Lines of Activity: Performance, Historiography, Hull-House DomesticityUniversity of Michigan Press, 2000 - 371 pages 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 study focuses specifically on the role of performance--not only theatrical representation, but also athletics, children's games, story-telling, 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. This groundbreaking book 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. As the notion of "performance historiography" gains currency, Jackson's study exposes the gender politics of such scholarly trends. 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. Shannon Jackson is Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and of Dramatic Art and Dance, University of California, Berkeley. |
Contents
Theorizing The Scaffolding | 1 |
Reformance | 8 |
Space and Experience | 18 |
Performance Historiography | 29 |
Settling Not Quite Classes and Not Quite Clubs | 37 |
Cordelia | 40 |
A Cosmopolitan Standard | 48 |
To Live with Children | 60 |
Queer Domesticity | 164 |
Doors and Dining | 187 |
Staging Act Well Your Part | 203 |
Lady Dancing | 206 |
A Wobbly Organization | 212 |
Cosmopolitan Theatricals | 223 |
Corporeal Styles | 236 |
Professionalizing To Enlarge the Field of Activity | 249 |
WordsDeeds | 73 |
Civic Housekeeping | 83 |
Building In Bricks and Mortar | 95 |
Art and Labor | 99 |
Recreation | 110 |
Oekology | 124 |
Janes | 135 |
Living Somehow the House Seems All Upset | 147 |
Public Parlors | 150 |
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Abbott Addams Memorial Collection Addams's affiliates Alice Hamilton American Bowen Building Butler child civic housekeeping coffeehouse courtesy of University cultural dance Dewey discourse domestic Edith Edith Abbott Ellen Gates Starr ethnic experience female Feminism feminist Florence Kelley gendered George Herbert Mead girls Grace Abbott Gyles gymnasium habits Helen Culver heterosocial homosocial House Hull Hull-House Bulletin Hull-House Maps Hull-House residents Hull-House's ideal Illinois at Chicago immigrant interaction interspatial Italian JAMC Jane Addams Memorial Jane Club John Dewey Julia Lathrop Labor Museum Lathrop Lines of Activity living Maps and Papers Mary Mary Crane ment Miss Addams Nancrede Nancy Fraser neighborhood neighbors Nineteenth Ward Notes to Pages performance Photo courtesy play politics practices pragmatic Progressive Era recreation reform Resident meeting rhetoric settlement sexual social space spatial theater theatrical theory tion Twose University of Illinois urban Washburne welfare woman Woman's Club women York young