Browse

The first public orphanage in America, the Charleston Orphan House saw to the welfare and education of thousands of children from poor white families in the urban South. From wealthy benefactors to the families who sought its assistance to the artisans and merchants who relied on its charges as apprentices, the Orphan House was a critical component of the city's social fabric. By bringing together white citizens from all levels of society, it also played a powerful political role in maintaining the prevailing social order. This book tells the story of the Charleston Orphan House through the words of those who lived there or had family members who did. Through their letters and petitions, it follows the families from the events and decisions that led them to the Charleston Orphan House through the children's time spent there to, in a few cases, their later adult lives. What these accounts reveal are families struggling to maintain ties after catastrophic loss and to preserve bonds with children who no longer lived under their roofs. An intimate glimpse into the lives of the white poor in early American history, the book is moreover an illuminating look at social welfare provision in the antebellum South.

The City Creative: The Rise of Urban Placemaking in Contemporary America offers the definitive history of “placemaking,” a concept that has become central to the perceived vitality of the twenty-first century city. From William H. Whyte in the 1950s to Richard Florida in the twenty-first century, The City Creative highlights the roles of such prominent individuals and organizations as Jane Jacobs, Robert Putnam, Project for Public Spaces, and the National Endowment for the Arts in the evolution of urban placemaking. What this history ultimately illustrates is that one cannot understand the evolution of the American city throughout the past 60 years without understanding the concept of placemaking. This historical understanding of placemaking has proven successful in influencing both the language and shape of urban redevelopment policy: city officials in a myriad of urban centers have sought to build a “culture economy” through placemaking, as a means to attract and retain the “Creative Class,” a group of educated workers deemed essential for the growth of any post-industrial urban economy. Yet such an approach to both placemaking and urban redevelopment often overlooks an important demographic: the residents who already call these cities homes. By highlighting the histories of such indigenous populations, The City Creative ultimately calls for a new definition of placemaking, one that sees such sites as spaces of production and redistribution. Aided by the stunning photography of David Schalliol, this book ultimately documents and analyzes how Americans are working through economic hardship to re-imagine and re-order the urban landscape.

For decades, the history of sexuality has been a multidisciplinary project serving competing agendas. Lesbian, gay, and queer scholars have produced powerful narratives by tracing the homosexual or queer subject as continuous or discontinuous. Yet organizing historical work around categories of identity as normal or abnormal often obscures how sexual matters were known or talked about in the past. Set against the backdrop of women’s work experiences, friendships, and communities during World War I, this book draws on a substantial body of new archival material to expose the roadblocks still present in current practices and imagine new alternatives. It clarifies the ethical value and political purpose of identity history—and indeed its very capacity to give rise to innovative practices borne of sustained exchange between queer studies and critical history. The book insists on taking seriously the imperative to step outside the logic of identity to address questions as yet unasked about the modern sexual past.