History and the Texture of Modern Life

by Salmon, Lucy Maynard; Adams, Nicholas; Smith, Bonnie G.

• ISBN13: 9780812235876
• ISBN10: 0812235878
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-01-26
• Publisher: Univ of Pennsylvania Pr

Summary

Almost a century ago Vassar professor Lucy Maynard Salmon (1853-1927) started down an intellectual path that made her one of the most innovative historians of all time. Her historical method relied on extensive use of the documents of everyday life. In class, for example, she surprised her students with laundry lists, grocery receipts, and newspapers, and asked them to interpret these "ephemera" as historical documents. What did the laundry receipts tell about those who used such services? About those who ran such establishments? About systems of domestic service? Business organization? In short, Salmon recentered history from narrative to methodology, from story to apparatus. By examining subjects that we associate with material culture she anticipated current practices by decades. Salmon was modern in her concerns and her methods, and a feminist in both her interests and her approach. The book contains a cross-section of her essays, including selections from her ground-breaking study "Domestic Service" and her well-known essays "History in a Back Yard" and "Main Street" in which she reads the everyday environment of garden and city in historical terms. Also included are her remarkable essay on the architectural organization of her kitchen and a hitherto unpublished essay on her former professor, Woodrow Wilson, that describes him in vivid terms as an "autophotographer." Salmon's modernism will startle those who have not read her before.

Author Biography

Nicholas Adams is Mary Conover Mellon Professor in the History of Architecture at Vassar College. Bonnie G. Smith is Professor of History at Rutgers University.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Lucy Maynard Salmon and the Texture of Modern Life	1	(29)
Nicholas Adams
Bonnie G. Smith
Domestic Space
Domestic Service Since the Colonial Period (1897)	30	(9)
Possible Remedies: Specialization of Household Employments (1897)	39	(10)
Economics and Ethics in Domestic Service (1906)	49	(8)
Our Kitchen (1906)	57	(6)
The Family Cook-Book (1923)	63	(13)
The City and the World of Objects
History in a Back Yard (1912)	76	(9)
Main Street (1915)	85	(13)
The Record of Monuments (1933)	98	(11)
How Far Can the Past Be Reconstructed from the Press? (1923)	109	(22)
Schools and Citizenship
Examinations in Theory and Practice (1905)	131	(7)
On the College Professor (1911)	138	(6)
Democracy in the Household (1912)	144	(15)
Monarchy and Democracy in Education [1914]	159	(10)
Research for Women (1926)	169	(13)
Suggestions for the Year's Study: History I, Vassar College (1905)	182	(20)
Historical Practice
The Historical Museum (1911)	202	(12)
President Wilson as an Autophotographer by an Old Acquaintance (1919)	214	(6)
Our Greatest Historian (1926)	220	(3)
Many Claimants for an Honor -- in America (1929)	223	(16)
Notes	239	(22)
Bibliography	261	(8)
Nancy MacKechnie
Index	269	(6)
Acknowledgments	275