Wonder House

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Onion
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Science Education ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Children's Museum

The Brooklyn Children’s Museum, the first children’s museum in the country, aimed its offerings at middle-class children who they saw as independent strivers. In discussing the types of science education available at their museum, the educators who ran the Brooklyn Children’s Museum showed how science education for boys in the early twentieth century was pitched at a higher level than the equivalent offerings for girls.

Flower Empowerment

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy Stalker
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Gender Norms ◽  
Japanese Women ◽  
Educational Reforms ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Job Opportunities ◽  
Paid Labor ◽  
Upper Middle Class

Ikebana, the art of Japanese flower arranging, was first systematized in the fifteenth century, when it was limited to elite male practitioners. It was first widely practiced by women in the early twentieth century, but did not reach mass popularity until the 1950s and 1960s, with an estimated ten million students, over 99 percent of whom were female. While it was still considered by many to be a domestic skill for upper-middle-class housewives, it increasingly offered employment for postwar Japanese women as teachers and even as headmasters (iemoto) of their own schools, allowing women to engage in paid labor without violating traditional gender norms. This chapter traces the trajectory of job opportunities for women in ikebana, examining how educational reforms in the Meiji and postwar periods provided chances to study and obtain teaching licenses in ikebana and how the three largest schools—Ikenobo, Ohara, and Sogetsu—increasingly professionalized their corps of teachers.

Not a Fanatic

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Wuthnow
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Self Control ◽  
American Religion ◽  
Religious Leaders ◽  
Popular Press ◽  
Public Officials ◽  
Early Twentieth Century

One of the more difficult aspects of middle-class respectability has been getting it right when it comes to displays of emotion—too little and a person seems stoical, indifferent, cold; too much and a person is likely to be accused of wearing their feelings on their sleeve, incapable of self-control, being dangerous, overzealous, a fanatic. Religion is a particularly interesting context in which to consider the display of emotion. This chapter examines how accusations of zealotry populated nineteenth- and early twentieth-century discussions of American religion. Zealotry was a contested idea that religious leaders, public officials, scholars, and the popular press discussed repeatedly. It was good, many commentators argued, for Americans to be zealous. But it was not good to be labeled a zealot. Zealots were led too much by their emotions. They were easily confused, frequently irrational, and sometimes dangerous.

scholarly journals Nonconformity and socialism: the case of J. G. Greenhough, 1880–1914

2019 ◽  
Vol 92 (258) ◽  
pp. 771-789 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liam Ryan
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Alternative Interpretation ◽  
Religious Culture ◽  
Liberal Party ◽  
Labour Movement ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Self Interest

Abstract This article examines the life, thought and activism of the prominent Baptist minister John Gershom Greenhough. Existing scholarly and popular narratives generally focus on the key role played by Nonconformity in nurturing the labour movement in late Victorian and Edwardian Britain. Using Greenhough as a case study this article posits an alternative interpretation of this relationship, contending that the individualistic religious culture of Nonconformity was often deeply hostile to socialism. This hostility motivated Greenhough, and others like him, to abandon their historical allegiance to the Liberal party in the early twentieth century in favour of the Conservatives. More broadly, this article investigates the process of political and ideological conversion and challenges dominant historical readings that characterize anti-socialism as being synonymous with middle-class economic self-interest.

‘What is a Beautiful Body?’

2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 192-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
Murat C. Yıldız
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Leisure Activities ◽  
Young Men ◽  
The Self ◽  
Male Body ◽  
Sports Clubs ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The Press ◽  
Late Nineteenth

This article examines the emergence and spread of the ‘sportsman’ genre of Ottoman photography in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century Istanbul. The ‘sportsman photograph’ depicted young men posing shirtless or wearing tight-fitting athletic attire, flexing their muscles and exhibiting their bodies. These images were embedded in a wider set of athletic and leisure activities and constituted novel social and photographic practices. By tracing the deployment of ‘sportsman’ photographs in sports clubs and the press, I argue that they cemented homosocial bonds, normalized and popularized new notions of masculinity, confessionalized the male body and reconfigured the ways in which Ottoman Muslims, Christians and Jews performed and conveyed their commitment to middle-class notions of masculinity and the self.

Wives, Wages, and Regulating Breadwinners

2020 ◽  
pp. 71-95
Author(s):  
Nimisha Barton
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Great War ◽  
Marital Discord ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Male Breadwinner ◽  
The Great War ◽  
Foreign Wives

This chapter cites Yolanda Foldes's 1937 novel about a Hungarian family in interwar Paris, in which the character Klari Barabas stumbles into the middle of a lovers' quarrel involving Greek Christos and his French wife. It analyses the misfortunes of fictional Christos and his French wife, which suggest men's work, missing wages, and marital discord that were intertwined in the mixed and immigrant working-class households sprouting up throughout France after the Great War. It also discusses the twin middle-class ideals of the male breadwinner and the femme au foyer that governed early twentieth century economic and social life. The chapter recounts how marriage became the most reliable legal means of securing access to a male breadwinner and his wages by the early twentieth century, especially in the event of the union's demise. It talks about alimentary pensions that were paid regularly by estranged husbands and were enforced by officials at the behest of French and foreign wives themselves.

Women's Voices, Men's Lives: Masculinity in a North Indian Urdu newspaper

2016 ◽  
Vol 50 (5) ◽  
pp. 1441-1473 ◽  
Author(s):  
MEGAN EATON ROBB
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Gender Roles ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
North India ◽  
Class Identity ◽  
Women Warriors ◽  
Women's Voices ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Literary Journals

AbstractLiterary journals and newspapers aiming to reform the religious beliefs and domestic habits of women were common in early twentieth-century North India. Although most readings have focused on how these texts reflected male legislation of women's behaviour, we should look at Muslim reformist literature to understand male experiences; this investigation offers new insights into an emergent middle-class identity defined more by manners than birth. Readings of a previously little-researched Urdu newspaper, Madinah, and its women's section offer new insights on male experiences of reformism, characterized by profound ambivalence. Playfulness emerged in some reformist descriptions of women's voices, channelling the influence of rekhti. Ultimately Madinah cultivated pride in Islam's strict division of gender roles and conversely threatened men with shame for failing to regulate uneducated women. Descriptions of powerful, Ottoman women warriors were framed to incite men to acts of bravery, using reports from Europe as cautionary examples of the over-indulgence of women. While the newspaper offered outlets for men to express curiosity about women's experiences, ultimately reformist literature limited expressions of pleasure. Male ambivalence regarding the implications of the reformist project remained embedded in writing about women.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document