Schedule of Readings

All course readings are either a Course Textbook (CT) or journal articles located on our HIS 4100 website – Readings Password Protected page (password sent via email on 1/19/2021)

W01: [1/19] Course Overview / [1/21] UWC + Zotero 101

W02: [1/26 and 1/28] What is the “Middle Class”?

  • Stearns, Peter N. “The Middle Class: Toward a Precise Definition.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 21, No. 3 (July 1979): pp. 377-396. [Link]
  • (CT) López, A. Ricardo, and Barbara Weinstein, eds. The Making of the Middle Class: Toward a Transnational History of the Middle Class. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012. Introduction. [link]
    • Staying on Pace >> Read (CT) Carassai, Sebastián. The Argentine Silent Majority: Middle Classes, Politics, Violence, and Memory in the Seventies. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014. [Introduction: pp. 1-8]

W03: [2/2 and 2/4] Cold War Politics, Modernity, and Gatekeeping

  • (CT) The Making of the Middle Class, Part 1 (pp. 29-118). Read all of Part 1. Take notes on [and be prepared to lead discussion on] three of the unit’s chapters and the commentary by Barbara Weinstein.
    • Staying on Pace >> (CT) The Argentine Silent Majority [Chapter 1: pp. 9-50]

W04: [2/9 and 2/11] Middle East & North Africa (with. Dr. Elizabeth Perego)

  • (CT) Watenpaugh, Keith David. “Being Middle Class and Being Arab: Sectarian Dilemmas and Middle-Class Modernity in the Arab Middle East, 1908-1936.” In The Making of the Middle Class, Part III, pp. 267-287.
  • Gandolfo, K. Luisa. “Bridging the Economic Gap: The Rise and Fall of the Middle Class in Jordan.” The Arab Studies Journal 15/16, No. 1/2 (Fall 2007/Spring 2008): pp. 100–122. [Link]
    • Staying on Pace >> (CT) The Argentine Silent Majority [Chapter 2: pp. 51-101]

W05: [2/16 and 2/18] 19th Century England (with Dr. Michael Turner)

  • Mangan, J.A. and James Walvin. “Introduction.” Manliness and Morality: Middle-Class Masculinity in Britain and America, 1800-1940. Edited by Mangan, J.A. and James Walvin. Manchester, United Kingdom: Manchester University Press, 1987. [Link]

Also, pick TWO (2) of the following, and be prepared to lead discussion >>>

  • Gunn, Simon. “Class, Identity, and the Urban: The Middle Class in England, c. 1790-1950.” Urban History 31, No. 1 (May 2004): pp. 29–47. [Link]
  • Wahrman, Dror. “National Society, Communal Culture: An Argument about the Recent Historiography of Eighteenth-Century Britain.” Social History 17, No. 1 (January1992): pp. 43-72. [Link]
  • Young, Arlene. “Virtue Domesticated: Dickens and the Lower Middle Class.” Victorian Studies 39, No. 4 (Summer 1996): pp. 483-511. [Link]
    • Staying on Pace >> (CT) The Argentine Silent Majority [Chapter 3: pp. 102-150]

W06: [2/23 and 2/25] Defining the Middle: Traditions, Respectability, and Professionalism

  • (CT) The Making of the Middle Class, Part II: Walkowitz, Kidambi, and López chapters (pp. 121-195).
    • Staying on Pace >> (CT) The Argentine Silent Majority [Chapter 4: pp. 151-204]

W07: [3/2 and 3/4] Politics & Revolution [Early-Mid 20th Century]
Pick TWO (2) of the following, and be prepared to lead discussion >>>

  • (CT) Ervin, Michael. “The Formation of the Revolutionary Middle Class during the Mexican Revolution.” In The Making of the Middle Class, Part II, pp. 196-222.
  • (CT) García-Bryce, Iñigo. “A Middle-Class Revolution: The APRA and Middle-Class Identity in Perú, 1931-1956.” In The Making of the Middle Class, Part III, pp. 235-252.
  • Mark, James. “Discrimination, Opportunity, and Middle-Class Success in Early Communist Hungary.” The Historical Journal 48, no. 2 (2005): pp. 499-521. [Link]
    • Staying on Pace >> (CT) The Argentine Silent Majority [Chapter 5: pp. 205-266]

W08: [3/8 and 3/11] Violence and Argentina’s Middle-Class Sectors (discussion of Carassai’s book)

  • (CT) Carassai, Sebastián. The Argentine Silent Majority: Middle Classes, Politics, Violence, and Memory in the Seventies. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014. [Entire Book – make sure to read “Conclusions” and “Epilogue”]

W09: [3/15 to 3/19] Individual Conference Week (30 mins.); No class meetings

  • None

W10: [3/23 and 3/25] Race, Social Mobility, and Consumerism
Pick one pair of readings – A or B – and be prepared to lead discussion >>>
READINGS A

  • (CT) Parker, David. “Siúticos, Huachafos, Arribistas, and Gente de Medio Pelo: Social Climbers and the Representation of Class and Perú” In The Making of the Middle Class, Part IV, pp. 335-354.
  • Young, Louise. “Marketing the Modern: Department Stores, Consumer Culture, and the New Middle Class in Interwar Japan.” International Labor and Working-Class History no. 55 (Spring 1999): pp. 52-70. [Link]

READINGS B

  • (CT) Garguín, Enrique. “‘Los Argentinos Descendemos de los Barcos’: The Racial Articulation of Middle-Class Identity in Argentina, 1920-1960.” In The Making of the Middle Class, Part IV, pp. 355-376.
  • Piggot, W. Benjamin. “The ‘Problem’ of the Black Middle Class: Morris Milgram’s Concord Park and Residential Integration in Philadelphia’s Postwar Suburbs.” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 132 no. 2 (April 2008): pp. 173-190. [Link]

W11: [3/30 and 4/1] Ethnic Identity and Assimilation in the Americas
Pick one pair of readings – A or B – and be prepared to lead discussion >>>
READINGS A

  • Corwin Berman, Lila. “American Jews and the Ambivalence of Middle-Classness.” American Jewish History 93, no. 4 (December 2007): 409-434. [Link]
  • Eula, Michael J. “The Costa Family Society and the Formation of Middle-Class Ethnicity in Postwar America, 1950-1970.” Italian Americana 32, no. 1 (Winter 2014): 41-66. [Link]

READINGS B

  • Gottlieb, Dylan. “‘Dirty, Authentic … Delicious’: Yelp, Mexican Restaurants, and the Appetites of Philadelphia’s New Middle Class.” Gastronomica 15, no. 2 (Summer 2015): 39-48. [Link]
  • McNamara, Sarah. “A Not-So-Nuevo Past: Latina Histories in the US South.” Labor: A Studies in Working-Class History 16, no. 3 (2019): 73-78. [Link]

W12: [4/6] No Class Meeting / [4/8] Open Lab

  • None

W13: [4/13 and 4/15] Class Presentations of Research

  • None

W14: [4/20] Race, Gender, and the Southern Middle Class / [4/22] Open Lab
Pick one pair of readings – A or B – and be prepared to lead discussion >>>
READINGS A

  • Fultz, Michael. “‘The Morning Cometh’: African-American Periodicals, Education, and the Black Middle Class, 1900-1930.” The Journal of Negro History 80, no. 3 (Summer 1995): 97-112. [Link]
  • Obadele-Starks, Ernest. “Black Labor, the Black Middle Class, and Organized Protest along the Upper Texas Gulf Coast, 1883-1945.” The Southwestern Historical Quarterly 103, no. 1 (July 1999): 52-65. [Link]

READINGS B

  • Hubbs, Nadine. “‘Redneck Woman’ and the Gendered Poetics of Class Rebellion.” Southern Cultures 17, no. 4 (Winter 2011): 44-70. [Link]
  • Richards, Matthew S. “‘The Rhetorical Register of Class: Gender, Resistance, and Social Justice in Appalachia’s Coalfields.” Journal of Appalachian Studies 26, no. 2 (Fall 2020): 248-263. [Link]

W15: [4/27] Suburbia, Gentrification, and Challenges to “Middle Classness” & Class Wrap-Up

  • Anderson, Tamsen. “‘Beautiful New Homes’: The Development of Middle-Class Housing in the Industrial Suburb of East Chicago, Indiana.” Indiana Magazine of History 109, no. 3 (September 2013): 185-223. [Link]
  • Stebenne, David. “Re-Stabilizing the Middle Class and the Poor: Lessons from the 1930s.” History News Network, July 12, 2020. https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/176380.

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