Engl. 772-35 Period in Literature:
American Realism

Contexts: Cultural and Historical

• Overviews of the Period
• Labor Unrest and Reform
• Tenement Life and Immigration
• Birth Control and Sexuality
• The New Woman, Suffragists
• World's Fair and Urban Planning
• Impressionists and Ash Can Art
• Robber Barons and Muckrakers
• Afro-American Issues
• Native Americans/The Frontier
• The Conservation Movement
• The Spanish-American War

1. Overviews of the Period

• America at Work, at School, at Leisure, 1894-1915--good overview; helpful introduction to the range of issues during the Gilded Age/Progressive Era. Click on "At School" and "At Leisure" at the top or the bottom of page.
• Women in the Progressive Era--short overview.

2. Labor Unrest and Reform

• Coal Mining in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era--lists many good links on the issue.
• Molly Maguires--popular ballad.
• In the Depths of a Coal Mine--newspaper article by Stephen Crane.
• Mother Jones: The Miner's Angel--the best "hell-raiser" of them all
• The Parable of the Pullman
• 1886, May 4: The Haymarket Tragedy (Chicago)
• The Dramas of Haymarket--sophisticated site
• Mary Van Kleeck "Child Labor in New York City Tenements"
• Mary Van Kleeck "Working Hours of Women in Factories"
• The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire--a shocker; many links.
• Photographs of Lewis Hine: Documentation of Child Labor--scroll down to photos and essay.
• Eugene Debs Page--well-known union leader and political activist.

3. Tenement Life and Immigration Issues

• The Housing Problem in Great Cities--an expose from 1900.
• The Tenement as History and Housing.
• Ellis Island
• Immigration 1800-1900.
• The Chinese-American Experience.
• About Angel Island--the West Coast "Ellis Island" and the Chinese immigrant experience.
• Russian Jews as Desirable Immigrants--essay from 1893.
• A Cruise on the Barbary Coast--Chinese immigrant life on West Coast; crime, corruption, prostitution.
• Hull House and Its Neighborhoods, 1889-1963--lots of information at this site about Jane Addams and the immigrant neightborhoods served by Hull House.
• Yiddish Music Halls, the Yiddish Press, and the Process of Americanization 1900-1910--scholarly article on mass culture and the problem of acculturation.
• Emma Lazarus, 'The New Colossus' and The New Colossus--about her Statue of Liberty poem.
• New York City - The Tenement Dwellers--an early 20th century, anti-immigrant article.

4. Birth Control and Sexuality

• Emma Goldman--famous feminist-anarchist
• Emma Goldman, Traffic in Women--by one of the great reformer/anarachists of the Progressive Era.
• White Slave Crusades: Race, Gender, and Anti-Vice Activism, 1887-1917--review of scholarly study.
• Women, Sexuality, and Morality in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era--class differences, birth control, prostitution, etc.
• Margaret Sanger--birth-control advocate.
• Margaret Sanger's "Deeds of Terrible Virtue"--biography of famous birth control advocate.
• Legislating Woman's Morals--Sanger's argument against comstockery.
• Anthony Comstock--creator of the obscenity laws in the Progressive Era.
• The Custom House Levee District--short article on prostitution, gambling, and corruption in Chicago.
• Sexual Geography and Gender Economy: The Furnished Room Districts of Chicago, 1890- 1930--excerpt from scholarly study.
• Menace of Undesirables: The Eugenics Movement during the Progressive Era.
• Evangelical Engagements with Eugenics, 1900-1940--reprint of ascholarly article.
• Moral Purity Campaigns, Middle-Class Clubwomen, and the California Red Light Abatement Act.

5. The New Woman, Suffragists, Gibson Girls

• The New Woman-- more detailed analysis.
• Biography of Susan B. Anthony--Anthony as activist in many areas.
• Elizabeth Cady Stanton--biography.
• Popular Culture & Imagery of American Women Suffrage--excellent museum exhibit; click on the many links listed on the page.
• Women's Roles in the Late 19th Century--detailed survey.
• Gibson-Girls--another kind of "new woman."
• The Steel-Engraving Lady and the Gibson Girl-- magazine article on the old and the new woman.
• American Beauties: Drawings from the Golden Age of Illustration
• La Belle Epoque 1895-1914: Edwardian Fashion--changing fashions.
• Destructive Women and Little Men: Masculinity, the New Woman, and Power in 1910s Popular Media--scholarly study of the new woman's image in the media.
• The Tragedy of Woman's Emancipation--Goldman's essay, reassessing the new woman.
• The Progressive Era in Illinois: Launching Pad for "New Women"--socialist feminist activists.
• Chapter One. The "New Woman" Revised--painting and gender.

6. World's Fair, Cultural Exhibits, Urban Planning

• Women's Art at the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago 1893--while art and architecture are the main focus of this site, there are many, many links at the bottom of the White City page to various kinds of cultural, technological, and historical exhibits shown at the Fair and to the meanings attributed to this international event.
• The White City: Chicago--City of Speed.

7. Urban Art: Gilded Age Impressionists and the Ash Can School

• Ash Can School: What Was It?--short introduction.
• Ethnic Image in Ashcan School Paintings--images/commentary.
• Mary Cassatt Paintings: Mary Cassatt: The Modern Woman; Mary Cassatt--many images; see Boating Party
• Mary Cassatt's Lost Mural & Other Exhibits at the 1893 World's Exposition--see my web page.
• Chapter One. The "New Woman" Revised--painting and gender.
• Grit and Revolution: The Ashcan School.
• Hassam Paintings: Childe Hassam--cityscape/commentary; Rainy Late Afternoon, Union Square-painting; Broadway and 42nd Street; Hassam Biography and Images--many images.
• Sloan Paintings: South Beach Bathers; Sun and Wind on the Roof; The City from Greenwich Village; McSorley's Bar
• Everett Shinn Painting: Dancer in White before Footlights.
• George Bellows Paintings: George Bellows' Both Members of this Club; eight images here; Bellow's Love of Winter; links to 2 pages of Bellows' images

8. Social Darwinism, Robber Barons, and Muckrakers

• Social Darwinism and American Laissez-faire Capitalism--Herbert Spenser's "social darwinism" and the rise of the "robber baron."
• The Rise of Big Business--were they "robber barons" or "captains of industry"?
• The Robber Barons--short introduction to Gould and Fisk. Related link: The Panic of 1873--about Cooke.
• The Gilded Age--short introduction to "old rich" and "new rich."
• Andrew Carnegie, Richest Man in the World--good biography.
• Wealth; or Andrew Carnegie's The Gospel of Wealth--selection.
• John D. and Standard Oil--Rockefeller monopoly.
• The Gospel of Wealth: Robber Barons and the Rise of Monopoly Capitalism--a different view of the "gospel of wealth."
• Why was America's philosophy "right" for economic development?.
• The Idle Rich--find out how they lived.
• The Rise of McClure's--Chapter II of a book-length study of the most famous muck-racking magazine of the Progressive Era.
• People & Events: Ida Tarbell, 1857-1944--America's first great woman journalist and a famous muckraker.
• Nellie Bly--another muckraker
• 1906: Rumble over 'The Jungle'--Sinclair's famous muckraking novel.

9. Afro-American Issues

• Reconstruction and Its Aftermath--Afro-Americans during the Reconstruction Era; also click/view PART II.
• Booker T. Washington Era--Afro-American life at turn-of-century; also click/view PART II.
• Ida Bell Wells-Barnett--famous crusader for justice. Another source: Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Her Passion for Justice.
• Lynching in America: Carnival of Death--"History of Lynching." See more links at bottom of page.
• Alex Manley--historical events behind the Wilmington Race Riots (see Chesnutt's novel).
• The Negro Exodus--essay (Atlantic Monthly, 1879) on why ex-slaves were leaving for Kansas
• Who Was Jim Crow? and What Was Jim Crow?.
• Creating Jim Crow and Surviving Jim Crow and Resisting Jim Crow and Escaping Jim Crow--four related essays.
• Plessy v. Ferguson--the infamous case instituting segregation.
• Jim Crow Laws--prepare to be offended by this material.
• Popular Art and Racism: Embedding Racial Stereotypes in the American Mindset--Jim Crow and Popular Culture--helpful overview.
• Race and Social Darwinism--the broader applications of the theory.

10. The West: Native Americans and the End of the Frontier

Wounded Knee Massacre:

• Like Grass before the Sickle; View these images: Big Foot's band of Lakota; Soldiers pose.
• Wovoka's Message: The Promise of the Ghost Dance; Ghost Dance Songs--scroll down the page. The Ghost Dance Among the Lakota. View these images: Imaging and Imagining the Ghost Dance: James Mooney's Illustrations...; Lakota Ghost Dancing Shirt.
• Black Elk Speaks--summary.
• Black Elk, Chap. 23: Bad Trouble Coming and Chap. 24: The Butchering at Wounded Knee from Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux.
• View these images: The Frozen Body; Soldiers Stack Frozen Bodies; Chief Big Foot.
• Barracks Ballad
• General Nelson A. Miles on the "Sioux Outbreak" of 1890
• Twisted Footnote to Wounded Knee".

Additional Resources:

• Wovoka: The Paiute Messiah.
• Sun-Dance of the Sioux--excellent article from 1890.
• Little Bighorn Battle.
• PBS Series: Eye-Witness Account of the Battle of Little Bighorn
• Frederick Jackson Turner and Turner's Frontier Thesis--the famous essay announcing the end of the frontier.
• Remington, Russell and the Language of Western Art--western painters; many images included.
• From Camelot to Abilene--another version of the West created by novelist Owen WIster.

11. The Conservation Movement

• Orientations to the Land: The National Parks and Wilderness Preservation Movement--good introduction.
• Evolution of Conservation Movement, 1850-1920--more detailed timeline organized by decades.
• Hats Off to Audubon--Audubon and 1890s fashions.
• John Muir Biography--"father" of the national park system and Sierra Club
• Bison History--good overview of the buffalo.
• The Passenger Pigeon and In Memoriam: The Passenger Pigeon.
• Moran: The West and Moran: The Final Years--painter Thomas Moran and the Grand Canyon; click on arrows at bottom of each page.
• Thomas Moran and the Spirit of Place--more on painter Thomas Moran.
• History of Drinking Water Treament--EPA article on the development of the clean water movement in the late 19th Century.
• Theodore Roosevelt--his impact as a conservationist.
• Enduring legacy: Women and the Environment--good overview of women and conservation.
• How the U.S. Cavalry Saved our National Parks.

12. American Imperialism and the Spanish-American War

• The World of 1898: The Spanish-American War--good overview and links on different aspects of the war.
• Battleship Maine--how the war started.
• Colonel Theodore Roosevelt and Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, Part Two--Roosevelt's Rough Riders.
• Theodore Roosevelt--short biography.
• The Strenuous Life--selection from Roosevelt's famous book.
• Buffalo Soldiers at San Juan Hill.
• Native Americans in the Spanish American War.
• An Overview: Black Participation In The Spanish-American War.
• Yellow Scourge in Cuba--the most dangerous "enemy" in the war.
• Black, White and Yellow: Journalism and Correspondents of the Spanish-American War--the rise of "yellow journalism."
• Mark Twain--famous writer opposing the war.
• Westward the Course of Empire
• The Old Cause--Anti-imperialism League.

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Updated: 10-24-12