History of Hull-House Settlement House: Books and Publications

One of the great American metropolises, Chicago rises out of the prairie in the heart of the country, buffeted by winds coming off the plains and cooled by the waters of the inland sea of Lake Michigan. Chicago is a city of size and mass, the cradle of modern architecture, the freight hub of the nation, a city built on slaughterhouses and cacophonous financial trading tempered by some of the finest cultural institutions in the world. While many histories have been written of the city, none can claim the scope and breadth of the long-awaited Encyclopedia of Chicago. Developed by the Newberry Library with the cooperation of the Chicago Historical Society, The Encyclopedia of Chicago is the definitive historical reference on metropolitan Chicago. More than a decade in the making, the Encyclopedia brings together hundreds of historians, journalists, and experts on everything from airlines to Zoroastrians to explore all aspects of the rich world of Chicagoland, from its geological prehistory to the present. The main alphabetical section of the Encyclopedia, comprising more than 1,400 entries, covers the full range of Chicago's neighborhoods, suburbs, and ethnic groups, as well as the city's cultural institutions, technology and science, architecture, religions, immigration, transportation, business history, labor, music, health and medicine, and hundreds of other topics. The Encyclopedia has the widest geographical reach of any city encyclopedia of its kind, encompassing eight of the region's counties, including suburbs. Nearly 400 thumbnail maps pinpoint Chicago neighborhoods and suburban municipalities; these maps are complemented by hundreds of black-and-white and color photographs and thematic maps that bring the history of metropolitan Chicago to life. Additionally, contributors have provided lengthy interpretive essays--woven into the alphabetical section but set off graphically--that take a long view of such topics as the built environment, literary images of Chicago, and the city's often legendary and passionate sports culture. The Encyclopedia also offers a comprehensive biographical dictionary of more than 2,000 individuals important to Chicago history and a detailed listing of approximately 250 of the city's historically significant business enterprises. A color insert features a timeline of Chicago history and photo essays exploring nine pivotal years in this history. The Encyclopedia of Chicago is one of the most significant historical projects undertaken in the last twenty years, and it has everything in it to engage the most curious historian as well as settle the most boisterous barroom dispute. If you think you know how Chicago got its name, if you have always wondered how the Chicago Fire actually started and how it spread, if you have ever marveled at the Sears Tower or the reversal of the Chicago River--if you have affection, admiration, and appreciation for this City of the Big Shoulders, this Wild Onion, this Urbs in Horto, then The Encyclopedia of Chicago is for you.

Guide to the microfilm of The Jane Addams Papers.

Includes biographical entries for many Hull-House participants.

Available online through Google Books.

Professing a policy of cultural and social integration, the American settlement house movement made early progress in helping immigrants adjust to life in American cities. However, when African Americans migrating from the rural South in the early twentieth century began to replace white immigrants in settlement environs, most houses failed to redirect their efforts toward their new neighbors. Nationally, the movement did not take a concerted stand on the issue of race until after World War II. In Black Neighbors, Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn analyzes this reluctance of the mainstream settlement house movement to extend its programs to African American communities, which, she argues, were assisted instead by a variety of alternative organizations. Lasch-Quinn recasts the traditional definitions, periods, and regional divisions of settlement work and uncovers a vast settlement movement among African Americans. By placing community work conducted by the YWCA, black women's clubs, religious missions, southern industrial schools, and other organizations within the settlement tradition, she highlights their significance as well as the mainstream movement's failure to recognize the enormous potential in alliances with these groups. Her analysis fundamentally revises our understanding of the role that race has played in American social reform.

"Lines of Activity investigates the cultural life of the Hull-House Settlement of Chicago, one of the most significant reform institutions of the Progressive Era, from its founding in 1889 through its growth into a major social service institution. The book focuses specifically on the role of performance - not only theatrical representation, but also athletics, children's games, storytelling, festivals, living museums, and the practices of everyday life - to demonstrate how such cultural rituals could propel social activism at Hull-House and paradoxically serve as vehicles for both cultural expression and cultural assimilation." "Developing a concept of "reformance" as a process that both restores and resists conventional behavior, Jackson demonstrates how performance analysis can contribute to the historical study of American reform as well as to critical inquiry on the arts and social change. She develops connections between performativity and sex/gender difference by interpreting Hull-House as a sphere of queer kinship and alternative gender performance. Lines of Activity also engages a variety of debates on the nature of historical representation and the role of theory in historical writing." "By selecting the Progressive Era and Hull-House as arenas of inquiry, Jackson foregrounds how past discourses of domesticity, pragmatism, transnationalism, and environmentalism already contain performance-centered notions of identity, space, and community. Through these and other arguments, Lines of Activity reveals the intimate connection between a history of Hull-House performance and the performance of Hull-House history." "This book contributes to the interdisciplinary field of performance studies while simultaneously demonstrating how performance studies engages the central questions and methods of related fields such as American Studies, sex/gender theory, cultural studies, literary theory, theater, folklore, and history."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

The settlement house movement, launched at the end of the nineteenth century by men and women of the upper middle class, began as an attempt to understand and improve the social conditions of the working class. It gradually came to focus on the "new immigrants"--mainly Italians, Slavs, Greeks, and Jews--who figured so prominently in this changing working class. Hull House, one of the first and best-known settlement houses in the United States, was founded in September 1889 on Chicago's West Side by Jane Addams and Ellen G. Starr. In a major new study of this famous institution and its place in the movement, Rivka Shpak Lissak reassesses the impact of Hull House on the nationwide debate over the place of immigrants in American society.

In 1889, while many Americans were disdainful of newly arrived immigrants, Jane Addams established Hull-House as a refuge for Chicago's poor. The settlement house provided an unprecedented variety of social services. Addams's inspiring autobiography chronicles the institution's early years and discusses the ever-relevant philosophy of social justice that served as its foundation.

Biography of one Jane Addams best friend written after Julia Lathrop's death. As one of the four members of the inner circle at Hull-House, Julia Lathrop played an instrumental role in the field of social reform for more than fifty years. Working tirelessly for women, children, immigrants and workers, she was the first head of the federal Children's Bureau, an ardent advocate of woman suffrage, and a cultural leader. She was also one of Jane Addams's best friends. My Friend, Julia Lathrop is Addams' lovingly rendered biography of a memorable colleague and confidant. The memoir reveals a great deal about the influence of Hull-House on the social and political history of the early twentieth century. An introduction by long-time Addams scholar Anne Firor Scott provides a broader account of women's work in voluntary associations.

Provides an examination of women's involvement and influence during the World War I pacifist movement resulting from the 1915 Hague International Congress of Women.

Filling a void in Jane Addams scholarship, this first volume of The Selected Papers of Jane Addams collects extant documents from the formative years of the major American historical figure, intellectual, social activist, and author. Documenting the early development of Addams's social principles, the documents reveal the leadership skills that led her into a life of public commitment.   For all her public compassion and visibility as an outspoken pacifist, Progressive reformer, and founder of Hull-House, Addams was an intensely private person who revealed her personal side only to family and close friends. Drawing on letters, diaries, and other writings from her childhood in Cedarville, Illinois, and her education at the Rockford Female Seminary, this volume provides heretofore unavailable insight into her developing ideas, educational experiences, and personal relationships.   More than just biographical records, The Selected Papers of Jane Addams defines the era in which Addams lived. Unique yet  representative of the spiritual ideals and political sensibilities of post-Civil War women and society, Addams's lesser-known, personal writings are necessary reading for scholars and historians. The volume explores important themes, including the migration of families westward, the first generation of college women, and the religious and domestic lives of nineteenth-century Americans. The editors' rich annotation of individuals and events featured in the documents and appendix of biographical profiles represent a trove of primary research and place the documents in historical context.  

A book on ethics that reflects on the factors that hinder the ability of members of society to determine their own well-being. This title shows how conceiving of democracy as a social obligation can lead to new, mutually beneficial lines of conduct.

Features musing on the role of memory and myth in women's lives. This title explores the catalytic function of cautionary tales in reviving older women's sense of agency. It emphasizes the importance of voicing a female perspective on war.

First published in 1922 during the "Red Scare," by which time Jane Addams's pacifist efforts had adversely affected her popularity as an author and social reformer, Peace and Bread in Time of War is Addams's eighth book and the third to deal with her thoughts on pacifism.   Addams's unyielding pacifism during the Great War drew criticism from politicians and patriots who deemed her the "most dangerous woman in America." Even those who had embraced her ideals of social reform condemned her outspoken opposition to U.S. entry into World War I or were ambivalent about her peace platforms. Turning away from the details of the war itself, Addams relies on memory and introspection in this autobiographical portrayal of efforts to secure peace during the Great War. "I found myself so increasingly reluctant to interpret the motives of other people that at length I confined all analysis of motives to my own," she writes. Using the narrative technique she described in The Long Road of Women's Memory, an extended musing on the roles of memory and myth in women's lives, Addams also recalls attacks by the press and defends her political ideals.   Katherine Joslin's introduction provides additional historical context to Addams's involvement with the Woman's Peace Party, the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and her work on Herbert Hoover's campaign to provide relief and food to women and children in war-torn enemy countries.