Cowan’s chapter “Twentieth-Century Changes in Household Technology” in her book More Work For Mother, discusses the transition in the household economy due to the invention and application of new technologies into the home, and what this transition meant for the homemaker. She begins by stating that the accepted model for this transition is from the household economy …
Monthly Archives: September 2017
05. Women and household technology
Andrew Pregnall: Reflections on Blue Monday
by •
For this week’s class I ready the chapter of Never Done by Susan Strasser called “Blue Monday.” Strasser begins the chapter with a detailed description of the laundry process during the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. For this post, I am going to focus more on the social argument of …
Continue reading “Andrew Pregnall: Reflections on Blue Monday”
05. Women and household technology
Delanie Tarvin: Considering Leonard’s “Household Labor and Technology in a Consumer Culture”
by •
In “Household Labor and Technology in a Consumer Culture,” Eileen B. Leonard challenges the idea that technology liberated women from the burdens of domestic work, arguing instead that technology changed the domestic work women were responsible for; further, Leonard discusses the persistent gender, race, and class inequalities that technology failed to undermine (and perhaps even …
05. Women and household technology
“… The Women are to be Worthy of Respect…”
by •
When asked to think about the quintessential snapshot of Americana from the 1950s and 60s, we are often greeted with the pastel, overly boyish images of a happy family sitting around a new television set; a boy casually sipping on a Coca-Cola from a glass bottle; or basically any Norman Rockwell painting. This kind of …
Continue reading ““… The Women are to be Worthy of Respect…””
05. Women and household technology
Women and Plumbing
by •
Although we take it for granted today, Indoor plumbing is one of the most important technological achievements in recent times. Although we have talked a bit about Women and Technology in this class, I remember learning a lot more about it in “History of Technology.” When all of these new innovations and inventions were coming …
03. Decision to use the atomic bomb: Alternative interpretations
Using the Atomic Bomb
by •
The article entitled “Reclaiming Realism for the Left: Gar Alperovitz and the Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb” written by Peter Kirstein, talks a lot about how the use of the duet of bombs was more of a political move than militaristic. Kirstein describes the work of Gar Alperovitz, and his view of why the …
05. Women and household technology
Analysis of 1950s Household Technology Advertisements
by •
Jason Arquette Professor Hirsh Blog 5u September 19th, 2017 Against the backdrop of the 1950s, the general idea of domesticity in America focused upon a woman’s duty to maintain the home while men went off to work. While modern day sentiments regarding this notion would discredit it as a misogynistic and stereotyped version of domesticity,…
05. Women and household technology
Quick and Easy – Dan Crosson
by •
For many of us, it would be difficult to imagine life without some of our most common home appliances. Dishwashers, laundry machines, refrigerators, and the college favorite microwave all make our lives easier by minimizing the time and effort required for daily household tasks. However, such standard and now mundane amenities were once at the …
05. Women and household technology
Cece Burger: Technology in the Home
by •
For this blog, I read a few old newspaper articles on women and technology in the home. All of them acclaimed the wonders, capacities, and prospects of new home technology. In many of the articles, technology for the home promised greater freedoms for women. The L.A. Times in 1959 reported technology as one factor, “leading …
05. Women and household technology
Helen Goggins: Women in Technology
by •
The second half of Ruth Schwartz Cowan’s article, “From Virginia Dare to Virginia Slims: Women and Technology in American Life”, dissects women’s interaction with technology throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Cowan focuses on the way in which society conceived of women as homemakers and as antitechnocrats. While technology transformed the way housework was…