This short book represents a collection of magazine articles related to the effect of urban conditions on the young. It is good summary of the thinking of Addams and others of her sensitivity. Download this early in the week, and read it throughout. You won't be able to finish it on a Thursday night. Be aware of how important environmentalism is in the thinking of Addams: how the environment shapes character.
We'll give Jane Addams the full hour she lost last week. Her thinking actually works well with this week's theme, too. We will look at the emerging concept of adolescence on Wednesday. We can anticipate it today with our discussion of Jane Addams' concerns for city youth. The ages she seems most concerned with would be adolescents by today's terminology
For Wednesday, April 10
Read, In Schlereth,
Chapter 8, Living and Dying. pp. 271 - 293
This concludes our work in Schlereth. (Well, nearly: there is still a short epilogue). It is appropriate that this chapter reviews the life cycle as experienced by Americans at the turn of the century. Note that some of the "stages" of life are as much cultural and psychological as they are biological. Adolescence , for example is an invention of the late nineteenth century. Be aware, too, that changes in medicine, nutrition, and public health are changing American's sense of what the expectations and limitations of any given age were.
As you read this material, try to apply its observations to your character and his/her experiences. The life cycle would have been something experienced in a much more immediate way in that day than in our own. Birth, illness, and death were far more likely to occur within the confines of the house than in institutions like hospitals.
For Friday, April 12
Internet Assignment:
While it would be useful to pursue additional insights into all the stages of life represented in the concluding chapter of Schlereth, it would hardly be practical. Following up on Wednesday's Assignment, I'd like you to download and look at these, as representative samples, recognizing that the experiences represented are quite distant from the direct experiences of many Americans of our era. However, then, as now, Americans experienced many things vicariously. The first two of these provide some insight into the lives of college students, male and female, and I thought you might enjoy comparing what they describe with the lives you are experiencing currently (as well as considering what your character would have thought, either experiencing these things, or observing them from the sidelines.) The third of these looks at the recurrent problems of epidemics and a beginning consciousness of the role in government in fighting them. The last provides a brief overview of 19th century attitudes toward death and dying. (The website seems to die itself, from time to time, so keep trying to access it if you don't succeed the first time.)
