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.

Emerging urban life seen in Birmingham hotel

As I prepare for the fall semester, I am already thinking about possible field trips for this course. We have focused twice on how Tuscaloosa fits into the story of emerging urban life in America. Perhaps we will travel to Birmingham and discover how that city figures into the same narrative. One place to visit, if we do as much, is the Hampton Inn's Tutwiler Hotel, which was built in 1910 as a nine-story fancy apartment house. 

Below are photos I took at this hotel, which pays homage to Birmingham's historic past well into the 20th century.While the Civil Rights movement is often the narrative to which we return to make discoveries about Birmingham, perhaps it will be worthwhile to also think about a longer narrative that includes human rights issues alongside additional topics, among them gender, culture, housing, industrialization and architecture.

slideshow of images from "Druid City: A Music Video" Premiere at Jemison Mansion

Here's a slideshow of photos from our December 3, 2014 premiere of "Druid City: A Music Video" featuring the music of local band Bible Study. Special thanks to Courtnee "Voni" Cook, a student enrolled in "The Nineteenth Century City" during the Fall 2014, for sharing these photos with us.

A Look at Tuscaloosa's Past with Katherine Richter

I am now prepping for the Spring 2015 semester while also resting. As promised, however, here are images from my recent visit to the Tuscaloosa County Preservation Society's  office in the basement of Jemison Mansion in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. There, Katherine Richter, Executive Director of the society, was kind enough to share some of the many archival documents in this building with me. I look forward to incorporating some of them into my teaching in the year ahead.

three days until the music video premiere

Still of clock in downtown Tuscaloosa

Still of student Rae Mann in Edelweiss, a local coffee shop.

Now that we've won the Iron Bowl against Auburn, we can turn toward completing the rest of the school year in fine fashion. The "world premiere" of the students' music video is just three days away.   It features not only the video itself, but a documentary of the students "discovering" the nineteenth century city in Tuscaloosa. Here are two still photographs from the project, which runs about 13 minutes.

The premiere happens 5:30-6:30 pm this Wednesday, December 3, at Jemison Mansion, 1305 Greensboro Avenue in Tuscaloosa. Dr. Robert Mellown, Associate Professor Emeritus of Art History at the University of Alabama, will be our guest speaker. There will be a silent auction of the students'  photography and refreshments.

Tim Higgins and Emily Dozier-Ewell, two members of the band Bible Study (whose music is featured in the video), will be present. Kori Hensell, composer of "Druid City," the song around which the video and documentary are deployed, will be there in spirit as she is now in Fairbanks, Alaska, pursuing an MFA. Talk about tensions between the frontier and the city!

Meanwhile, the students should also be studying for their final exam, which will take place December 9. Until then, Roll Tide!

the poster for our December 3 Music Video "World Premiere"

I was so happy to learn that the students are okay with using the above image by Caleb McCants, a student in the class, for the poster promoting our music video (the Faculty Resource Center's design staff did an amazing job on this). They all took terrific photographs unveiling the tensions between America's (and Tuscaloosa's) urban and rural past and present. Some of those images will be displayed December 3 at Jemison Mansion during a small reception before the video launch. Again, we thank Ian Crawford at Jemison for this opportunity. And of course, we thank Bible Study, a local band, for allowing us to visually interpret their wonderful tune "Druid City."

Jasmine Wells, a Public Relations major at UA (and the person unknowingly featured in the photo which was taken during our recent downtown tour and creates room to push our thinking about the "public feminine" as defined by Gunther Barth and others), is helping with publicity. She even made a Facebook page. Ben Smith, who works in technology for the Athletic Department, has threatened to remaster my edited video. I welcome his skills.

On other fronts, yesterday we discussed Clarence King and Ada Copeland's relationship in New York City during the Gilded Age as presented in Martha Sandweiss' study. We pondered black-white interactions in and outside of the urban space by watching a good part of Muscle Shoals, a documentary highlighting the white musicians who played behind many African American singers in the 1960s and early 1970s. Next week, we will continue this conversation by bringing the urban space into fuller view although in the context of Dublin, Ireland, via the 1991 Alan Parker film The Commitments.

I am vigilant about historicizing black-white encounters and pushing the students to do the same. What happened in 19th century New York that couldn't or could happen in 1960s rural Alabama or 1980s Dublin (or 1863 New York for that matter) when it comes to how black and white bodies come together - and part?

Finally, I just received the best news. Dr. Robert Mellown, a recently retired, but ever-busy UA Professor of Art History will be our guest speaker at the Dec. 3 music video launch at Jemison Mansion. We are truly honored to hear him discuss his efforts to aid the restoration of local structures including Jemison and Bryce Hospital. He will sign copies of The University of Alabama: A Guide to the Campus and Its Architecture (University of Alabama Press, 2013) at this event.

on the issue of complexity and continuity in a Mississippi Delta town

The Clark House, Clarksdale, MS

Bill Howell, Clark House innkeeper

The original entrance of the Clark House.

After leaving Oxford, Mississippi, where I presented a paper at the University of Mississippi William Faulkner & Yoknaptawpha Conference, my husband and I traveled to Clarksdale, MS. During our visit, a dear friend pointed out a 19th century structure that seemed fitting for this blog. Again, I am deeply interested in encouraging students enrolled in this class (or thinking about enrolling in this class this fall) to always be on the look-out for how the nineteenth century urban space is still with us just as I did last year with another group of students. As I said - quoting Faulkner - during  my presentation on antebellum black-white intimacies this past Monday at the Oxford conference, "the past is never dead. It is not even past." Sure enough, I was soon standing in front of The Clark House in Clarksdale. John Clark, a native of England and founder of this town, began construction on this home, which is now a bed and breakfast, in 1859.  He had to suspend construction because he was relying on Northern workers rather than enslaved labor. Indeed, when the Civil War began, those workers departed. The complexities of his politics seemed interesting and made me want to learn more about him.

I learned that Clark had earlier done well as a local landholder and lumberman, benefitting from many things including his ties to James Lusk Alcorn, the governor of Mississippi, who was his brother-in-law, but also a coming railroad that eventually contributed to Clarksdale's initial growth when it was incorporated in 1882. As my husband and I walked around the downtown area we guessed that this city's initial hey-day was likely in the late nineteenth century before the boll-weevil arrived in the 1920s (that critter, the mechanization of the cotton industry as well as the "long freedom" - or Civil Rights -movement, contributed to many changes throughout the south).

The heartbeat of Clarksdale these days is doubtless Ground Zero, a blues nightclub that draws tourists from around the world.  In recent years, this institution figures into numerous signs of the uphill battle that Clarksdale and other towns and cities in this country face in their attempts to jumpstart new growth. Yazoo Pass, a local coffee house that is an easy walk from this nightclub, is another one of the positive signals. In it, blacks and whites work behind the counter, something that would have been unheard of during the nineteenth century through the 1940s when my maternal relatives, many of them sharecroppers, lived near this Mississippi Delta town.

Modern irrigation systems reduce the risk of drought in the Delta.

Bill Howell, the innkeeper, used a word to which I often turn - complexity - when he began to share some the Clark House's history. As we talked, Howell, a self-described bohemian who also runs a pedicab business, also used the word "continuity" to refer to southern history, the idea being this: there is continuity in the South's complexities. My own research on nineteenth century black-white intimacy reveals as much.  I nodded as he spoke because I believe there is both complexity and continuity in narratives concerning sorrow and triumph across the class and color line in the South. I think, too, about the Choctaw and Chickasaw Indians that resided in the fertile Delta before white settlement. I look forward to discussions about these words and the many aspects of emerging urban life in the United States in just four weeks. Yes, school starts on August 20. 

By the way, a mansion next door to the Clark House is on the original site of the Clark mansion. This mansion is named for J.W. Cutrer and his wife, Blanche. Blanche was Clark's daughter and the inspiration behind the Blanche du Bois character in the 1947 Tennessee Williams play A Streetcar Called Desire, which was made into a film in 1951.

Tuscaloosa, The Nineteenth Century City, a short film

We presented our short film, "Tuscaloosa, The Nineteenth Century City" today. Katherine Richter, Executive Director of the Tuscaloosa County Preservation Society and University of Alabama graduate, spoke after the film was shown. You may see the entire short here. Enjoy.

finally...the movie poster

It arrived today from the university's printing department. Yay!

Coming soon...

HY 300

Fall 2013

Wednesdays, 3:30-6 pm

University of Alabama

"In an atmosphere of expanding personal freedom and individual opportunity, nineteenth century cities severed the old ties of men and women with the countryside, setting them adrift in a maelstrom of people radically different from themselves."

Gunther Barth, City People

Lower East Side, circa 1890