Coming Fall 2014

Sarah Forbes Bonetta Davies

I just hung fliers around campus and tenHoor Hall for this course. I will teach it for the second time next semester. One of the fliers features a photograph of Sarah Forbes Bonetta Davies, a woman of West African royal ancestry who was reportedly orphaned in 1848 when her parents were killed in a massacre. Two years later, the king of Dahomey presented her as a "gift" to Queen Victoria. After becoming the queen's goddaughter, Davies apparently spent the rest of her life between her home in England and Africa until her death in 1880. 

I was struck by Davies' elegant hairdo in this photograph. It made me think of one of the historical actors the students will learn about in this course:  Eliza Potter, a hairdresser of mixed race.  A native of New York, Potter, too, traveled to Europe, working as a nursemaid and later as a hairdresser for wealthy people on both sides of the Atlantic. All this as she eventually  owned a home with her "own fig tree," as she put it, in Cincinnati. Through studying Potter's life, the students will learn how gender, race and class figure into an increasingly urban America. The growth of cities begins in earnest in the early nineteenth century. By 1920, more Americans lived in cities than the countryside.

I also used an image depicting the cover of Bloomingdale's 1886 catalog on a flier because this course will also address, as Gunther Barth has written, how by the late nineteenth century, department stores helped define city life in the United States. So did other things including, believe it or not, baseball, a sport played by New York businessmen during this century.

I am still pondering how this course will incorporate architecture into the curriculum. Last fall, the students in this course became "experts" on Tuscaloosa buildings that were built in the nineteenth century. Their efforts culminated in a short film. I am wondering if we might try something different, perhaps a music video. We shall see. 

Finally, I am also wondering about the best way to highlight the specific experiences of men of color as I am now reminded of the "watermen" who spent time in port cities on the Eastern Seaboard and inland. What new things can their experiences teach us about how nature, or specifically, how waterways figure into America's growing urban economy? I may turn again to David Cecelski's study on this issue (students taking my Black Urban Culture course this spring read an excerpt from his book). In the meantime, I look forward to teaching this class next fall. The class will meet 3 to 5:30 pm every Wednesday.