelationship between U.S. foreign and domestic policies:
American overseas expansion
Incorporating Asian cultures into American identities
-Divine inspiration: claiming the westward land as our home (manifest destiny)
-Consumer capitalism: mass prod
Japanese Architecture
-Japanese Temple: wood block prints, paintings, carvings, want ancient stuff
-Ward Willits House: designed as part of nature, peacock room included golden peacocks, Chinese pottery, and lanterns, Princess of the Porcelain Land
Madame Butterfly
-Short story by John Luther Long
-The year the U.S. starts expanding into the pacific
-Basically a western fantasy of western Asians
-American Naval Lieutenant hooks up with Madame Butterfly and gets her pregnant. He leaves and she raises her son by herse
Onotto Watanna
A Japanese Nightingale"
-Direct response to Madame Butterfly
-Winifred Eaton posed as a Japanese woman to sell the novel
-Role reversal of Madame Butterfly
-It's about female empowerment
Lee Tung Foo
-Chinese American baritone who was born in California
-Vaudeville; popular and operatic songs
-Mimic ethnic accents
-Instead of white people playing Asian, the Asian is playing white
-Identity can be changed, shaped, and formed
-Identity is a role play an
Nickelodeons
-Simple store front spaces which featured slot machines, kinetoscopes, and other penny arcade attractions
-Curtained-off spaces for motion picture viewing (short films at 5 cents each)
-Targeted working class customers and catered to specific ethnic commu
Movie Palaces
-Motion pictures grew longer
-More upscale clientele
-Featured large marquees, architecturally elaborate interiors, lush balcony seating, and live orchestrated music