Courage, Endurance and Quickness of Decision: Gender and Athletics at the University of Chicago, 1890-1920

This article addresses the gendered assumptions about men and women's roles within collegiate culture at the University of Chicago. Specifically, it highlights how notions of men and women's physical capacities, their patterns of sociability and the physical spaces they occupied on campus manifested the mark of gender differences. Debates over the role of athletics at the University illustrate the continued belief in the different needs and roles of men and women, even within a coeducational institution. These pervasive assumptions of difference forced female students and educators to walk a fine line between providing for the 'special needs' of women, and fighting for equal status within all University programmes, including athletics, in the Progressive Era. Moreover, the spatial dimension of these debates about gender illustrated how the presence of the female body in a space often perceived as 'male' (the university campus) led to the creation of plans intended to circumscribe women's place so as not to 'overfeminize' and thereby undervalue university education. Examining collegiate culture through the lens of athletics exposes many of the assumptions about gender difference that structured the modern university. Highlighting the material culture of the university offers a useful tool in rethinking the process by which these assumptions became inscribed in the built environment, helping both to reflect and reify complex and often contradictory cultural attitudes about gender

Cultural boundaries: Constructing urban space and civic culture on Chicago's South Side, 1890-1919.

This dissertation explores the relationship between urban space and civic culture on the South Side of Chicago during the Progressive Era. I discuss urban planning as a cultural and political process whereby various city leaders, both men and women, sought to create an urban public sphere which emphasized their (sometimes conflicting) visions of order, civility, and respectability. This examination focuses on the interaction between planners and reformers, state officials, and community residents as they each sought to shape urban development and define their roles within the urban environment. I look at three sites on Chicago's South Side in order to illustrate the contestation and compromise involved in the planning and use of urban space, and in the development of public discourse. The University of Chicago, the South Parks system, and Comiskey Park all represented arenas in which community leaders sought to create a unified civic culture. Civic leaders articulated an understanding of urban society which posited strong connections between the physical shape of the city, and urban social order and civic culture. This belief in the reforming capacity of the urban landscape, what I am calling progressive urbanism, took a variety of forms during the period under study. Numerous leaders, including university administrators, park promoters, and mass culture entrepreneurs, looked to the physical design of the city to shape their visions of urban culture. Yet the urban landscape of the South Side functioned both as a site of civic unity and as an arena for the expression of diverse ethnic, racial, and class interests. I illustrate how the creation of a local terrain of civic culture was a contested process, with the battle for cultural authority transforming urban politics and blurring the line between private and public space. In the process, new sites of public culture--including universities, parks and playgrounds, and commercial ballparks--emerged as alternative arenas of civic discourse.Ph.D.American historyGeographySocial SciencesUrban planningUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/129937/2/9711919.pd

Building the South Side urban space and civic culture in Chicago, 1890-1919

Building the South Side explores the struggle for influence that dominated the planning and development of Chicago's South Side during the Progressive Era. Robin F. Bachin examines the early days of the University of Chicago, Chicago’s public parks, Comiskey Park, and the Black Belt to consider how community leaders looked to the physical design of the city to shape its culture and promote civic interaction. Bachin highlights how the creation of a local terrain of civic culture was a contested process, with the battle for cultural authority transforming urban politics and blurring the line between private and public space. In the process, universities, parks and playgrounds, and commercial entertainment districts emerged as alternative arenas of civic engagement. “Bachin incisively charts the development of key urban institutions and landscapes that helped constitute the messy vitality of Chicago’s late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century public realm.”—Daniel Bluestone, Journal of American History "This is an ambitious book filled with important insights about issues of public space and its use by urban residents. . . . It is thoughtful, very well written, and should be read and appreciated by anyone interested in Chicago or cities generally. It is also a gentle reminder that people are as important as structures and spaces in trying to understand urban development." —Maureen A. Flanagan, American Historical Revie

City Stories Place-Making Narratives in the Rise and Fall of Urban America

Scholarship on urban tourism has addressed the multiple ways in which visual images and narrative texts, especially impressions by outsiders, play a vital role in shaping perceptions of place in cities. These perceptions are shaped both by civic boosters and also by critics and reformers, highlighting the complex process by which city officials, journalists, travel writers, and photographers create and sell certain images of cities that have the potential to promote renewal, growth, and allure but just as often evoke decay, devastation, and decline. Consideration of the official scripts of urban revitalization alongside narratives of fear and ruin allows scholars to flesh out the complex process by which place-making happens and through which residents and toursist alike create their perceptions of urban life. </jats:p