Wednesday, November 18, 2015
student photography offered in a charity silent auction at Dec. 2 event
Get a sneak peek at student photography that will be presented at the December 2 event addressing the experiences of young women and education in an urbanizing America. The photography is part of a silent auction. Proceeds benefit Jemison Mansion and the Tuscaloosa County Preservation Society.
Some background: students enrolled in "The Nineteenth Century City," a History course at the University of Alabama, were charged with exploring the ways in which young women pursuing an education figured into an urbanizing world. Throughout the semester, they visited several sites in Tuscaloosa to see buildings, among them Gorgas House, the Drish House, Jemison Mansion, the L & N Railroad Station, the Old Tavern, the Alabama Museum of Natural History, the ruins of the the former Alabama State Capitol building and later, a "female" academy, and other places, among them the Black Warrior River. These sites and others permit us to witness how the "nineteenth century city" is still with us as seen in advancements in technology that made it possible for people, raw materials and products to get from Point A to Point B, but also in how an increasingly wealthy country and global market provided ways for some individuals to participate in leisure activities that also reflected rising industry. The arrival of department stores and professionalization of baseball by the late 19th century serve as examples. The photos represent this query.
To see the photos in person, visit UA's Gorgas House 4-5:30 pm December 2, 2015. Our guest speaker is Birmingham Southern University Associate Professor of History Victora Ott. Her talk is titled "A Safe Place to Hide?: The Role of Female Academies in the Confederate South."
There will also be a poster display unveiling primary sources the students studied as well as a chronological history of local colleges that young women attended, among them Sims Female Academy, Alabama Female Academy, Alabama Female Athenaeum, Tuskaloosa Female College, Alabama Central Female College, Hills Female College and UA, which opened its doors to women in 1893.
Wednesday, November 11, 2015
Young Women in Higher Education Exhibit 4-5:30pm Dec. 2
Reprinted from my active learner blog Catalogue:
The end of the semester is quickly approaching. The students enrolled my "The Nineteenth Century City" course have completed the work for our December 2 presentation. There, we will present our research on young women and education in early Alabama and an urbanizing America. Between the 1830s and 1920, cities increasingly grew in the United States owing partly to the invention of the steamboat and railroads, two technologies that helped people move through space more easily. Historian Gunther Barth has argued that within this period an urban “culture” emerged via the arrival of apartment houses, department stores, baseball, vaudeville houses, and metropolitan newspapers. In such things, as he writes, people with very different racial and ethnic backgrounds managed to find a “common humanity” and learned how to cope in congested spaces. Notably, Barth did not look to churches or institutions of higher learning for signs of an urbanizing America. This was possibly because in those two spaces he saw more homogeneous populations, or people whose backgrounds were similar. The students in this course were charged with looking for signs of an urban culture in the lives of young women who attended college during the nineteenth century or at the turn of the century, in and outside of Alabama. Certainly a female academy existed in Tuscaloosa even before the University of Alabama opened in Tuscaloosa in 1831. Some such students include Addie Lovett Findlay whose diploma is pictured here, and the coeds who lived with the family of a Bryce Hospital administrator. They are also pictured. As this exhibit hopes to demonstrate, young women in a city that still feels like a college town even today were becoming sophisticated people in the years surrounding the Civil War. The students studied several documents to learn more about such women and others in West and North Alabama. Among the documents was an 1861 letter from a Huntsville, Alabama, girl of mixed race who attended Wilberforce after being recently manumitted. Ultimately, the class saw how historians interpret the past while often relying on very little information. The result was four displays that will be presented on 4-5:30 pm at the university's Gorgas House. Use this interactive map for directions. There will also be a silent auction of photography inspired by the nineteenth century city theme taken and curated by the students. We are pleased to have Birmingham Southern University Associate Professor of History Victoria Ott as our guest speaker. Her talk is titled "A Safe Place to Hide?: The Role of Female Academies in the Confederate South."
This event is co-sponsored by the Summersell Center for the Study of the South.
The end of the semester is quickly approaching. The students enrolled my "The Nineteenth Century City" course have completed the work for our December 2 presentation. There, we will present our research on young women and education in early Alabama and an urbanizing America. Between the 1830s and 1920, cities increasingly grew in the United States owing partly to the invention of the steamboat and railroads, two technologies that helped people move through space more easily. Historian Gunther Barth has argued that within this period an urban “culture” emerged via the arrival of apartment houses, department stores, baseball, vaudeville houses, and metropolitan newspapers. In such things, as he writes, people with very different racial and ethnic backgrounds managed to find a “common humanity” and learned how to cope in congested spaces. Notably, Barth did not look to churches or institutions of higher learning for signs of an urbanizing America. This was possibly because in those two spaces he saw more homogeneous populations, or people whose backgrounds were similar. The students in this course were charged with looking for signs of an urban culture in the lives of young women who attended college during the nineteenth century or at the turn of the century, in and outside of Alabama. Certainly a female academy existed in Tuscaloosa even before the University of Alabama opened in Tuscaloosa in 1831. Some such students include Addie Lovett Findlay whose diploma is pictured here, and the coeds who lived with the family of a Bryce Hospital administrator. They are also pictured. As this exhibit hopes to demonstrate, young women in a city that still feels like a college town even today were becoming sophisticated people in the years surrounding the Civil War. The students studied several documents to learn more about such women and others in West and North Alabama. Among the documents was an 1861 letter from a Huntsville, Alabama, girl of mixed race who attended Wilberforce after being recently manumitted. Ultimately, the class saw how historians interpret the past while often relying on very little information. The result was four displays that will be presented on 4-5:30 pm at the university's Gorgas House. Use this interactive map for directions. There will also be a silent auction of photography inspired by the nineteenth century city theme taken and curated by the students. We are pleased to have Birmingham Southern University Associate Professor of History Victoria Ott as our guest speaker. Her talk is titled "A Safe Place to Hide?: The Role of Female Academies in the Confederate South."
This event is co-sponsored by the Summersell Center for the Study of the South.
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