The United States from 1877 to 1914

Missouri, circa 1874

The United States from 1877 to 1914

Marie Stopes, British birth control advocate

The United States from 1877 to 1914

The Victorian Coalition• The Women’s Christian Temperance Union

• Anti-pornography and social purity advocates

• Religious leaders• The American Medical Association

The WCTU White Ribbon Campaign

The United States from 1877 to 1914

The “Comstock” Act of 1873• “Act of the Suppression of Trade In, and Circulation of, Obscene Literature and Articles of Immoral Use”

• Prohibits sending of obscene literature through the mails

• Defines birth control information as obscene

• Comstock appointed assistant postmaster to enforce the law

Anthony Comstock

The United States from 1877 to 1914

Victoria Woodhull

• Stockbroker• Advocate of

women’s suffrage and “free love”

• First person to publish

Marx/Engels’ “Communist

Manifesto” in the United

States• Ran for

President of the United

States, 1872

The United States from 1877 to 1914

Right: Dr. Turner and graduate students at the University of Wisconsin; below: Meredith college graduates, 1903; below right: two new Ph.D.’s from the University of Chicago

The United States from 1877 to 1914

Dr. Edward Clark

• “Without denying the self-evident proposition, that whatever a women can do, she has a right to do, the question arises, what can she do?”

The United States from 1877 to 1914The 19th century body as closed system . . .

The United States from 1877 to 1914

How is your health?

• Asked by Marion Talbot of 705 U Chicago women

• 78 percent said good health

• 17 percent said bad health

• 5 percent said fair health

Marion Talbot in her later years

The United States from 1877 to 1914William Rainey Harper

President, University of Chicago

• More science; less classics

• Paid scholars more than east coast schools

• Pioneered in co-education schooling

The United States from 1877 to 1914The

Pragmatists• Encouraged experimentation and measurement rather than reliance on ideologies

• Rejected both Social Darwinism and Marxism

• People need to learn how to change their minds –John DeweyJohn Dewey

The United States from 1877 to 1914

The United States from 1877 to 1914

Pragmatism is a “future-oriented instrumentalism that tries to deploy thought as a weapon to enable more effective action.” – Cornell West

Below: DuBois’ Philadelphia Negro and Alain Locke’s The New Negro

The United States from 1877 to 1914

Lewis Terman on women’s IQ, 1917

“There is no evidence of any wider range of intelligence among boys, such as has been commonly supposed to exist . . .

“The difference, if any, seems to be in the opposite direction.”

The United States from 1877 to 1914

Jane Addams and Mary Rozet Smith

The United States from 1877 to 1914

The invention of homosexuality

• Foucault: The concept of homosexuality invented by medical profession

• Became a thing people were rather than something they did

The United States from 1877 to 1914

Oscar Wilde tried for homosexuality in 1895

For much of nineteenth century homosexuality is tolerated, but . . .

The United States from 1877 to 1914

The United States from 1877 to 1914

Steeplechase Park, New York

The United States from 1877 to 1914

Freud, Lectures on Psychoanalysis, 1909

Havelock Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex, 1907, 1910

The United States from 1877 to 1914

Max Eastman

The United States from 1877 to 1914

The Armory Show, 1913

Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase

The United States from 1877 to 1914

Margaret Sanger

Early advocate of birth control in the United States

The United States from 1877 to 1914

Emma Goldman