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In 1935, the United States Congress began employing large numbers
of American artists through the Works Progress
Administration-fiction writers, dramatists, photographers, poster
artists, painters, sculptors, muralists, wood carvers, composers
and choreographers, as well as journalists, historians and
researchers. Secretary of Commerce and supervisor of the WPA Harry
Hopkins hailed it a ""renascence of the arts, if we can call it a
rebirth when it has no precedent in our history."" Women were
eminently involved, creating a wide variety of art and craft,
interweaving their own stories with those of other women whose
lives might not otherwise have been the subject of artistic
attention. This book takes a look at the thousands of women artists
who worked for the U.S. government, the historical and social
worlds they described and the collaborative depiction of womanhood
they created at a pivotal moment in American history.
Winifred Black worked in journalism from 1888 to 1936, often
writing under the pseudonym Annie Laurie. Her work appeared in the
Hearst papers - especially the San Francisco Examiner - and in
fifty additional newspapers weekly through syndication. Black wrote
10,000 short pieces, as well as three books, a nonfiction oeuvre
that combined quasi-autobiographical details with characters and
scenes to provide cultural analysis for a nationwide audience. She
wrote about the realities facing modern women - their work, their
marriages and divorces, the violence they endured, their need for
independence. Contemporary praise for Black named her ""the world's
most famous feature writer"" and ""one of the world's most
successful reporters,"" while her critics affixed the pejorative
labels ""stunt girl"" and ""sob sister."" This study covers her
influential career and gives the first serious attention to her
journalism and nonfiction.
In the years from 1880 to 1940, considered the glory days of the
American circus, between a third and a half of the cast members
were women, a large group of very visible American workers whose
story has never been told. In this book, drawing on diverse sources
such as diaries, autobiographies, newspaper accounts, films,
posters, and route books, the authors first consider the popular
media's presentation of these performers as unnatural and
scandalous--as well as romantic and thrilling. The book next moves
to the stories told by circus women, which contradict and
complicate other versions of their lives. Across America in those
years an array of acts featured women, such as tableaux, freak
shows, girlie shows, tiger acts, and aerial performance, all
involving special skills and means of communication with an
audience. By beginning with representations of women as circus
performers and then moving to the performances themselves, this
book offers a unique and fascinating view of what it meant to be an
American woman at work.
Past biographies, histories, and government documents have ignored
Alice Paul's contribution to the women's suffrage movement, but
this groundbreaking study scrupulously fills the gap in the
historical record. Masterfully framed by an analysis of Paul's
non-violent and visual rhetorical strategies, Alice Paul and the
American Suffrage Campaign narrates the remarkable story of the
first person to picket the White House, the first to attempt a
national political boycott, the first to burn the president in
effigy, and the first to lead a successful campaign of
non-violence. Katherine H. Adams and Michael L. Keene also
chronicle other dramatic techniques that Paul deftly used to gain
publicity for the suffrage movement. Stunningly woven into the
narrative are accounts of many instances in which women were in
physical danger. Rather than avoid discussion of Paul's
imprisonment, hunger strikes, and forced feeding, the authors
divulge the strategies she employed in her campaign. Paul's
controversial approach, the authors assert, was essential in
changing American attitudes toward women's suffrage.
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Come Boldly
C. S. Lewis
Hardcover
R610
R195
Discovery Miles 1 950
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