Edited by David Strand (NHC Fellow, 1995–96), Sherman Cochran (NHC Fellow, 2002–03), and Wen-Hsin Yeh This volume offers a fresh perspective on how Chinese cities were transformed or "Westernized" in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries and how Asian and Western cities received Chinese influences dispatched through the media of commerce and migration. Part 1 … Continued
By Ellen Stroud (NHC Fellow, 2009–10) The once denuded northeastern United States is now a region of trees. Nature Next Door argues that the growth of cities, the construction of parks, the transformation of farming, the boom in tourism, and changes in the timber industry have together brought about a return of northeastern forests. Although historians and … Continued
By John F. Kasson (NHC Fellow, 1980–81; 2009–10) With keen insight and subtle humor, John F. Kasson explores the history and politics of etiquette from America's colonial times through the nineteenth century. He describes the transformation of our notion of "gentility," once considered a birthright to some, and the development of etiquette as a middle-class … Continued
Between 1880 and the first decades of the twentieth century, American cities became something new on the nation’s landscape. Millions of men and women from small-town and rural America and from abroad flooded into them. Some found jobs in skyscrapers, rode the subways, and played in amusement parks. Others toiled in sweat shops, lived in … Continued
Between the 1930s and the 1970s, racialized legislation and subsequent migrations of Black Americans combined to drive explosive population growth in urban centers, which in turn gave rise to the creation of segregated districts and public housing projects. The experience of life in these spaces, which required residents to navigate precarious conditions where distinctions between public and private collapsed, was chronicled by Black women writers of the era. In this podcast, Jennifer D. Williams, assistant professor of English at Howard University, discusses her research into urban spaces, racial politics, and Black womanhood in the twentieth century.