Readings Response: Imagined Histories and Spaces

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.