American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning

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This site introduces the American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning (ASHP/CML), an organization located at the City University of New York (CUNY) that "seeks to revitalize interest in history by challenging the traditional ways that people learn about the past," with a particular emphasis on labor history and social history. The site includes information about ASHP/CML books, documentary films, CD-ROMs, Internet projects, and educational programs, as well as five articles by staff members and numerous links to history resources.

"Heaven Will Protect the Working Girl: Immigrant Women in the Turn-of-the-Century City" presents selected photographs, illustrations, and accompanying short explanatory texts intended for use with a ASHP/CML documentary of the same name. Among the Project's current endeavors is "an intellectual and spatial exploration of P. T. Barnum's American Museum," entitled The Lost Museum, which burned down under mysterious circumstances in 1865. With the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, ASHP/CML produces History Matters.

Eudora Welty House [MS]

Description

The Eudora Welty House served as the residence of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Eudora Welty (1909-2001) for 76 years. The Welty home retains the author's own belongings, set as she lived among them. Welty authored short stories, novels, and her memoir. She is best known for her novel The Optimist's Daughter, a story of family and loss. Her stories and novels depict life in the South.

The house offers period rooms, gardens, tours, and archive access. Reservations are required for both tours and archive access.

Molly Brown House Museum [CO]

Description

The Molly Brown House was the opulent 1889 home of the Titanic's most famous survivor, the "unsinkable" Molly Brown. Brown, a wealthy "new money" philanthropist from Colorado was responsible for bringing publicity and aid to survivors of the disastrous Titanic sinking, of which she was also a victim. Her house is a tribute to her and all of her progressive ideals.

The site offers tours for students K-8, 12 traveling education outreach programs, and a host of online teaching resources.

Dirt on Their Skirts

Description

This electronic field trip looks at pioneering women baseball players, owners, umpires, and teams from as early as 1866, all the way up to present-day women playing and working in baseball. The common thread running through the stories examined is the efforts of women and girls to be a part of America's national pastime: baseball.

Many Americans are surprised to learn that women once played professional baseball in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL), from 1943-1954. Founded by Chicago Cubs owner Phil Wrigley as a method to entertain Americans and keep ball parks full during World War II, the league provided an unprecedented opportunity for young women to play professional baseball; see the country; and aspire to careers beyond the traditional female roles of teacher, secretary, nurse, librarian, or housewife.

Andover Historical Society [MA]

Description

The Andover Historical Society seeks to preserve and share the history of Andover, Massachusetts, founded 1646. To this end, the society operates the 1819 Amos Blanchard House and Barn Museum which illustrates the life of an early 19th-century (1820-1850), middle-class family. The barn contains a variety of vernacular tools. According to the society site, tour topics include "politics, religion, women's roles, economics, banking, youth, education, household management, and agriculture." Extensive archival materials are available for research at the Caroline M. Underhill Research Center.

The society offers exhibits, period rooms, guided tours, educational programs, hands-on activities, and archival access.

Paisley Shawl

Description

According to the Kansas State Historical Society website:

"Some clothes are well-suited for travel. That's what little Elizabeth Ruppert's father discovered when he concealed her in this shawl and fled from Virginia to Kansas."

American Literature on the Web

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Provides thousands of links to information on and texts by more than 300 American writers from 1620 to the present. Users can search in five chronological periods for links to timelines, author's sites, related resources, music and visual arts, and "social contexts." Also contains specific categories for electronic text collections, U.S. History, American Studies, poetry, movements and genres, Southern literature, women writers, literary theory, reference works, and "minority literature/multi-cultural resources," including categories for African-American, Asian-American, Jewish-American, and Latino/Latina writers. Authors represented include famous literary figures such as Louisa May Alcott (1832-88), Anna Bradstreet (ca. 1612-72), Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950), Emily Dickinson (1830-86), and Ralph Ellison (1914-94); important public figures, such as William Byrd (1674-1744) and Frederick Douglass (1818-95); and lesser-known figures, such as John Woolman (1720-72) and Amelia Edith Barr (1831-1919).

Offers images of many writers, links in Japanese, a section devoted to Canadian authors, a master list of authors in alphabetical order, and "two site-specific search engines" for word searches of this site and others. Last updated in December 2001, many links are no longer operable; however, as a gateway, it offers an abundance of usable links in a well-designed format for those needing resources on American writers and their times.

Mark Twain and the American Character, Part Two

Description

Professor David Foster analyzes Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, looking at what the novel, its characters, and the life of its author reveal about the "American character" and views of American ideals and life at the time of its writing.

This lecture continues from the lecture Mark Twain and the American Character, Part One.

For the lecture, follow the link below and scroll down to the second seminar under Wednesday, August 4.

An older version of this lecture can be found here.

Mark Twain and the American Character, Part One

Description

Professor David Foster analyzes Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, looking at what the novel, its characters, and the life of its author reveal about the "American character" and views of American ideals and life at the time of its writing.

For the lecture, follow the Website Title link and scroll down to the first seminar under Wednesday, August 4.

This lecture continues in Mark Twain and the American Character, Part Two.

An older version of this lecture can be found here.