This weeks reading grappled with social constructions. Upton
and Weyeneth looked at race, Belk and Wallendorf, gender. Ulrich provides
necessary insight by using a particular myth about colonial New England as her
inspiration to tell history.
Dell Upton’s “White and Black Landscapes in
Eighteenth-Century Virginia,” analyzed the ways the planter class and the slave
class acquired different perceptions, perspectives, and uses of the landscape. Upton
views the landscape and an assemblage of realities that combine formal
architecture, such as the placement of planter houses in juxtaposition to slave
quarters, and daily activities, such as churchgoing and farming. The only parts
of Upton’s article where I raised my eyebrows wanting more were when he tried
to equivocate the poor white landscape with that of slaves. Despite his broad
treatment of race, Upton’s piece was about slave societies that exist on large
plantations and I would have preferred that he embraced this specificity.
Robert Weyeneth takes landscape analysis forward and looked
at the different ways that people used architectural spaces to enforce and
imagine segregation. Weyeneth’s ideas about temporal separation and malleable
partitions provide a fascinating set of challenges to the study of landscapes. The
idea that certain physical spaces are shared confronts the more conventional
stereotypes of segregated schools and bathrooms. For a public historian
interpreting a streetcar, it can be difficult to describe what happens in the
middle of the bus. However, that interpretation has far more potential to spark
visitors’ imaginations about what it must have been like to live in a
segregated society than simply knowing that blacks were at the back and whites
were in the front.
Belk and Wallendorf’s “Of Mice and Men” looked to gender
instead of race. They ask if collecting and collections are gendered. I was
intrigued by their ideas, but I am not certain I buy them. The authors showed
that individuals are likely to reflect their gender identity in the things that
they collect, an important consideration for looking at collections from
individuals. I am curious about how mission-based collecting at museums
compares with idiosyncratic collections. Something about this use of gender in
history does not sit well with me. I preferred how Ulrich adopted an imagined
conception of the past, and used gender when it was relevant.
I absolutely loved The
Age of Homespun! Ulrich’s writing contains enough storytelling to get lost
in her characters, but enough history to produce reflection. Beginning with the
1851 sermon by Horace Bushnell that coined the term “age of homespun” and
painted an idyllic vision of colonial New England, Ulrich moved her narrative
backwards to the eighteenth century and searches for the roots of the myth. In
“Willy-Nilly, Niddy-Noddy,” Ulrich looked at cross reels, or niddy-noddys. This
tool, used to create a skein and measure the amount of yarn produced, is an
important part of homespun production. Ulrich looked at the important of
homespun in reference to the non-importation movement, but also went further
and interpreted niddy-noddys as meaningful for women who claimed rights to
their own labor.
Ulrich’s “A Bed Rug and a Silk Embroidery,” compares the
textile work and diaries of two women, one from a patriot family, and one from
a royalist. Despite their politics, the most important aspects of the stories
are personal, how these women dealt with their daily struggles. Ulrich
highlighted the shifting roles of women and women’s place in the wage economy through
telling these two stories. All of these readings use history to confront social
constructions. Looking at race and gender often involves articulating our
current understandings of these ideas and trying to figure out how they have
changed. Part of why I liked the Ulrich reading so much was that she began with
the myth then strove to understand it and challenge it, all the while
acknowledging that the myth of rural New England is ingrained into American
culture.
Here is a video on how to use a niddy-noddy to make a skein:
Readings
Belk, Russell W. and Melanie Wallendorf, “Of Mice and Men:
Gender Identity and Collecting” in K. Martinez and K. Ames, eds. The
Material Culture of Gender, the Gender of Material Culture (Winterthur:
Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum , 1997): 7-26.
Ulrich,Laurel Thatcher. “Introduction: The Age of Homespun,”
“Willy-Nilly, Niddy-Noddy,” “A Bed Rug and a Silk Embroidery,” and “Afterward”
in The Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation of an American
Myth. New York: Vintage Books,
2001.
Upton, Dell. “White and Black Landscapes in
Eighteenth-Century Virginia,” in Robert Blair St. George, ed., Material Life
in America, 1600-1860. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1988.
Weyeneth, Robert. “The Architecture of Racial Segregation:
The Challenges of Preserving the Problematical Past,” The Public Historian 27
(Fall 2005): 11-44.
