2007–2008
Co-sponsored by The Newberry Library, The University of Chicago, and Trinity Christian College
Seminars are held on Saturdays from 11:00 AM–3:00 PM
at the Newberry Library, 60 W. Walton Street, Chicago, IL.
Printable 8½” x 11” pdf Schedule
European Culture and Connections to North America
Irish-language Jokes and Rural Responses to Modernity, 1850–1900
Nicholas Wolf, University of Wisconsin at Madison
How do rural communities react to the decline of their regionally spoken language? This paper searches for an answer in the shift from the Irish language to English in Ireland in the decades following the Great Famine of 1845–50. Irish-language folk sources reveal an unexpected response to this change in the form of jokes told about linguistic misunderstandings. Such humor enabled Irish speakers to reshape their identity under conflicting economic and cultural demands, a tactic that has also been found in similarly situated communities from China and India to West Africa, South America, Europe, and North America.
Rethinking Labor in the Countryside: Petits Propriétaires and the Concept of Rural Democracy in the Guadeloupe and the Aude
Elizabeth Heath, University of Chicago
This paper explores the efforts of French administrators to promote and support petits propriétaires (small property owners) and small-scale farming on the French Caribbean island-colony of Guadeloupe and the southern metropolitan department of the Aude at the end of the nineteenth century. It suggests that the policy reflected a need by French officials to define “Frenchness” and French traditions in the face of global economic pressures and internal political instability. As a result, the move to promote small-scale farming in the two regions marked a moment of potential assimilation between colony and metropole and the possibility of new forms of equality between colonial and metropolitan citizens.
Benvenuti Stranieri: Italians as Foreigners in the Arkansas Delta, 1884-1905
Lauren Braun, University of Illinois at Chicago
This paper is from a chapter in my dissertation, which follows a turn-of-the-twentieth century transatlantic movement to establish immigrants on small landholdings in the South. As this paper will demonstrate, rationales for importing immigrants from Italy overrode national and regional biases against Italians that were prominent at the turn of the twentieth century. Supporters of the project for Southern rural colonization pointedly chose to ignore the religion and origins of Italian families they recruited. As the organizers argued in their published writings, the work ethic of peasant Italians agreed with the Southern rural value system as they envisioned it. While the identity or “whiteness” of these immigrants—the real question being whether they could be incorporated into the American body politic—was hotly contested, the sponsors of Italian settlement in the South focused instead on the suitability of this population for a region struggling to become economically viable.
This paper will also utilize a unique data set taken from the 1896 end of season records and apply quantitative analysis to assess the impact of rational decision-making on Italians’ success at cotton farming. In the case of Sunnyside Plantation, Delta-dwelling Italians experienced distinct advantages and disadvantages because of their cultural, linguistic, and economic “foreignness.” Both resident Italians and landowners called upon their status as welcome stranieri—strangers—as a way to distinguish their contribution to as well as integrate them into the political economy of Delta cotton.
Themes in American Rural Culture in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
Forged in Conflict: Abolitionists and Old Northwest Hospitality, 1830–1861
Dana Weiner, University of Arizona at Tucson
From the mid-1830s through the Civil War, local people’s hospitality enabled antislavery activism across the crucial battleground of the Old Northwest. I argue that in the volatile states of Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio, reformers faced violent conflicts over race relations, slavery, and social control. There, itinerant organizers relied on locals’ willingness to feed and shelter travelers to facilitate their speaking tours. Old Northwestern hosts placed the private spaces of their houses in the service of the larger antislavery cause, and their often-invisible direct aid to traveling activists permitted them to work in this contentious region with few hospitality options.
Tidbits from Here and There in De Volksvriend: Social News and Ethnic Identity Among Dutch Americans in the Midwest (1874–1951)
Robert Schoone-Jongen, Calvin College
Immigrant communities, defined by language, religious faith, and lingering national or regional identities often used newspapers to linked scattered colonies into “imagined communities.” De Volksvriend, a Dutch language newspaper published in northwest Iowa, served a network of Dutch Calvinist communities for over seventy-five years. Each week local correspondents submitted news about churches, weddings, crop yields, family gatherings, and local politics; columns written in the belief that each enclave of Dutch immigrants included people longing to hear the latest information another Dutchman’s American home. Their submissions highlight the development of overlapping identities anchored to the belief that America needed their communities’ unique contributions to truly thrive as a nation.
Singing with the Schoolmarm: Music in the One-Room Schools
Pamela Stover, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale
This paper addresses the musical equipment, teaching methods and materials, musical activities and programs, and the scheduling of music at Midwestern one-room schools, 1890-1950. Typically, patriotic songs were sung during opening exercises, and many school programs included music. The Iowa Choir plan and Journeys in MusicLand were two specific music systems developed for rural schools. Singing and play-party games were done on the playground, in music instruction, or during community socials. Music was an important part of many rural communities, and the student’s musical experiences in school and through the church, laid this foundation.
The seminar format assumes that all participants have read the essay in advance, and that all those requesting the paper will attend the seminar. Please do not request a paper unless you plan to attend. We encourage faculty members to call the seminar to the attention of graduate students.