Literature of the American Civil War
What literature was published and read during the Civil War? How did literature help make sense of the war and the profound changes it brought to the nation?
US History
Home Front: The Visual Culture of the Civil War North
How did images shape the meaning of the war for people at home and the meaning of the home during wartime?
The Jungle and the Community: Workers and Reformers in Turn-of-the-Century Chicago
What did it mean to live in the neighborhood of the Union Stock Yard around 1900? How does Upton Sinclair’s representation of this community in The Jungle compare to the accounts of sociologists and reformers?
Mapping Chicago and the Midwest, 1688–1906
How do maps tell the early history of Chicago and the Midwest? How have maps been used by different empires and nations to secure control of the region?
Maps and the Beginnings of Colonial North America
What can maps tell us about how people from different times, places, and cultures make sense of their world? How did maps and mapmaking influence the development of colonial North America?
Raising Support for World War I
World War I in U.S. Popular Culture
How did popular publications in the United States respond to World War I? How did artists, writers, publishers, and advertisers work to promote the war effort? What criticisms of the war did dissenting artists make?
Reading Visual Images: The First World War
Representing the American Revolution, 1768–1893
How did people interpret the events of the American Revolution in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries? How did the meaning of the Revolution change over time? In what ways has the Revolution meant different things to different people at any given time?
Imagining the American West in the Late Nineteenth Century
How has the West been imagined as both America’s manifest destiny and a wild frontier? In what ways do American Indian art and literature challenge these popular narratives of the West?
Immigration and Citizenship in the United States, 1865-1924
What role has immigration played in the formation of America’s national identity and ideals? How have Americans understood and debated the social effects of immigration? How have immigrants portrayed their experiences and contributed to these debates themselves?
Women on the Move: Gender and Mobility in American Culture, 1890–1950
What are the relationships between social mobility and spatial mobility in American culture? In what ways do we associate movement—the ability to go anywhere and be anyone—with freedom? How do these relationships change when women are the ones on the move?