front cover of American Home
American Home
Sean Cho A.
Autumn House Press, 2021
Cho A.’s poetry wonders at small everyday delights.
 
Sean Cho A.’s debut poetry chapbook directs a keen eye on everyday occurrences and how these small events shape us as individuals. This collection is filled with longing for love, understanding, and simplicity. But these poems also express great pleasure in continued desire. With exuberant energy that flows through the collection, the speaker announces: “I won’t apologize for the smallness of my delights.” Filled with questions and wonder, these poems revel in the unknowing and liminal spaces, and we as readers are invited to join in this revelry. Cho A.’s poetry reminds and allows us to pause, to wonder, and enjoy our many pleasures.
 
American Home was selected by Danusha Laméris for the 2020 Autumn House Chapbook Prize.
 
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front cover of Arts And American Home
Arts And American Home
1890-1930
Jessica H. Foy
University of Tennessee Press, 1995
Between 1890 and 1930, the domestic arts, as well as the daily life of the American family, began to reflect rapid advances in technology, aesthetics, and attitudes about American culture. Pictorial, literary, musical, and decorative arts from this era all reveal a shift from clutter to clarity and from profusion to restraint as modern conveniences, ranging from pre-stamped needlework patterns to central heat, were introduced into the domestic environment. However, the household arts were also affected by an enduring strain of conservatism reflected in the popularity of historically inspired furnishing styles.
In this collection of essays, ten experts in turn-of-the-century popular and material culture examine how the struggle between modernity and tradition was reflected in various facets of the household aesthetic. Their findings touch on sub-themes of gender, generation, and class to provide a fascinating commentary on what middle-class Americans were prepared to discard in the name of modernity and what they stubbornly retained for the sake of ideology. Through an examination of material culture and prescriptive literature from this period, the essayists also demonstrate how changes in artistic expression affected the psychological, social, and cultural lives of everyday Americans.
This book joins a growing list of titles dedicated to analyzing and interpreting the cultural dimensions of past domestic life. Its essays shed new light on house history by tracking the transformation of a significant element of home life - its expressions of art.
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front cover of Chicagoland Dream Houses
Chicagoland Dream Houses
How a Mid-Century Architecture Competition Reimagined the American Home
Siobhan Moroney
University of Illinois Press, 2024
Chicagoland Dream Houses is an engaging addition to the growing body of scholarship concerning Chicago’s twentieth-century residential landscape characterized by a diverse group of architects and builders.”--Michelangelo Sabatino, coauthor of Modern in the Middle: Chicago Houses 1929–1975
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front cover of Inside Culture
Inside Culture
Art and Class in the American Home
David Halle
University of Chicago Press, 1993
Dubbed as "You Are What You Hang (or Don't)" by the New York Times,Inside Culture takes us on a tour of 160 homes in and around New York City, from affluent townhouses on Manhattan's Upper East Side and rowhouses in blue-collar Brooklyn to middle and upper-class suburbs of Long Island. The result is an unprecedented portrait of the use of cultural artifacts—fine art, photographs, religious art—in private lives.

"This is a first-class addition to what we know about culture in the specific rather than the abstract."—Howard S. Becker, Contemporary  Sociology

"This book is well worth reading, especially in your own home."—Eugene Halton, American Journal of Sociology

"David Halle's researches earned him a license amateur voyeurs would kill for. . . . Refreshing for readers outside his discipline."—Peter Campbell, London Review of Books

"[This book] tells us interesting things about ourselves. . . . It affords us a birds-eye view of American culture from which we can see . . . unsuspected patterns of tastes and acquisitions."—James Gardner, Washington Times

"[A] voyeuristic thrill. . . . Lucid and entertaining. . . . A fascinating book that will open the eyes of anyone who's ever glibly said about art, 'I know what I like.' After reading Inside  Culture, they'll also know a little bit more about why."—Maureen Corrigan, New York Observer
 
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front cover of Making the American Home
Making the American Home
Middle-Class Women and Domestic Material Culture, 1840–1940
Marilyn F. Motz
University of Wisconsin Press, 1988
The transformation of a house into a home has been in our culture a traditional task of women. The articles examine this process as they reflected the role of American middle-class women as homemakers in the years 1840–1940.
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