Grace Lees Maffei, "From National Histories of Advice Discourses to a 'Transatlantic Domestic Dialogue", US Studies Online, March 2015.Contribution to a Society for the History of Women in the Americas (SHAW) series on the British Association of American Studies (BAAS) website U.S. Studies Online.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

Lees-Maffei, Grace

Grace Lees Maffei, "From National Histories of Advice Discourses to a 'Transatlantic Domestic Dialogue", US Studies Online, March 2015.Contribution to a Society for the History of Women in the Americas (SHAW) series on the British Association of American Studies (BAAS) website U.S. Studies Online.Peer reviewe

University of Hertfordshire Research Archive

ABOUT US WHAT WE PUBLISH OUT NOW! CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS OUT NOW! REVIEW BOOKS NEXT #BOOKHOUR SPECIAL BLOG SERIES: PAST, PRESENT, FUTUREU.S. Studies OnlineForum for New WritingPromoting the research of postgraduate and early career researchersin the field of American Studies since 2001Research ₪ Reviews ₪ Career Advice ₪ InterviewsSSundaayy,,  Deecceembeerr  44,,  22001166BY GRACE LEES MAFFEI MARCH 11, 2015"WOMEN IN AMERICA" - WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH SERIES, HISTORY, RESEARCH, SOCIETY FOR THE HISTORY OF WOMEN IN THE AMERICAS (SHAW), SPECIAL FEATURED BLOG SERIESAn American, as representedin a humorous advice book bya British aristocrat: ‘Hi-ya,Johnny boy!’ illustration byNicolas Bentley, in The Duke ofBedford’s Book of Snobs, John,Duke of Bedford incollaboration with GeorgeMiles, London: Peter Owen,1965, p. 51.A landmark text in the development of informalAmerican home entertaining in the post-WW2period: ‘The Kitchen Buffet’, illustration by JamesKingsland. Mary and Russel Wright, Guide toEasier Living, New York: Simon and Schuster,1954 (1950). Permission Russel Wright StudiosCC-BY.From National Histories of Advice Discourses to a ‘Transatlantic Domestic Dialogue’ TThiiss  bllogg  sserriiess  waass  prroducced  tthrrouggh  aa  ccollllaaborraattiion  bettween  tthe  SSocciiettyy  fforr  tthe  Hiissttorryy  off  Women  iin  tthe  Amerriiccaass  ((SSHAW))  aand  USS  SSttudiiess  Onlliine..TThe  ssiixx  possttss  sshowccaasse  tthe  diivverrssiittyy  off  rresseaarrcch  aand  diifffferriingg  exxperriienccess  off  sscchollaarrss  who  aarre  baassed  iin  tthe  UK  butt  worrkk  on  women  iin  tthe  USS..  TThecconttrriibuttorrss  aallsso  hiigghlliigghtt  tthe  cchaallllenggess  ffaacciingg  aaccaademiiccss  ((botth  tthosse  rresseaarrcchiingg  ttrraanssnaattiionaallllyy  aand  morre  ggenerraallllyy))  aass  wellll  aass  tthe  vvaalluaablle  iinssiigghttsstthaatt  cconttiinuess  tto  emerrgge  ffrrom  tthiiss  ccrrossss--diisscciiplliinaarryy  ffiielld..  TThe  ffiinaall  tthrree  cconttrriibuttiionss  offfferr  diissttiincctt  ccaasse  ssttudiiess..  IIn  tthe  ffourrtth  posstt,,  Grraacce  LLeess--Maaffffeii  diissccussssess  tthe  ssiiggniiffiiccaancce  off  movviingg  ffrrom  ssiingglle  naattiionaaccccounttss  ttowaarrdss  ttrraanssnaattiionaall  hiissttorryy  iin  herr  rreccentt  rresseaarrcch  prrojjecctt  on  domessttiicc  aadvviicce..When I was undertaking research for what eventually became my book Design at Home: Domestic Advice Books in Britain and the USA since 1945 (Routledge,2013) I was struck by the way in which some of the material I read focussed exclusively on the US to the extent that inaccurate generalisations were made aboutthe periodization and content of the domestic advice genre. To assert, for example, that books of domestic advice originated in the 1830s was to ignore theEuropean origins of the domestic advice genre and several centuries of writing and publishing activity in that genre before it developed in the US. This was not myfirst taste of the US-centrism associated with the American exceptionalism that has now been effectively challenged and deconstructed, but it was the mostperplexing because it was so closely related to my research.This  exclusionary  focus  was  useful  too,  because  my  dissatisfaction  with  the  single-nation  emphasis  that  produced  thiserroneous  assertion  led  me to  reflect  on  the  national,  international  and  transnational  paradigms I  employed in  my ownresearch and writing about domestic advice books.   It  led me, too, to read work concerned with the ‘transnational turn’ inAmerican Studies and beyond, which has been lucidly reviewed in recent edited volumes such as Brian T. Edwards and DilipParameshwar Gaonkar’s Globalizing American Studies (University of Chicago Press, 2010), Winifried Fluck, Donald E. Pease andJohn Carlos Rowe’s Re-Framing the Transnational Turn in American Studies (Dartmouth College Press, 2011) and Laura Bieger,Ramón Saldívar and Johannes Voelz’s The Imaginary and Its Worlds: American Studies after the Transnational Turn (DartmouthCollege Press, 2013). While some authors have continued to focus on the US to the exclusion of other nation states, I joinedthose advocates of the transnational turn and refused to produce a single-nation study. I was interested in the domestic advicebooks which formed my primary source material whether they were published in the US or in the UK. I saw a fruitful dialoguebetween the domestic advice discourses of the two countries, which was not surprising given the development of writing ondomestic advice in the US.Arthur M. Schlesinger Snr.’s account of the development of American etiquette, Learning How to Behave (1946), states that USsettlers brought advice books with them, principally from Britain and France.  These titles were then printed and published inthe US, before being adapted to better suit the US situation, a process which eventually resulted in the publication of homegrown (north) American advice. Schlesinger is too subtle to posit a complete break with the past in US advice sources, however,and closes his 1946 book by proposing enhanced attention to etiquette as a tool in and for international relations. Schlesinger’sapproach to American advice is therefore related to transnational studies of advice such as those by sociologists Norbert Elias([1939] 1994) and Cas Wouters (2007), and historian Linda Young (2003). The pattern of influence Schlesinger outlines is seen inthe material from my period (1945 to the present) as Anglocentric models have ceded to US-originated advice such as MarthaStewart’s Omnimedia.Reading advice about the home, from guidance on social interaction foundin etiquette books, to the homemaking and home decoration books concerned with the home as materiallyconstructed, I  discerned more convergence than divergence between US and UK sources.    As a result,  thenotion of a transatlantic domestic dialogue began to take shape in my research and to offer a more cogentmodel for understanding the development of domestic advice than those in which culture was determined anddemarcated by geographical and political national borders.  I saw linguistic variations in the idiomatic Englishused by US and UK writers respectively. I saw a greater emphasis on thrift and tradition in UK sources of thepost-WW2 period than in the expansive and optimistic US books of the same period. But more than that I sawdomestic advice as a markedly intertextual discourse; advice books sometimes contain direct quotations fromother writers (chiefly Emily Post), and bibliographies recommending other advice titles for further reading, butthey also rely  on precedent to the extent that  each new title  provides advice which is  only incrementallydistinct from that which has gone before. These intertextual characteristics inform my proposal of a dialogueas a useful way of understand the relationship between UK and US discourses of domesticity.The expanded field of analysis that resulted from my identification of a dialogue played out on the pages ofdomestic advice books was not convenient. It meant that I had to read a lot more domestic advice books, for astart. My reading was facilitated by my own transatlantic status: as an English design historian married to a US design historian, I have travelled between the UKand the US regularly for the past 15 years, and have conducted my research in various UK and US universities and research libraries as a result. With increasingU.S. STUDIES ONLINEFORUM FOR NEW WRITINGHOME BLOG CALLS FOR CONTRIBUTIONS HOW TO PUBLISH WITH US #BOOKHOUR EVENTS ABOUTU.S. Studies Online » "Women in America" - Women's History Month series » From National Histories of Advice Discourses to a ‘Transatlantic Domestic Dialogue’From National Histories of Advice Discourses to a ‘Transatlantic... http://www.baas.ac.uk/usso/from-national-histories-of-advice-disc...1 of 11 04/12/2016, 22:47Cover, Design at Home:Domestic Advice Books in Britainand the USA since 1945, GraceLees-Maffei (Routledge 2013)showing cover detail from TheArt of Being a Woman by AmabelWilliams-Ellis, published by TheBodley Head, London, 1951.TAGGED« Job-hunting: An Early Career Perspective Belle, Books, and Ballot: The Life and Writing of Nineteenth Century ReformerLillie Devereux Blake (1833-1913) »digitisation programmes, archival research need not be conducted in archives on the other side of the Atlantic. And, because my focal sources were in factpublished books, I easily and cheaply amassed a personal library of UK and US domestic advice books from across the twentieth century.Notwithstanding the transnational turn in American Studies, the transatlantic focus of my own study meant that I had to work harder in some academic contextsto justify my methodology than I would have needed to had I adopted a more conventional national unit of study. I needed to be clear at each point in my bookabout whether my comments related principally to the UK, the US or both nations. When my analysis veered more towards the US (for example, when talkingabout the development of home economics) or the UK (for instance, when examining the waning of aristocratic influence in domestic advice discourses) I neededto explicitly state that this was the case, and explain why. In this sense, my study is not a properly comparative one in that it does not continuously compare onenation with another, providing the UK and US case in relation to every question asked or topic broached. Rather it is transnational in that it takes as its focal unitof analysis a region which extends beyond that of one nation, to two nations, and considers the relationship between those nations as exemplified in the materialstudy, namely domestic advice books.Only readers (and reviewers) of my book can judge whether I have handled my transatlantic field adequately and whether myreading of a transatlantic domestic dialogue is useful in understanding the development of domestic advice since 1945. In themeantime, I remain committed to a transnational field of study, as shown in my work on the reception of Italian design in theUK. I am currently co-editing a book on the place of national histories of design in an age of increasing globalization, to which Iwill contribute a chapter of my own on the transatlantic domestic dialogue, and working with colleagues internationally todevelop an integrated approach to the history of European design. I am clear that the expanded field of American Studieswhich acknowledges the range of nation states implied in the term ‘America’ and which examines the US in the wider worldwill present a richer understanding of the particularities of the US, and its relationships with other nations and nation states.SShaarree  tthiiss::Twitter Facebook Tumblr Pinterest 2 Google LinkedIn Email Print Reddit  C20, Gender and Sexuality, Transatlantic.  BOOKMARK THE PERMALINK.ONE COMMENTPingback: Round-up of our ‘Women in America’ blog series for Women’s History Month - U.S. Studies OnlineSIGN UPSelect CategoryAbout Latest PostsGGrraaccee  LLeeeess  MaaffffeeiiDr Grace Lees-Maffei is Reader in Design History at the University of Hertfordshire, Visiting Professor of Design History and Theory at VU University, Amsterdam andManaging Editor of the Journal of Design History (OUP).        LLiikee  tthiiss::LikeBe the first to like this.LEAVE A COMMENTMONTHLY MAILING LISTCATEGORIESLLAATTEESSTT PPOPPULLAARRAmerican Studies across Borders: International Opportunities for PhDs and PostdocsReview: HOTCUS Postgraduate Conference, ‘Patriot or Protester?: Changing Ideas of Americanism during the Vietnam Era’From National Histories of Advice Discourses to a ‘Transatlantic... http://www.baas.ac.uk/usso/from-national-histories-of-advice-disc...2 of 11 04/12/2016, 22:47Be the first of your friends to like thisU.S. Studies O405 likes…Like PageEmbed View on TwitterTweets by @BAASUSSO1h U.S. Studies Online RetweetedHave the pleasure of hosting this month's #bookhour with @LCostaguta, @misbehavingmonk, @kamali_leila & @gavandtonic. 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From National Histories of Advice Discourse to a "Transatlantic Domestic Dialogue"

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From National Histories of Advice Discourse to a "Transatlantic Domestic Dialogue"

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