Resources: Below are many social history titles that may help you to think about topics and readings for your PBA.
Anti-Immigrant (Nativist) Movements:
John Higham, Strangers in the Land.
David Bennett, The Party of Fear: From Nativist Movements to the New Right in American History.
Ray Allen Billington, The Protestant Crusade.
Alexander Saxton, The Indispensible Enemy: Labor and the Anti-Chinese Movement in California.
Leonard Dinnerstein, Uneasy at Home: Antisemitism and the American Jewish Experience.
David Gerber, ed., Anti-Semitism in American History.
Kenneth Jackson, The Ku Klux Klan in the City.
Social Mobility and Migration:
Stephen Thernstrom, The Other Bostonians: Poverty and Progress in the American Metropolis, 1880-1970.
Thomas Kessner, The Golden Door.: Italian and Jewish Immigrant Mobility in New York City, 1880-1915, ch. 1-3.
Joanne Meyerowitz, "Women and Migration: Autonomous Female Migrants to Chicago, 1880-1920," Journal of Urban History 13.
(1987), 147-168.
Jacqueline Jones, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow, ch. 5.
John Bodnar, Immigration and Industrialization: Ethnicity in an American Mill Town, 1870-1940.
John Bodnar, et al., Lives of Their Own: Blacks, Italians, and Poles in Pittsburgh, 1900-1960.
John Bodnar, The Transplanted: A History of Immigrants in Urban America.
Clyde and Sally Griffen, Natives and Newcomers, ch. 4.
Jon Gjerle, From Peasants to Farmers: The Migration from Balestrand, Norway, to the Upper Middle West.
Elizabeth Ewen, Immigrant Women in the Land of Dollars: Life and Culture on the Lower East Side, 1890-1925.
Nicolas Lemann, The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America.
Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration.
Roger Daniels, Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life, Part 2.
Ronald Takaki, A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America, ch. 11-13.
John Higham, Strangers in the Land, ch. 7.
Urban and Ethnic Families:
Tamara Hareven, Family Time, Industrial Time.
Christopher Lasch, Haven in a Heartless World, Intro., ch. 1-3.
John Bodnar, Workers' World: Kinship, Community, and Protest in an Industrial Society, 1900-1940.
Judith Smith, Family Connections: A History of Italian and Jewish Immigrant Lives in Providence, Rhode Island, 1900-1940.
Ewa Morawska, For Bread with Butter: Life-Worlds of East Central Europeans in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.
Virginia Yans-McLaughlin, Family and Community: Italian Immigrants in Buffalo, 1880-1930.
Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives
George Sanchez, Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles,1900-1945.
Virginia E. Sanchez Korrol, From Colonia to Community: The History of Puerto Ricans in New York City.
Reproductive Control:
Janet Farrell Brodie, Contraception and Abortion in Nineteenth-Century America.
Richard W. Wertz and Dorothy C. Wertz, Lying In: A History of Childbirth in America.
James Reed, From Private Vice to Public Virtue: The Birth Control Movement in American Society.
James C. Mohr, Abortion in America.
Linda Gordon, Women's Body, Women's Right.
David M. Kennedy, Birth Control in America.
Ellen Chesler, Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America.
Rickie Solinger, Wake Up, Little Susie: Single Pregnancy
and Race Before Roe v. Wade.
Beth Bailey, Sex in the Heartland.
Lisa Duggan and Nan D. Hunter, Sex Wars: Sexual Dissent and Political Culture.
Faye D. Ginsburg, Contested Lives: The Abortion Debate in an American Community.
Janice M. Irvine, Talk About Sex: The Battles Over Sex Education in the United States.
Jeffrey P. Moran, Teaching Sex: The Shaping of Adolescence in the 20th Century.
Jonathan Elg, The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution.
Elaine Tyler May, America and the Pill: A History of Promise, Peril and Liberation.
Linda Gordon, The Moral Property of Women: A History of Birth Control Politics in America.
Same Sex Intimacy and Sexuality:
Carroll Smith Rosenberg, " Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations Between Women in Nineteenth Century America," Signs 1(1975), 1-29.
Anthony Rotundo, American Manhood, ch. 4.
George Chauncey, Gay New York.
George Chauncey, Jr., "Christian Brotherhood or Sexual Perversion? Homosexual Identities and the Construction of Sexual Boundaries in the World War One Era." Journal of Social History 19 (1985), 189-211.
John D'Emilio, "Capitalism and Gay Identity," in Snitnow, Stansell, and Thompson, eds., Powers of Desire, pp. 100-113.
Lillian Faderman, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers.
Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy and Madeline D. Davis, Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community.
Blanche Wiesen Cook, "The Historical Denial of Lesbianism," Radical History Review 20 (1979), 60-65.
Martin Duberman, About Time: Exploring the Gay Past.
Jonathan Katz, ed., Gay American History.
Kathy Peiss and Christina Simmons, eds., Passion and Power: Sexuality in History, ch. 6, 12.
Marc Stein, City of Sisterly and Brotherly Loves: Lesbian and Gay.
Joanne Meyerowitz, How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality.
Illicit Sexuality and Sex Reformers:
Timothy Gilfoyle, City of Eros: New York City, Prostitution, and the Commercialization of Sex, 1790-1920.
Ruth Rosen, Lost Sisterhood: Prostitution in America, 1900-1918.
Mary E. Odem, Delinquent Daughters: Protecting and policing Adolescent Female Sexuality in the United States, 1885-1920.
Ruth M. Alexander, The "Girl Problem": Female Sexual Delinquency in New York, 1900-1930. Historical Review 100 (1995), 1465-87.
Jayme Solokow, Eros and Modernization: Sylvester Graham, Health Reform, and the Origins of Victorian Sexuality in America.
Ronald Walters, ed., Primers for Prudery: Sexual Advice to Victorian Americans.
Marjorie Garber, Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety.
Race and Sex:
Kevin Mumford, Interzones: Black/White Sex Districts in Chicago and New York in the Early Twentieth Century.
Martha Hodes, ed., Sex, Love, and Race: Crossing Boundaries in North American History, selected essays.
Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, "'The Mind That Burns in Each Body': Women, Rape, and Racial Violence," in Ann Snitow, Christine Stansell, and Sharon Thompson, eds, Powers of Desire.
James Goodman, Stories of Scottsboro.
Marriage and Divorce:
William O'Neill, Divorce in the Progressive Era.
Elaine Tyler May, Great Expectations: Marriage and Divorce in Post-Victorian America.
Robert Griswold, Fatherhood in America.
John Demos, Past, Present, and Personal.
Joseph Kett, Rites of Passage: Adolescence in America, 1790 to the Present.
Steven Mintz, A Prison of Expectations: The Family in Victorian Culture.
Miriam Formanek-Brunell, Made to Play House: Dolls and the Commercialization of American Girlhood, 1830-1930.
Stephanie Coontz, Marriage, A History.
Women & Public Space:
Mary Ryan, Civic Wars.
Glenna Matthews, The Rise of the Public Woman: Woman's Power and Woman's Place in the United States, 1630-1970.
Paula Baker, The Moral Frameworks of Public Life: Gender, Politics and the State in Rural New York, 1870-1930. History 82 (1995), 494-521.
Sara Evans, Born for Liberty.
Ellen Carol Dubois, Woman Suffrage and Women’s Rights.
Turn-of-the-Century "Crisis" in Masculinity:
Kevin J. Mumford, "'Lost Manhood' Found: Male Sexual Impotence and Victorian Culture in the United States." Journal of the History of Sexuality 3 (1992).
John D'Emilio and Estelle Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America, pp. 222-325.
Gail Bederman, Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917.
Gail Bederman, "'The Women Have Had Charge of the Church Work Long Enough': The Men and Religion Forward Movement of 1911-1912 and the Masculinization of Middle-Class Protestantism," American Quarterly 41 (September 1989), 432-65.
Kristin Hoganson, Fighting for American Manhood.
Joe L. Dubbert, "Progressivism and the Masculinity Crisis," in Elizabeth H. Pleck and Joseph H. Pleck, eds., The American Man.
Peter Filene, Him/Her/Self: Sex Roles in Modern America.
Jeffrey P. Hantover, "The Boy Scouts and the Validation of Masculinity," in Elizabeth H. Pleck and Joseph H. Pleck, eds., The American Man.
David I. MacLeod, Building Character in the American Boy: The Boy Scouts, YMCA, and Their Forerunners.
Theodore Roosevelt, The Strenuous Life.
Worker Control - Workers' Lives:
Lizabeth Cohen, Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-39.
Kathy Peiss, Cheap Amusements, ch. 2-3.
James R. Green, The World of the Worker: Labor in Twentieth-Century America.
Roy Rosenzweig, Eight Hours for What We Will: Workers and Leisure in an Industrial City, 1870-1920.
David Montgomery, Workers Control in America.
Eric Arnesen, Waterfront Workers of New Orleans: Race, Class, and Politics, 1863-1923.
Dana Frank, Purchasing Power: Consumer Organizing, Gender, and the Seattle Labor Movement, 1919-1929.
John Bodnar, Workers' World: Kinship, Community, and Protest in an Industrial Society, 1900-1940.
Steven Ross, Workers on the Edge.
Susan A. Glenn, Daughters of the Shtetl: Life & Labor in the Immigrant Generation.
Women and Labor.
Alice Kessler-Harris, Out to Work: A History of Wage-Earning Women in the United States.
Ruth Milkman, ed., Women, Work, and Protest: A Century of U.S. Women's Labor History.
Ava Baron, ed., Work Engendered.
Dorothy Sue Cobble, Dishing It Out: Waitresses and Their Unions in the Twentieth Century.
Ruth Milkman, Gender at Work: The Dynamics of Job Segregation by Sex during World War II.
Vicki Ruiz, Cannery Women, Cannery Lives: Mexican Women, Unionization, and the California Food Processing Industry, 1930-1950.
Labor Radicalism:
Nick Salvatore, Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist.
James R. Green, Grass-Roots Socialism: Radical Movements in the Southwest, 1895-1943.
Candace Falk, Love, Anarchy, and Emma Goldman.
Mari Jo Buhle, Women and American Socialism.
John Laslett, Labor and the Left.
John Laslett, ed., Failure of a Dream?: Essays in the History of American Socialism.
Unions.
Melvyn Dubofsky, Industrialism and the American Worker, 1865-1920.
Marjorie Murphy, Blackboard Unions.
Patricia Cooper, Once a Cigar Maker : Men, Women, and Work Culture in American Cigar Factories, 1900-1919.
David Brody, Steelworkers in America.
Consumer Society -- Work and Gender:
Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America.
Lary May, The Big Tomorrow: Hollywood and the Politics of the American Way.
Susan Porter Benson, Counter Cultures: Saleswomen, Managers, and Customers in American Department Stores.
Kathy Peiss, Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York.
Kathy Peiss, "Commercial Leisure and the 'Woman Question'," in Richard Butsch, ed., For Fun and Profit: The Transformation of Leisure into Consumption, 105-117.
William R. Leach, "Transformations in the Culture of Consumption: Women and Department Stores, 1890-1925," Journal of American History 71 (Sept. 1984), 319-342.
Andrew Heinze, Adapting to Abundance, esp., Introduction & ch. 2 & 8.
William Leach, Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture.
Susan Strasser, Satisfaction Guaranteed: The Making of the American Mass Market.
Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920-1940.
Mark
Alfino, John S. Caputo, and Robin Wynyard, eds., McDonaldization Revisited: Critical Essays on Consumer Culture.
Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America.
William Kowinski, The Malling of America: An Inside Look at the Great Consumer Paradise.
Popular Culture and Entertainment (1890-1940):
Lewis Erenberg, Steppin' Out: New York Nightlife and the Transformation of American Culture, 1890-1930.
Lary May, Screening Out the Past: The Birth of Mass Culture and the Motion Picture Industry.
Robert W. Snyder, The Voice of the City: Vaudeville and Popular Culture in New York.
Paula Fass, The Damned and The Beautiful: American Youth in the 1920’s, part II.
Kathy Ogren, The Jazz Revolution: Twenties America and the Meaning of Jazz.
Susan Smulyan, Selling Radio: The Commercialization of American Broadcasting, 1920-1934.
Nathan Irvin Huggins, Harlem Renaissance, 1, 4, 5 and 6.
Jim Cullen, The Art of Democracy: A Concise History of Popular Culture in the United States.
Lawrence Levine, The Unpredictable Past: Explorations in American Cultural History.
Sports:
Elliott Gorn, The Manly Art: Bare-Knuckle Prize Fighting in America.
Steven A. Riess, City Games: The Evolution of American Urban Society and the Rise of Sports.
Susan Cahn, Coming on Strong: Gender and Sexuality in 20th Century Women's Sport.
Peter Levine, Ellis Island to Ebbets Field: Sport and the American Jewish Experience.
Social History of Habits, Vices and Social Behavior:
John C. Burnham, Bad Habits: Smoking, Taking, Drugs, Gambling, Sexual Misbehavior and Swearing in American History.
Claude S. Fischer, America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940.
Harvey Levenstein, Paradox of Plenty: A Social History of Eating in Modern America.
Race Conflict During the War:
Karen Anderson, "Last Hired, First Fired: Black Women Workers During World War Two," Journal of American History 69 (1982),82-97.
Robin D.G. Kelley, Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class, ch. 7.
Robin D.G. Kelley, "'We Are Not What We Seem': Re-thinking Black Working Class Opposition in the Jim Crow South," Journal of American History 80 (1993), 75-112.
Karen Anderson, "Last Hired, First Fired: Black Women Workers During World War Two," Journal of American History 69 (1982), 82-97.
Harvard Sitkoff, "Racial Militancy and Interracial Violence in the Second World War," Journal of American History 58 (1971), 661- 81.
Daniel M. Johnson, Black Migration in America: A Social Demographic History.
Michi Weglyn, Years of Infamy: The Untold Story of America's Concentration Camps.
John Tateishi, And Justice For All : An Oral History of the Japanese American
Detention Camps.
Ronald Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans, ch. 10.
Gender and Family at Mid-Twentieth Century America:
Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound.
Joanne Meyerowitz, Joanne, ed., Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America, 1945-1960.
Sherna Gluck, ed., Rosie the Riveter Revisited: Women, the War, and Social Change.
Ruth Milkman, Gender at Work: The Dynamics of Job Segregation by Sex during World War II.
Karen Anderson, Wartime Women: Sex Roles, Family Relations, and the Status of Women During World War II.
Wini Breines, Young, White, and Miserable: Growing Up Female in the Fifties.
Suburbanization:
Kenneth Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States.
Herbert J. Gans, The Levittowners.
Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit.
Andrew Weise, Places of their Own: Black Suburbanization in America.
Samuel Zipp, Manhattan Projects: The Rise and Fall of Urban Renewal in Cold War.
Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside: Suburban Sprawl and the Rise of American Environmentalism.
Social History of the Civil Rights Movement:
Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-1963.
Clayborne Carson, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s.
Harvard Sitkoff, The Struggle for Black Equality, 1954-1980.
Aldon D. Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement.
Robert Weisbrot, Freedom Bound.
Richard Kluger, Simple Justice.
Vicki Crawford, Jacqueline Anne Rouse, and Barbara Woods, Women in the Civil Rights Movement: Trailblazers & Torchbearers, 1941-1965.
Todd Gitlin, The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage.
J. Anthony Lukas, Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families.
Charles M. Payne, I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle.
Social History of the Women’s Movement:
Robin Morgan, ed., Sisterhood is Powerful: An Anthology
of Writings From the Women's Liberation Movement.
Jane Sherron DeHart and Donald Mathews, Sex, Gender
and the Politics of the ERA.
Alice Echols, Daring to be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967-1975.
Sara Evans, Personal Politics: The Roots of Women's Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left.
Alice KesslerHarris,In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men, and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in 20th Century America
Amy Swerdlow, Women Strike for Peace: Traditional Motherhood and Radical Politics in the 1960s
Estelle B. Freedman, No Turning Back: A History of Feminism in America.
Popular Culture and Entertainment (1940-Present):
Jim Cullen, The Art of Democracy: A Concise History of Popular Culture in the United States.
George Lipsitz, Time Passages.
George Lipsitz, Dangerous Crossroads.
Eric Barnouw, Tube of Plenty: The Evolution of American Television.
David Marc, Demographic Vistas: Television and American Culture.
Ella Taylor, Prime-Time Families: Television Culture in Postwar America.
Peter Guralnick, Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley.
David Szatmary, A Time to Rock: A Social History of Rock-and-Roll.
Paul Friedlander, Rock and Roll: A Social History.
Nelson George, The Death of Rhythm and Blues.
Nelson George, Hip Hop America.
Tricia Rose, Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America.
Social History of the Conservative Ascendancy:
Godfrey Hodgson, The World Turned Right Side Up: A History of the Conservative Ascendancy in America.
Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right.
Kim Philips‐Fein, Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement from the New Deal to Reagan.
Bethany Moreton, For God andWal‐Mart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise.
Kevin Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism.
Matt Lassiter, The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South.
Thomas and Mary Edsall, Chain Reaction: The Impact of Race, Rights, and Taxes on
American Politics.