History 75800,  Topics in American Urban History                Professor Thomas Kessner

                              Fall 2018: Th 11:45- 1:45                                          tkessner@gc.cuny.edu; 212. 817.8437

 

For those who would understand America’s past, the role of urban society is crucial. The influence of our cities has been considerable, pervasive and shaping. America’s cities exerted broad economic, political and cultural authority, often steering the transforming forces of nineteenth and twentieth century American life.

 

Historians have too often studied the city as a closed system of locally limited relations, but the impact of cities and especially the major metropolises on national life has been extraordinary. While the founding elite of the early republic – Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Monroe – fastened upon the nation the ethos of the plantation and southern life, cities assumed a more important part in setting national priorities following the Civil War.

 

Herald of twentieth century modernity, urban America, made itself into the center of world capitalism and American diversity. Urban America’s fabled variety provides a riveting history of relations between groups divided by class, interest, culture, ethnicity, and race. The assortment of city markets and services afforded urban centers a reach in space and influence that remains unmatched and offers a fascinating perspective for examining the development of American economic, social, and political life.

 

Shown a portrait of her, painted by Picasso in his characteristic style, Gertrude Stein gazed at it with some distaste, protesting: “But I don’t look like that”. “Don’t worry,” he replied, “you will, you will.” How often urban issues have been viewed as unique only to discover that they were merely early.

 

Over the past half century freshly conceived city studies have fashioned a rigorous body of systematic work that is informed by theory and broad questions. Skilled in the tools of social science, and sensitive to calls for inclusion and complexity, city scholars have crafted a textured urban past from the lives of workers, women, ethnic and racial minorities and other strands from the common weave. Often emphasizing analysis over narrative, applying varied techniques to the study of social, economic and demographic patterns, and interested in subjects having to do with the material basis of existence, as well as cultural, class, political and gender issues, these historians have elaborated a complex process of city history.

 

Many of these studies have been provocatively, even dazzlingly conceived. While some of these studies have tended to isolate their subjects from the larger history of the nation or even of cities in general, creating a field of brilliant fragments, the challenge remains to bring together these important, if segmented, studies into a coherent picture of American urban life.

 

Reading selections will be drawn from the following assigned books and articles.

 

Course learning objectives:

 

Over the course of the semester students will be expected to demonstrate:

• An understanding of key texts in American Urban History
• An understanding of the role of politics, economics, social forces, culture and technology in shaping urban society
• An understanding of  processes of urban experience and
• development
• An ability to read American urban monographs critically and analytically and to lead class discussion on related topics.
• A familiarity with important urban research resources including archives, web sources, and source collections
• An appreciation for the complexity of urban experience and examples of the influence of prime variables like race, gender and class, on urban life
• An ability to write a well defined, carefully researched and cogently argued research paper in American Urban history

 

S- Scan  E- E book  *Suggested reading  TC Assigned pages to come

 

1. THE CITY AS A FIELD OF STUDY

 

Frederick Jackson Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier,” American Historical Association Annual Report, (1893), 199-227.

Arthur M. Schlesinger, “The City in American History,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 27 (June, 1940), 43-66.

Robert E. Park, “The City: Some Suggestions for the Investigation of Human Behavior in the Urban Environment,” in Robert E. Park and Ernest W. Burgess, The City. Chicago U. Press, 1925.

Louis Wirth, “Urbanism as a Way of Life,” The American Journal of  Sociology, 44 (July, 1938) 1-24.

Timothy Gilfoyle, “White Cities, Linguistic Turns and Disneylands: The New Paradigms of Urban History,” Reviews in American History 26 (1998), 175-204

Timothy Gilfoyle, “Michael Katz on Place and Space in Urban History,” JUH 41:4  (2015), 572-584.

 

2. CLASSIC CITY STUDIES

 

Lewis Mumford, The City in History. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1961. 3-54, 119-182, 205-314, 410-578.

Sam B. Warner Jr., Streetcar Suburbs, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962. TC

Riis, Jacob, How the Other Half Lives. (1890) http://depts.washington.edu/envir202/Readings/Reading01.pdf 

 

3. REGIONAL GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT

 

Robert G. Albion,  The Rise of the New York Port.  Nebraska University Press. 1984. pp. 1-37; 55-75; 95-121; 235-259. Albion Rise of New York Port S

Roy Rosenzweig and Elizabeth Blackmar, The Park and the People: A History of Central Park. Cornell University Press, 1992. pp. 37-205.

David McCullough, The Great Bridge. Simon & Schuster, 1972. 103-215, 434-504.

Bernstein, Peter L, Wedding of the Waters: The Erie Canal and the Making of a Great Nation. W.W. Norton, 2005. pp. 89-108; 142-179; 279-292; 308-324; 343-378. Bernstein Wedding of the Waters S

 

4. INFRASTRUCTURE

 

David Jones, Mass Motorization and Mass Transit. Indiana University Press,  2010. Ch 1-2

Joel Tarr, The Search for the Ultimate Sink: Urban Pollution in Historical Perspective.

University of Akron Press, 1996. TC

*Clay McShane, Down the Asphalt Path, Columbia U Press, 1994

Mark Rose, Cities of Light and Heat Penn State University Press 2004. 1,2,6

Carl Smith, City Water,  City Life Water and the Infrastructure of Ideas in Urbanizing Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago. U of Chicago Press 2104. 1,2,3,5

*Gerard Koeppel, Water for Gotham, Princeton University Press, 2001. Pp. 50-284

*Cliff Hood, 722 miles  Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. Pp. 91-240

 

5. TRANSFORMATIONS

 

Richard Dennis. Cities in Modernity: Representations and Productions of Metropolitan Space, 1840-1930. Cambridge University Press, 2008. TC

Tyler Anbinder, Five Points: The 19th-Century New York City Neighborhood That Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections, and Became the World’s Most Notorious Slum. Free Press, 2001. pp. 7-303.

Scott P. Marler. The Merchants’ Capital: New Orleans and the Political Economy

of the Nineteenth-Century South. Cambridge University Press. 2013. TC

Sean Wilentz. Chants Democratic New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788-1850. Oxford University Press, 2004. 2,6

Josh Freeman, Behemoth: A History of the Factory and the Making of the Modern World,  W.W. Norton, 2018. 2-4

*Philip Scranton, Proprietary Capitalism, Textile Manufacture in Philadelphia, 1800-1855 Cambridge, 1984.

 

6. IMMIGRANTS

 

John  Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925. Rutgers University Press, 2008. pp. 12-105. Higham Strangers in the Land S

*Oscar Handlin, The Uprooted. Little, Brown, 1951. 1,5,6,9

John Bodnar, The Transplanted. Indiana UP, 1986. 1-56, 85-116; 169-205.

Lila Fernandez, Brown in the Windy City, Mexicans and Puerto Ricans in Chicago, WWII. U Chi P, 2012. TC

*Ronald Bayor, Handbook of American Immigration and Ethnicity. NYU Press, 2016

Howe, Irving, World of Our Fathers: The Journey of the East European Jews to America and the Life They Found and Made. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976. pp. 5-325.

Gabaccia, Donna R. From Sicily to Elizabeth Street Housing and Social Change Among Italian Immigrants, 1880-1930. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984. pp. 35-116. Gabaccia From Sicily to Elizabeth Street S

*Carl Nightingale, Segregation, Divided Cities U Chi P.  2012

Gerber David A. “Immigration Historiography at the Crossroads,” Reviews in American History Vol. 39, No. 1 (March 2011), pp. 74-86. Gerber Immigration History at the Crossroads S

Mae M. Ngai, “The Architecture of Race in American Immigration Law: A Reexamination of the Immigration Act of 1924.” Journal of American History, Vol. 86, No. 1 (Jun., 1999), pp. 67-92 Ngai The Architecture of Race in American Immigration Law S

 

7. WOMEN

 

Cheryl Hicks, Talk with You Like a Woman, 1890-1945, U of No. Ca. P, 2010. 1,2,4,6.

*Sarah Deutsch, Women and the City: Gender Space and Power in Boston 1870-1940, Oxford UP, 2000.

Kathy Lee Peiss. Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York. Temple U. Press, 1986. pp.11-33; 163-188. Peiss Cheap Amusements S

Nan Enstad. Ladies of Labor, Girls of Adventure: Working Women, Popular Culture, and Labor Politics at the Turn of the Twentieth Century. Columbia University Press. 1999. 2,3,4

 

8. RECASTING GENDER

 

Lilllian Faderman and Stuart Timmons, Gay LA: A History of Sexual Outlaws, Power Politics, And Lipstick Lesbians, Basic books, 2006. 3-7.

*Boyd, Nan Alamilla. Wide-open town: A history of queer San Francisco to 1965. Univ of California Press, 2003. TC

Maynard, Steven. ““Without Working?” Capitalism, Urban Culture, and Gay History.” Journal of Urban History 30, no. 3 (2004): 378-398.

Chauncey, George. Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture and the Makings of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940. New York: Basic Books, 1994. 99-130, 179-206, 227-267, 271-299. S

Bederman, Gail. Manliness & Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995, pp. 1-44; 121-216. Bederman Manliness and Civilization S

 

9. RACE

 

*Gilbert Osofsky, Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto. Harper, 1963. Chs 1,5,8,9,10 Osofsky Harlem S

Arnold Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago 1940-1960. U Chi P 1998. TC

JUH 29 (2003) 238-309 symposium on 2d Ghetto

Jacqueline Hall, ”The Long Civil Rights Movement,” JAH 91: 3 (2005)

Thomas Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit

Princeton University Press, 1996. TC

*Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North, Random House, 2008.

*Wilder, Craig Steven. A Covenant with Color: Race and Social Power in Brooklyn. Columbia University Press, 2000. pp. 175-218. Wilder A Covenant With Color S

National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders Kerner Commission,

Nicholas Lemann, The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How it Changed America. A.A. Knopf. 1991.

*Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration, 2011.

 

10. LABOR AND WORKER LIFE

 

Lizabeth Cohen. Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939. Cambridge University Press, 1990. TC

Orleck, Annelise. Common Sense and a Little Fire: Working Women and Working-Class Politics in the United States, 1900-1965. University of North Carolina Press, 1995. pp. 53-120.  S

Herbert Gutman. “Work, Culture, and Society in Industrializing America,”  American Historical Review, 78 (June 1973) 531-588.

Eric Arnesen, “Up From Exclusion,” Reviews In American History, 26 (1998), 146-174.

James R. Barrett Work and Community in the Jungle, Chicago, 1894-1922, U of Illinois Press 2002. 1,2,3,6.

*Becky Nicolaides, My Blue Heaven , Life and Politics in Working Class LA 1920-1965, U Chi 2001

O’Donnell, Edward T. Henry George and the Crisis of Inequality: Progress and Poverty in the Gilded Age, New York: Columbia University Press, 2015, pp. 33-96; 128-166. O’Donnell Henry George S

*Addams, Jane. Twenty Years at Hull House. (1912). http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/addams/hullhouse/hullhouse.html

 

11. METROPOLIS

 

William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis:  Chicago and the Great West. W.W. Norton, 1991. 41-148,  263-310 Cronon Nature’s Metropolis S

*Sven Beckert,  Monied Metropolis. Cambridge U. Press. 2003. Chs: 1,3,6,7, 10

Thomas Kessner. Fiorello H. LaGuardia and the Making of Modern New York. McGraw-Hill, 1991.TC

Max Paige, The Creative Destruction of  Manhattan pp. 1-104  Page Creative Destruction of manhattan S

*Scott Battles, LA and the Automobile

Daniel T Rodgers.  Atlantic Crossings:  Social Politics in a Progressive Age. Harvard University Press, 1998, pp. 33-208; 235-266. E

 

12. DISORDER, JUSTICE AND JAILS

 

Gage, Beverly. The Day Wall Street Exploded: A Story of America in its First Age of Terror         Oxford. pp. 11-124. E

Thompson, Heather Ann. Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy, Pantheon, 2016. TC

Thompson, Heather. “Why Mass Incarceration Matters: Rethinking Crisis, Decline and Transformation in Postwar American History,”Journal of American History. (December, 2010)

Selections: Special issue . The Journal of American History, Historians and the Carceral State. June 2015, 25,34, 47,61,100, 113, 174

Selections: Special issue “Urban Spaces and the Carceral State”  Journal of Urban History. September, 2015

*Eric Schneider, Smack: U Penn, 2008.

*Andrew Diamond, Mean Streets, Everyday Struggles,1908-1969, U Cal P, 2009

 

13. 13. RESHAPING CITIES

 

Christopher Kelemek, The Transatlantic Collapse of Urban Renewal, Postwar Urbanism from NY to Berlin, U  Chicago P  2011. TC

*Carol Willis, Form Follows Finance:  Skyscrapers and Skylines in NY and Chicago, Princeton 1995.

*John Tauranac, The Empire State Building, Scribner, 1995.

Robert Caro.  The Power Broker.  Random House, 1975.  4, 9, 10, 12, 18, 20, 28, 33, 35,37-40.

Jacobs, Jane, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Random House, 1961.TC

Kenneth T. Jackson, “Robert Moses and the Planned Environment: A Re-Evaluation,” in Joann P. Krieg, ed., Robert Moses: Single-Minded Genius, 1989. Pp. 21-30.

David Ward and Olivier Zunz, The Landscape of Modernity,  Russel Sage, 1993. 1-5, 7, 8, 12, 14 Ward Zunz Landscape of Modernity S

Samuel Zipp, Manhattan Project: Rise and Fall of Urban Renewal, Oxford, 2012. TC

 

14. PRESENTATION OF RESEARCH

 

COLLATERAL ASSIGNMENTS:

 

The assignments in this course are designed to train students for research, writing and teaching. Reading, leading class discussions and participating in them are integral to successfully completing the work for this class. Each session will have a discussion leader who will prepare a short synopsis of the reading to be presented and then e-mailed to participants after the class discussion of the readings. The presentation discussion should focus on major historical issues and pose interpretive/ analytic questions to promote a discussion of pivotal issues. How is the study structured? What is the evidence base; how solid is the argument? Where does it fit historiographical? Then lead a discussion of the book with questions that are not another form of lecture. Questions should be direct and open ended and they should be part of a well thought out organized presentation. Asking good questions is critical not only for doing good research but also for running good classes. critique of the reading based on the review literature and their own evaluation of the.

 

The second reader will offer a report on a supplementary reading and its review literature. There are several additional assignments.

 

Writing Assignments: The assignments are keyed to specific sessions.

 

Session 4. Select a monograph in urban history and write a 3-4 page review that treats: Summary, Central Argument,  Methodology, Sources, Critique. You need not follow this formula but should include these elements.

 

Session 5. Submit a proposal for your paper. 1 page: topic, sources, approach

 

Session 7.  Go back to year 1880 for your birthday and look up the NY Times (or other daily) for that day. Read it in its entirety, including reviews and ads. Write a three page description of the day and what you find historically noteworthy. Then select a single theme from the 1880 paper and compare its treatment in 1900 and then in 1918. Four pages. You  may compare treatments of workers, women, immigrants, race issues, politics, urban growth projects, business, culture, reform,  entertainment, or even at the changes in advertising strategy and format. Do not use any sources beyond the paper. Total seven pages.

 

Session 12.  Submit a 12-15 page historiographic paper on an approved topic  We will discuss the number of books and articles and other relevant issues for this paper in class.

Or

Define a topic in Urban history and based upon  research in contemporaneous  newspapers and magazines/journals  write a documented analytic essay approximately 15 pages in length. The objective of the essay is to identify, categorize and analyze your topic’s relationship to the larger urban system, metropolitan, regional, national.

 

You may select a topic like the Brooklyn Bridge, the development of a neighborhood, the urban political process, a prominent figure, a social movement, an institution, a business, a cultural mode, etc.

 

The paper will obviously be limited in scope. But you can look at an issue as it was reported – recognizing that errors often do creep into reports when an observer writes against a deadline, is forced to depend upon random testimony, and often lacks context – and with discretion, use the information. Do not settle upon a single circumstance or event; build a base of information that can be related thematically to your topic.

 

Your paper should be based exclusively on what can be learned from the primary research. You may use one secondary source to provide context, but not for information. Footnote your material with brief citations.

 

Start early. Reserve a good bit of time to organize and write the paper.

 

By the third session you will need to hand in a brief outline of your subject and your secondary source. The paper will be due the first week in May. There is a one week grace period. If you hand in your paper late your grade will reflect the tardiness.

 

 

There is a one week grace period. If you hand in your paper late your grade will reflect the tardiness.

 

Please consult with me about any problems or questions.

 

N.B.: Keep copies of everything you submit. Your papers should be your own work and reflect your own research. Where you have relied on outside sources for material make sure that this is noted. Quotes should be marked off to indicate they are not your words and they should be footnoted. Do not use previously submitted papers, purchased material or any other form of work that is not your own. The consequences of plagiarism can be serious. Enough said.