Week of October 8, 2007

The Free Library of Philadelphia has created

nice resource base on the Centennial

Exposition of 1876.

The Illinois Institute of Technology has done the

same thing for the Columbian Exposition in

Chicago, 1893.

Visit both, browse around a little, and come

prepared to share what you’ve found. I’d be

delighted if you located 5 “interesting things”

from each fair. I’ll provide a spot to put these

on blackboard. The Columbian Exposition

Website is a bit more difficult to use

because it uses “frames” technology

(which means that the address of the page

doesn’t change as you move around the website). I’ll demonstrate a technique for getting around that little problem in class.

We have already become acquainted with a number of the changes which this chapter considers, but here the emphasis will be on the psychological effects of these changes, and perhaps on the sociology of change, as well. We will also begin to note that this new society is losing its Victorian flavor and moral attitudes are changing. We'll consider how these changes arise out of the economic and geographic changes we're noticing. We will touch on racism, but we'll return to look at blacks in the 1890s in much greater detail later.

They started selling watches.

Then Richard Sears and Alva

Curtis Roebuck started a

revolution -- a "wish book" that

made life on the farm a little

easier and put consumer goods

within reach of every American.

A story of entrepreneurial

triumph as well as an

affectionate portrait of Americ

a from the 1890s through

the 1920s.

The last part of Chambers’ chapter returns to the question of the new consumer culture which we looked at on Friday last. Either this class session or probably Wednesday, I’ll show another PBS video: Mr. Sears’ Catalog. The italicized paragraph above is taken from promotional material for the video. The primary focus of it is the period from 1893 to 1906 and it should cement our understanding of the new consumer culture very well. What will determine whether or not I show the video will depend on your response to the little torture exercise I outline below.

I’ve been showing you a lot of material on the 1890s which I’ve found by prowling around the Internet. I’m beginning to think that I should get you out there prowling, too. So here’s a little exercise I’ve devised for you.

Chambers’ Chapter 4 is divided into Subheadings...all his chapters are. In some cases the subheading is specific enough to search using one or the other of the two methods I’m suggesting below. In some instances, there are names of organizations, individuals, or movements which could be searched profitably. So. . .

Choose a subheading, name, movement, or individual of personal interest to you,

Search it using either Clusty or Google Advanced, and, from the search results, choose one response you find interesting and maybe useful to another student, and add it to the Chambers Chapter 4 Journal I’ve added to blackboard. I’ll show how to do this in class on Friday.

Your Journal entry must be unique...so check who may have posted something earlier.

Hint You’ll find this most manageable by choosing good limiters. For example, make sure you include 1890s. If you find you need to limit further, (For example, you get too many responses which are unrelated to the United States), you can use United States as a limiter.

We’ll work at understanding what the cultural importance of expositions of this kind was. We’ll also try to predict why Schlereth invents the word, “interlogue” for this exposition in 1893.

You may discover some interesting connections between the Chicago World’s Fair and the Pullman Strike if you look carefully. Shall I make a contest out of this? Perhaps...let me think about it.