The Oxford Handbook of History and Material Culture, 2020
This chapter uses John Kouwenhoven’s 1963 essay “American Studies: Words or Things” as a touchsto... more This chapter uses John Kouwenhoven’s 1963 essay “American Studies: Words or Things” as a touchstone to examine the history of the relationship between material culture and the study of the past. Material culture studies promised access both to the history of those who left no written records and to a different kind of cognitive insight than could be gained from traditional historical sources. While this was of a piece with the development of the “new social history” in the 1960s, the chapter looks back to the early twentieth century to put Kouwenhoven’s call for the study of material culture in a longer historical context, and it traces what happened to material culture studies over the last half-century. The chapter suggests that despite its many accomplishments, the use of material culture remains on the edges of most historical work, especially after historians took the linguistic turn, which refocused their attention on texts rather than things.
This paper addresses the health problems and opportunities that society will face in 2030. We pro... more This paper addresses the health problems and opportunities that society will face in 2030. We propose a proactive model to combat the trend towards declining levels of physical activity and increasing obesity. The model emphasizes the need to increase physical activity among individuals of all ages. We focus on the right to move and the benefits of physical activity. The paper introduces a seven-level model that includes cells, creature (individual), clan (family), community, corporation, country, and culture. At each level the model delineates how increased or decreased physical activity influences health and well-being across the life span. It emphasizes the importance of combining multiple disciplines and corporate partners to produce a multifaceted cost-effective program that increases physical activity at all levels. The goal of this paper is to recognize exercise as a powerful, low-cost solution with positive benefits to cognitive, emotional, and physical health. Further, the model proposes that people of all ages should incorporate the "right to move" into their life style, thereby maximizing the potential to maintain health and well-being in a cost-effective, optimally influential manner.
The White Man's Indian forty years ago. In it, Berkhofer detailed how Americans constructed a set... more The White Man's Indian forty years ago. In it, Berkhofer detailed how Americans constructed a set of racially charged stereotypes about the people who lived in the Western Hemisphere before Europeans arrived and demonstrated just how enduring those images have proved to be. The book is still worth reading and not just because it has been enormously influential. Once scholars started looking for Indian images and imitations and tropes and appropriations, they found them everywhere-from the cowboys-and-Indians games American children played to the music of Antonín Dvořák. The vanishing race turned out to be ubiquitous-at least in the Euro-American imagination. Officially Indian is one of those books that descends, at least in part, from Berkhofer's study, and like The White Man's Indian, it isn't really about Indians at all. Rather, it is about images of Indians-symbols, as the subtitle has it-created by the majoritarian culture for its own purposes. And given the four decades that have elapsed since Berkhofer, it is remarkable that Cécile R. Ganteaume has found so much that is fresh and unexpected for her book. But she surely has. Whereas many scholars have mined popular culture, broadly speaking, in their search for Indian imagery, Ganteaume looks instead at what she defines as ''official and semi-official emblems'' of the United States, and she argues that the use of these Native American symbols ''sheds light on the United States' evolving sense of itself as a democratic nation'' (17). Once she went looking, she found all sorts of examples, many hiding, often literally, in plain sight. At the heart of this book sit nearly fifty of Ganteaume's discoveries, arranged chronologically starting with Tupinambas of Coastal Brazil (1505) and ending with the cast glass portrayal of Sequoyah completed in 2013 and now installed in the John Adams Building of the Library of Congress. These images are bookended by a brief forward, written by Colin Calloway, an introduction written by Ganteaume herself, and an afterword by Paul Chaat Smith. Official Indian is connected with the new long-term exhibit at the National Museum of the American Indian, and as I write this review that exhibit has not yet opened. This book is not the exhibit catalogue exactly, but is instead described as the ''companion'' volume. Holding it in your hand, it feels like something of a hybrid. It is beautifully illustrated and produced but is surely not a coffee-table book; each image or symbol is accompanied by about two pages of explanatory and analytic text, but this also is not an academic monograph. Whatever genre it might be, Official Indian is a fascinating delight. It is a book easy to dip in and out of. Open to pages 94 and 95 and discover that in 1898 the US Postal Service issued a four-cent stamp titled ''Indian Hunting Buffalo,''
Chapter 1 The American Urban Paradox Chapter 2: America's Urban Moment Arrives Chapter 3 The ... more Chapter 1 The American Urban Paradox Chapter 2: America's Urban Moment Arrives Chapter 3 The Center Should Not Hold: Decentralizing the City in the 1920s and '30s Chapter 4 New Deal, New Towns: The Anti-Urban New Deal Chapter 5 Looking for Alternatives to the City: The Past and The Folk Chapter 6 The Center Did Not Hold: The City in the Age of Urban Renewal Chapter 7 The Triumph of the Decentralized City Chapter 8 Small Town, New Town, Commune Chapter 9 New Communities, New Urbanisms Afterword Urbanism as a Way of Life
As objects from China and Japan made their way into American collections during the nineteenth ce... more As objects from China and Japan made their way into American collections during the nineteenth century, museums faced the categorical problem of how best to classify and display them. For some, these objects belonged in the category of "fine art"; for others, they belonged more properly in the category of anthropology or ethnology. By the 1920s, this debate had largely been resolved in favor of "art." At stake, of course, was the larger question of how Americans would ultimately view the cultures that produced the objects.
The Civil War generated hundreds of history paintings. Yet, as this essay argues, painters failed... more The Civil War generated hundreds of history paintings. Yet, as this essay argues, painters failed to create any iconic, lasting images of the Civil War using the conventions of grand manner history painting, despite the expectations of many that they would and should. This essay first examines the terms by which I am evaluating this failure, then moves on to a consideration of the American history painting tradition. I next examine several history paintings of Civil War scenes in light of this tradition and argue that their “failure” to capture the meaning and essence of the war resulted from a breakdown of the narrative conventions of history painting. Finally, I glance briefly at Winslow Homer’s Civil War scenes, arguably the only ones which have become canonical, and suggest that the success of these images comes from their abandonment of old conventions and the invention of new ones.
History in urban places: the historic districts of the United States/David Hamer. p. cm.-(Urban l... more History in urban places: the historic districts of the United States/David Hamer. p. cm.-(Urban life and urban landscape series) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8142-0790-1 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Historic districts-United States. 2. Cities and towns-United States-History. 3. Urbanization-United States-History. 4. Historic preservation-United States. I. Title II. Series E159.H19 1998 363.6'9'0973-dc21 98-23921 CIP Text and jacket design by Gary Gore.
This article argues that because a center-periphery model has dominated our understanding of post... more This article argues that because a center-periphery model has dominated our understanding of postwar suburban growth we have failed to fully understand the rural dimensions of that growth. That misunderstanding resulted from the urban orientation of sociologists who studied the suburbs. As a consequence, we have also not appreciated the extent to which rural political outlooks shaped the postwar backlash against New Deal liberalism in the suburbs.
I was asked to write this for the UK magazine Unherd from my book The Lies of the Land: Seeing Ru... more I was asked to write this for the UK magazine Unherd from my book The Lies of the Land: Seeing Rural American for What It Is - and Isn't (Chicago, 2023).
The opening of the NMAI is surely a cause for excitement and celebration. It is an impressive bui... more The opening of the NMAI is surely a cause for excitement and celebration. It is an impressive building which stands as the culmination of years of negotiation, fundraising, and lobbying. It also promises to be a major center for research and education about the whole of Native America, a place where scholars, the general public, and Native people themselves can interact on a host of levels. But as it stands now, that great promise remains largely unfulfilled. Instead, all the hard work that created the NMAI has resulted in a contradiction wrapped around a neologism. The experience at the National Museum of the American Indian is sometimes confusing, sometimes incoherent, and ultimately disappointing. The contradiction, simply put, is this: how to build a museum to display cultures which have a deep ambivalence about the notion of being displayed? Many Native Americans have rejected outright the notion that Native American cultures can or should be displayed in museums at all. Museums, after all, are simply part of the cultural apparatus of expansion and colonization. And Native Americans have reason to be suspicious of the museum enterprise at all levels. Native American artifacts have many times been looted and stolen, and 69
The Oxford Handbook of History and Material Culture, 2020
This chapter uses John Kouwenhoven’s 1963 essay “American Studies: Words or Things” as a touchsto... more This chapter uses John Kouwenhoven’s 1963 essay “American Studies: Words or Things” as a touchstone to examine the history of the relationship between material culture and the study of the past. Material culture studies promised access both to the history of those who left no written records and to a different kind of cognitive insight than could be gained from traditional historical sources. While this was of a piece with the development of the “new social history” in the 1960s, the chapter looks back to the early twentieth century to put Kouwenhoven’s call for the study of material culture in a longer historical context, and it traces what happened to material culture studies over the last half-century. The chapter suggests that despite its many accomplishments, the use of material culture remains on the edges of most historical work, especially after historians took the linguistic turn, which refocused their attention on texts rather than things.
This paper addresses the health problems and opportunities that society will face in 2030. We pro... more This paper addresses the health problems and opportunities that society will face in 2030. We propose a proactive model to combat the trend towards declining levels of physical activity and increasing obesity. The model emphasizes the need to increase physical activity among individuals of all ages. We focus on the right to move and the benefits of physical activity. The paper introduces a seven-level model that includes cells, creature (individual), clan (family), community, corporation, country, and culture. At each level the model delineates how increased or decreased physical activity influences health and well-being across the life span. It emphasizes the importance of combining multiple disciplines and corporate partners to produce a multifaceted cost-effective program that increases physical activity at all levels. The goal of this paper is to recognize exercise as a powerful, low-cost solution with positive benefits to cognitive, emotional, and physical health. Further, the model proposes that people of all ages should incorporate the "right to move" into their life style, thereby maximizing the potential to maintain health and well-being in a cost-effective, optimally influential manner.
The White Man's Indian forty years ago. In it, Berkhofer detailed how Americans constructed a set... more The White Man's Indian forty years ago. In it, Berkhofer detailed how Americans constructed a set of racially charged stereotypes about the people who lived in the Western Hemisphere before Europeans arrived and demonstrated just how enduring those images have proved to be. The book is still worth reading and not just because it has been enormously influential. Once scholars started looking for Indian images and imitations and tropes and appropriations, they found them everywhere-from the cowboys-and-Indians games American children played to the music of Antonín Dvořák. The vanishing race turned out to be ubiquitous-at least in the Euro-American imagination. Officially Indian is one of those books that descends, at least in part, from Berkhofer's study, and like The White Man's Indian, it isn't really about Indians at all. Rather, it is about images of Indians-symbols, as the subtitle has it-created by the majoritarian culture for its own purposes. And given the four decades that have elapsed since Berkhofer, it is remarkable that Cécile R. Ganteaume has found so much that is fresh and unexpected for her book. But she surely has. Whereas many scholars have mined popular culture, broadly speaking, in their search for Indian imagery, Ganteaume looks instead at what she defines as ''official and semi-official emblems'' of the United States, and she argues that the use of these Native American symbols ''sheds light on the United States' evolving sense of itself as a democratic nation'' (17). Once she went looking, she found all sorts of examples, many hiding, often literally, in plain sight. At the heart of this book sit nearly fifty of Ganteaume's discoveries, arranged chronologically starting with Tupinambas of Coastal Brazil (1505) and ending with the cast glass portrayal of Sequoyah completed in 2013 and now installed in the John Adams Building of the Library of Congress. These images are bookended by a brief forward, written by Colin Calloway, an introduction written by Ganteaume herself, and an afterword by Paul Chaat Smith. Official Indian is connected with the new long-term exhibit at the National Museum of the American Indian, and as I write this review that exhibit has not yet opened. This book is not the exhibit catalogue exactly, but is instead described as the ''companion'' volume. Holding it in your hand, it feels like something of a hybrid. It is beautifully illustrated and produced but is surely not a coffee-table book; each image or symbol is accompanied by about two pages of explanatory and analytic text, but this also is not an academic monograph. Whatever genre it might be, Official Indian is a fascinating delight. It is a book easy to dip in and out of. Open to pages 94 and 95 and discover that in 1898 the US Postal Service issued a four-cent stamp titled ''Indian Hunting Buffalo,''
Chapter 1 The American Urban Paradox Chapter 2: America's Urban Moment Arrives Chapter 3 The ... more Chapter 1 The American Urban Paradox Chapter 2: America's Urban Moment Arrives Chapter 3 The Center Should Not Hold: Decentralizing the City in the 1920s and '30s Chapter 4 New Deal, New Towns: The Anti-Urban New Deal Chapter 5 Looking for Alternatives to the City: The Past and The Folk Chapter 6 The Center Did Not Hold: The City in the Age of Urban Renewal Chapter 7 The Triumph of the Decentralized City Chapter 8 Small Town, New Town, Commune Chapter 9 New Communities, New Urbanisms Afterword Urbanism as a Way of Life
As objects from China and Japan made their way into American collections during the nineteenth ce... more As objects from China and Japan made their way into American collections during the nineteenth century, museums faced the categorical problem of how best to classify and display them. For some, these objects belonged in the category of "fine art"; for others, they belonged more properly in the category of anthropology or ethnology. By the 1920s, this debate had largely been resolved in favor of "art." At stake, of course, was the larger question of how Americans would ultimately view the cultures that produced the objects.
The Civil War generated hundreds of history paintings. Yet, as this essay argues, painters failed... more The Civil War generated hundreds of history paintings. Yet, as this essay argues, painters failed to create any iconic, lasting images of the Civil War using the conventions of grand manner history painting, despite the expectations of many that they would and should. This essay first examines the terms by which I am evaluating this failure, then moves on to a consideration of the American history painting tradition. I next examine several history paintings of Civil War scenes in light of this tradition and argue that their “failure” to capture the meaning and essence of the war resulted from a breakdown of the narrative conventions of history painting. Finally, I glance briefly at Winslow Homer’s Civil War scenes, arguably the only ones which have become canonical, and suggest that the success of these images comes from their abandonment of old conventions and the invention of new ones.
History in urban places: the historic districts of the United States/David Hamer. p. cm.-(Urban l... more History in urban places: the historic districts of the United States/David Hamer. p. cm.-(Urban life and urban landscape series) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8142-0790-1 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Historic districts-United States. 2. Cities and towns-United States-History. 3. Urbanization-United States-History. 4. Historic preservation-United States. I. Title II. Series E159.H19 1998 363.6'9'0973-dc21 98-23921 CIP Text and jacket design by Gary Gore.
This article argues that because a center-periphery model has dominated our understanding of post... more This article argues that because a center-periphery model has dominated our understanding of postwar suburban growth we have failed to fully understand the rural dimensions of that growth. That misunderstanding resulted from the urban orientation of sociologists who studied the suburbs. As a consequence, we have also not appreciated the extent to which rural political outlooks shaped the postwar backlash against New Deal liberalism in the suburbs.
I was asked to write this for the UK magazine Unherd from my book The Lies of the Land: Seeing Ru... more I was asked to write this for the UK magazine Unherd from my book The Lies of the Land: Seeing Rural American for What It Is - and Isn't (Chicago, 2023).
The opening of the NMAI is surely a cause for excitement and celebration. It is an impressive bui... more The opening of the NMAI is surely a cause for excitement and celebration. It is an impressive building which stands as the culmination of years of negotiation, fundraising, and lobbying. It also promises to be a major center for research and education about the whole of Native America, a place where scholars, the general public, and Native people themselves can interact on a host of levels. But as it stands now, that great promise remains largely unfulfilled. Instead, all the hard work that created the NMAI has resulted in a contradiction wrapped around a neologism. The experience at the National Museum of the American Indian is sometimes confusing, sometimes incoherent, and ultimately disappointing. The contradiction, simply put, is this: how to build a museum to display cultures which have a deep ambivalence about the notion of being displayed? Many Native Americans have rejected outright the notion that Native American cultures can or should be displayed in museums at all. Museums, after all, are simply part of the cultural apparatus of expansion and colonization. And Native Americans have reason to be suspicious of the museum enterprise at all levels. Native American artifacts have many times been looted and stolen, and 69
This chapter explores what has changed and what has stayed the same in business schools across th... more This chapter explores what has changed and what has stayed the same in business schools across the United States. On the one hand, the growth of the finance economy since the 1980s has meant that what goes on in business schools has aligned more perfectly with the corporate world than at any other time in the preceding century. Shareholder value became the mantra chanted in classrooms and boardrooms. On the other hand, business schools continue to evade the ethical issues raised in and by the business world, and they have avoided much by way of accountability for what they teach. The chapter then explains that two more things have changed over the last few decades. The first involves the erosion of the democratic impulse of American higher education. The second change is the growing influence of business-school thought on the way universities do their own business.
Journal of International Women's Studies June, 2001
Marietta Chudakova is a remarkable woman. A literary scholar of international renown, she has rec... more Marietta Chudakova is a remarkable woman. A literary scholar of international renown, she has recently left the safe halls of institutes and research libraries for the world of politics. During the 1991 coup attempt, she spent all night at the barricades outside Moscow's White House. ...
Since 2006, the AHR has published eleven "Conversations" on a wide range of topics. By now, we ha... more Since 2006, the AHR has published eleven "Conversations" on a wide range of topics. By now, we have a standard format: the Editor convenes a group of scholars with an interest in the topic who, via e-mail over the course of several months, conduct a conversation that is then lightly edited and footnoted, finally appearing in the December issue. The aim is to provide readers with a wide-ranging and accessible consideration of a topic at a high level of expertise, in which participants are recruited across several fields. As participants respond to one another, a unique informal dialogue emerges, one that exemplifies the interplay of ideas that drives so much scholarship behind the scenes. The procedure also throws open a window onto the process by which scholars turn evidence into conceptualization; these are not polished essays, but thought-in-action. It is the sort of publishing project that this journal is uniquely positioned to take.
This address was given at the Ohio Academy of History conference at the University of Dayton in M... more This address was given at the Ohio Academy of History conference at the University of Dayton in March, 2018.
This was given as the Eda Diskant Memorial Lecture at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in November ... more This was given as the Eda Diskant Memorial Lecture at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in November 2017 as part of the centenary symposium honoring the John G. Johnson Collection.
This was a lecture I delivered at the Museum of the American Indian in New York as part of a terr... more This was a lecture I delivered at the Museum of the American Indian in New York as part of a terrific group of scholars marking the 100th anniversary of the Heye Collection of Native American objects.
At the AHA in Denver, I participated in a panel with Stanley Fish, Jacqueline Jones, Jon Zimmerma... more At the AHA in Denver, I participated in a panel with Stanley Fish, Jacqueline Jones, Jon Zimmerman and AHA Executive Director Jim Grossman to discuss the "Historians Against Trump" letter and Fish's response to it in the New York Times.
A review of the book "The Overlooked: The Resilience of Our Rural Towns and What It Means for Our... more A review of the book "The Overlooked: The Resilience of Our Rural Towns and What It Means for Our Country"
in foreign radical ideas. As Zeidel points out, such a view "deflected any consideration of fault... more in foreign radical ideas. As Zeidel points out, such a view "deflected any consideration of faults or inequalities within the US economy" (-). This is the central point of the book, which is then expanded upon through a series of case studies. The first of these is the build-up to the Chinese Exclusion Act: a precursor of what was to come, and a lens through which to view all discussion of labour unrest and immigration in the coming decades. As Ziedel's book shows, industrialists increasingly blamed their own immigrant workers for social unrest, which only intensified by the end of the century. Zeidel suggests that the assassination of President William McKinley by a foreign anarchist in marked a turning point in the wider debate over immigration. Here, and elsewhere, Zeidel is attuned to how industrialists perceived immigrants both as one homogeneous and potentially subversive group, and as an essential labour supply with certain groups favoured over others. By the early twentieth century, Southern and Eastern Europeans immigrants were the two groups perceived as subversive. How to control immigration became a central concern during the Progressive Era, as revealed by the Dillingham Immigration Commission of . This commission would suggest immigration quotas and literacy tests as a means of controlling immigration, yet it would also highlight how dependent American industrialists were on immigrant labour. World War I exacerbated existing tensions, with restrictions sold as a means of benefiting all labour. Moreover, the long-standing question of loyalty came to the fore, most notably during the Red Scare of -. The extent to which all immigrants became Americanized came under the spotlight, with the resultant quotas favouring Western Europeans over the more "radicalized" Southern and Eastern Europeans. Zeidel's book is based on extensive research, having mined numerous archival collections, which are used alongside the public statements of industrialists and politicians. As such, Zeidel is attuned to the contours of the debates over immigration and the fear of social unrest. For instance, there was a gendered dimension to how industrialists viewed unrest. The immigrant women who voiced their opinions in the public sphere through participation in strike action "did not adhere to proper social decorum" (). This book demonstrates persuasively that dissent and radicalism were regarded as interwoven in the minds of industrialistsa perceived connection that nativists took as the basis for pushing for further immigration restrictions following World War I.
Uploads
Books by Steven Conn
Papers by Steven Conn