In Now Hiring, historian Julia Kirk Blackwelder adroitly traces the evolution of the American occupational structure, delineating the main lines of the development of the female work force and its interactions with education, family life, and social convention.
Styling Jim Crow focuses on the beauty education industry in racially segregated communities from World War I through the 1960s. In this study of two black beauty companies of the Jim Crow era, Julia Kirk Blackwelder looks at the industry as a locus of black entrepreneurial effort and an opportunity for young women to obtain training and income that promised social mobility within the African American community. Blackwelder demonstrates that commerce, gender norms, politics, and culture all intersected inside African American beauty schools of the Jim Crow era. The book centers on Marjorie Stewart Joyner of the Madam C. J. Walker beauty chain and James H. Jemison of the Franklin School of Beauty, two educators who worked throughout their business lives to liberate women from the clutches of racial prejudices. They stood at the helms of enterprises that brought self-reliance and pride of accomplishment to generations of African Americans. In Blackwelder’s well-documented story and clearly argued analysis, the history of African American beauty education shows how succeeding generations of black women, in the face of seemingly overwhelming odds, freed themselves from a life of service to whites and advanced into dignified economic independence though work that they and their clients valued for its intangible worth.
Even before the Depression, unemployment, low wages, substandard housing, and poor health plagued many women in what was then one of America's poorest cities--San Antonio. Divided by tradition, prejudice, or law into three distinct communities of Mexican Americans, Anglos, and African Americans, San Antonio women faced hardships based on their personal economic circumstances as well as their identification with a particular racial or ethnic group. Women of the Depression, first published in 1984, presents a unique study of life in a city whose society more nearly reflected divisions by the concept of caste rather than class. Caste was conferred by identification with a particular ethnic or racial group, and it defined nearly every aspect of women's lives. Historian Julia Kirk Blackwelder shows that Depression-era San Antonio, with its majority Mexican American population, its heavy dependence on tourism and light industry, and its domination by an Anglo elite, suffered differently as a whole than other American cities. Loss of migrant agricultural work drove thousands of Mexican Americans into the barrios on the west side of San Antonio, and with the intense repatriation fervor of the 1930s, the fear of deportation inhibited many Mexican Americans from seeking public or private aid. The author combines excerpts from personal letters, diaries, and interviews with government statistics to present a collective view of discrimination and culture and the strength of both in the face of crisis.
For seven decades the General Electric Company maintained its manufacturing and administrative headquarters in Schenectady, New York. Electric City: General Electric in Schenectady explores the history of General Electric in Schenectady from the company’s creation in 1892 to the present. As one of America’s largest and most successful corporations, GE built a culture centered around the social good of technology and the virtues of the people who produced it. At its core, GE culture posited that engineers, scientists, and craftsmen engaged in a team effort to produce technologically advanced material goods that served society and led to corporate profits. Scientists were discoverers, engineers were designers and problem solvers, and craftsmen were artists. Historian Julia Kirk Blackwelder has drawn on company records as well as other archival and secondary sources and personal interviews to produce an engaging and multi-layered history of General Electric’s workplace culture and its planned (and actual) effects on community life. Her research demonstrates how business and community histories intersect, and this nuanced look at race, gender, and class sets a standard for corporate history.
Even before the Depression, unemployment, low wages, substandard housing, and poor health plagued many women in what was then one of America's poorest cities--San Antonio. Divided by tradition, prejudice, or law into three distinct communities of Mexican Americans, Anglos, and African Americans, San Antonio women faced hardships based on their personal economic circumstances as well as their identification with a particular racial or ethnic group. Women of the Depression, first published in 1984, presents a unique study of life in a city whose society more nearly reflected divisions by the concept of caste rather than class. Caste was conferred by identification with a particular ethnic or racial group, and it defined nearly every aspect of women's lives. Historian Julia Kirk Blackwelder shows that Depression-era San Antonio, with its majority Mexican American population, its heavy dependence on tourism and light industry, and its domination by an Anglo elite, suffered differently as a whole than other American cities. Loss of migrant agricultural work drove thousands of Mexican Americans into the barrios on the west side of San Antonio, and with the intense repatriation fervor of the 1930s, the fear of deportation inhibited many Mexican Americans from seeking public or private aid. The author combines excerpts from personal letters, diaries, and interviews with government statistics to present a collective view of discrimination and culture and the strength of both in the face of crisis.
For seven decades the General Electric Company maintained its manufacturing and administrative headquarters in Schenectady, New York. Electric City: General Electric in Schenectady explores the history of General Electric in Schenectady from the company’s creation in 1892 to the present. As one of America’s largest and most successful corporations, GE built a culture centered around the social good of technology and the virtues of the people who produced it. At its core, GE culture posited that engineers, scientists, and craftsmen engaged in a team effort to produce technologically advanced material goods that served society and led to corporate profits. Scientists were discoverers, engineers were designers and problem solvers, and craftsmen were artists. Historian Julia Kirk Blackwelder has drawn on company records as well as other archival and secondary sources and personal interviews to produce an engaging and multi-layered history of General Electric’s workplace culture and its planned (and actual) effects on community life. Her research demonstrates how business and community histories intersect, and this nuanced look at race, gender, and class sets a standard for corporate history.
In Now Hiring, historian Julia Kirk Blackwelder adroitly traces the evolution of the American occupational structure, delineating the main lines of the development of the female work force and its interactions with education, family life, and social convention.
After a promising start as a prosperous and liberal democratic nation at the end of the nineteenth century, Argentina descended into instability and crisis. This stark reversal, in a country rich in natural resources and seemingly bursting with progress and energy, has puzzled many historians. In Civilizing Argentina, Julia Rodriguez takes a sharply contrary view, demonstrating that Argentina's turn of fortune is not a mystery but rather the ironic consequence of schemes to "civilize" the nation in the name of progressivism, health, science, and public order. With new medical and scientific information arriving from Europe at the turn of the century, a powerful alliance developed among medical, scientific, and state authorities in Argentina. These elite forces promulgated a political culture based on a medical model that defined social problems such as poverty, vagrancy, crime, and street violence as illnesses to be treated through programs of social hygiene. They instituted programs to fingerprint immigrants, measure the bodies of prisoners, place wives who disobeyed their husbands in "houses of deposit," and exclude or expel people deemed socially undesirable, including groups such as labor organizers and prostitutes. Such policies, Rodriguez argues, led to the destruction of the nation's liberal ideals and opened the way to the antidemocratic, authoritarian governments that came later in the twentieth century.
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