Carol Quirke | SUNY: Old Westbury (original) (raw)
Books by Carol Quirke
Routledge eBooks, Mar 4, 2019
Dorothea Lange, Documentary Photography, And Twentieth-Century America, 2019
Dorothea Lange, Documentary Photography, And Twentieth-Century America, 2019
Routledge eBooks, Mar 4, 2019
Dorothea Lange, Documentary Photography and Twentieth Century America: Reinventing Self and Nation, 2019
Dorothea Lange, Documentary Photography, and Twentieth-Century America charts the life of Dorothe... more Dorothea Lange, Documentary Photography, and Twentieth-Century America charts the life of Dorothea Lange (1895–1965), whose life was radically altered by the Depression, and whose photography helped transform the nation. The book begins with her childhood in immigrant, metropolitan New York, shifting to her young adulthood as a New Woman who apprenticed herself to Manhattan’s top photographers, then established a career as portraitist to San Francisco’s elite. When the Great Depression shook America’s economy, Lange was profoundly affected. Leaving her studio, Lange confronted citizens’ anguish with her camera, documenting their economic and social plight. This move propelled her to international renown.
This biography synthesizes recent New Deal scholarship and photographic history and probes the unique regional histories of the Pacific West, the Plains, and the South. Lange’s life illuminates critical transformations in the U.S., specifically women’s evolving social roles and the state’s growing capacity to support vulnerable citizens. The author utilizes the concept of "care work," the devalued nurturing of others, often considered women’s work, to analyze Lange’s photography and reassert its power to provoke social change. Lange’s portrayal of the Depression’s ravages is enmeshed in a deeply political project still debated today, of the nature of governmental responsibility toward citizens’ basic needs.
Students and the general reader will find this a powerful and insightful introduction to Dorothea Lange, her work, and legacy. Dorothea Lange, Documentary Photography, and Twentieth-Century America makes a compelling case for the continuing political and social significance of Lange’s work, as she recorded persistent injustices such as poverty, labor exploitation, racism, and environmental degradation.
In the twentieth century's first decades, U.S. workers waged an epic struggle to achieve security... more In the twentieth century's first decades, U.S. workers waged an epic struggle to achieve security through unions; simultaneously Americans came to interpret current events through newspaper photographs. Eyes on Labor brings these two revolutions together, revealing how news photography brought workers into the nation's mainstream. The author focuses on images ignored by scholars but seen by millions of Americans in the news of the day. Part visual analysis, part labor and cultural history, Eyes on Labor analyzes over one hundred photographs: stereographs of the Uprising of 1877, tabloid photos of the 1919 strike wave, photo-essays in the nationally popular LIFE Magazine, and even photos taken by a union camera club. Quirke anchors her interpretations in a lively historical narrative that takes readers from Washington D.C. hearings, to small towns in Indiana and Pennsylvania, to local union halls and to New York City boardrooms. Illuminating why unions, employers, and news publishers vied to represent workers with the camera's eye, Eyes on Labor explores how Americans understood the complex and contradictory portrait of labor they produced.
Papers by Carol Quirke
Routledge eBooks, May 1, 2024
Teaching Labor History in Art and Design Capitalism and the Creative Industries, 2024
American Quarterly, 2008
The picture stood again in his mind; two lines like two rows of. .. toy soldiers; move one line u... more The picture stood again in his mind; two lines like two rows of. .. toy soldiers; move one line up into position, stand the other against it, then the first line goes bang, bang, bang and the second line is all knocked down. .. That was the simple picture. Out of that he had to find meaning. 1 | 130 American Quarterly | 131 Reframing Chicago's Memorial Day Massacre | 132 American Quarterly | 135 Reframing Chicago's Memorial Day Massacre
Routledge International Handbook of Working-Class Studies, 2020
Essay examines postwar representations of labor, particularly those by Walker Evans, Arthur Leipz... more Essay examines postwar representations of labor, particularly those by Walker Evans, Arthur Leipzig, Danny Weiner, and Robert Frank. The author argues that the accepted chronology of the documentary becoming depoliticized in the postwar era is challenged when examining images of labor appearing in corporate employee magazines and in photojournals.
Activist History Review, 2019
Like Jacob Riis's immigrant tenement sweatshop workers, or Lewis Hine's industrial or child labor... more Like Jacob Riis's immigrant tenement sweatshop workers, or Lewis Hine's industrial or child laborers, Depression-era photographs of migrant labor are woven into the nation's collective memory. This memory often reveres the subjects' fortitude, while repressing migrants' life exigencies then and now. Dorothea Lange's photos of migrant workers, taken for the New Deal under the Farm Security Administration (FSA), are emblematic; "Migrant Mother," a photo of a mother and her children, stuck in a dreary, California pea field, is iconic.[1] [Fig. 1.]
Radical History Review, 2018
Local 65 United Warehouse Workers Union (1933–1987), which became District 65 United Auto Workers... more Local 65 United Warehouse Workers Union (1933–1987), which became District 65 United Auto Workers, promoted photography with a camera club, and a member-edited newspaper New Voices, featuring photographs taken by members. This left-led, New York City distributive industry union began in 1933 on the Lower East Side, and it became the city’s second largest local. The union utilized photography to normalize the role of African American members within the union and to advance a civil rights and anti-racism agenda. This article includes photographs taken by member-photographers, and photo-reproductions of New Voices. New Voices’ photographs included African Americans in the everyday life of the union, challenged race-based labor segmentation, supported community struggles, and defied racial norms in midcentury America.
Most of us rely on written sources in our teaching, but we know there are many mediums and genres... more Most of us rely on written sources in our teaching, but we know there are many mediums and genres through which the story of our nation can be told. In this issue, History Now focuses on one of these: reading our past through the visual arts. We have asked five scholars and artists to show the ways in which photographs, statuary, monuments, and paintings reveal critical events, eras, or controversies in our history. In our first essay, "'The Strange Spell That Dwells in Dead Men's Eyes': The Civil War, by Brady,"Harold Holzer examines both the impact of the photographs of the horrors of war and the role of two men who brought these stark realities into the lives of millions far from the battlefield. Although these photographs bear the name of Mathew Brady, Holzer reveals to us the name of the actual photographer, Alexander Gardner, and provides fascinating portraits of both men. The photographs taken by Brady and Gardner not only preserved this tragic moment in our national history, they also changed forever the way Americans-and the world-looked at the cost of war. Linda S. Ferber looks at the art produced during the first wave of nineteenth-century nationalism. In"'Nature's Nation': The Hudson River School and American Landscape Painting, 1825-1876,"Ferber brings to life the artists of New York whose "sketching expeditions" in the Hudson River Valley, the Catskills, the Adirondacks and the White Mountains, and later in the West, introduced the beauty and majesty of America's natural landscape to both American citizens and to the world. As Ferber notes, American identity has always been rooted in the vast physical landscape of the United States. Borrowing from the visual traditions of Europe, the painters of the Hudson River School like Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand, and Frederic Church captured the sense of unique destiny shared by many nineteenth-century Americans. How did Confederate leaders come to be enshrined in the National Statuary Hall? Bess Beatty explains the politics behind their inclusion in "Why Are They There? The Confederate Statues in the National Statuary Hall Collection." The idea of a gallery of notables, originally conceived of in 1857 as a way to fill an available empty chamber in the Capitol, soon caught on. Men-and an occasional woman-were nominated by their home states to be immortalized in what came to be known as Statuary Hall. Until the twentieth century, however, no southern statesmen or women were proposed for the Hall. When Virginia nominated Robert E. Lee in 1903, both Union veterans and African Americans protested. Although the right of Virginia to select who it wished was upheld, the statue of Lee was added quietly and without fanfare. But when Mississippi nominated Jefferson Davis in 1931, the unveiling ceremony included a Marine band playing Confederate favorites. There were few Union veterans left to protest. To this day, Beatty notes, no state has chosen an African American for the Hall. Photography returns as a medium for telling our history in Carol Quirke's moving account of Dorothea Lange's coverage of the Great Depression. In "'Ditched, Stalled, and Stranded': Dorothea Lange and the Great Depression," Quirke analyzes what Lange's camera eye records: what Lange herself calls a record of how a person "stood in the world." Through photographs like "White Angel," and "Man Beside Wheelbarrow," Lange made visible the effects of an economic and social crisis that could not be captured by mere statistics or charts and graphs. Her photographs of southerners are especially arresting and serve, Quirke notes, as a visual comment on southern history, while her photos of dispossessed families on the road west are an ironic commentary on the nineteenth century's optimism about manifest destiny. Quirke provides the background story for
Routledge eBooks, Mar 4, 2019
Dorothea Lange, Documentary Photography, And Twentieth-Century America, 2019
Dorothea Lange, Documentary Photography, And Twentieth-Century America, 2019
Routledge eBooks, Mar 4, 2019
Dorothea Lange, Documentary Photography and Twentieth Century America: Reinventing Self and Nation, 2019
Dorothea Lange, Documentary Photography, and Twentieth-Century America charts the life of Dorothe... more Dorothea Lange, Documentary Photography, and Twentieth-Century America charts the life of Dorothea Lange (1895–1965), whose life was radically altered by the Depression, and whose photography helped transform the nation. The book begins with her childhood in immigrant, metropolitan New York, shifting to her young adulthood as a New Woman who apprenticed herself to Manhattan’s top photographers, then established a career as portraitist to San Francisco’s elite. When the Great Depression shook America’s economy, Lange was profoundly affected. Leaving her studio, Lange confronted citizens’ anguish with her camera, documenting their economic and social plight. This move propelled her to international renown.
This biography synthesizes recent New Deal scholarship and photographic history and probes the unique regional histories of the Pacific West, the Plains, and the South. Lange’s life illuminates critical transformations in the U.S., specifically women’s evolving social roles and the state’s growing capacity to support vulnerable citizens. The author utilizes the concept of "care work," the devalued nurturing of others, often considered women’s work, to analyze Lange’s photography and reassert its power to provoke social change. Lange’s portrayal of the Depression’s ravages is enmeshed in a deeply political project still debated today, of the nature of governmental responsibility toward citizens’ basic needs.
Students and the general reader will find this a powerful and insightful introduction to Dorothea Lange, her work, and legacy. Dorothea Lange, Documentary Photography, and Twentieth-Century America makes a compelling case for the continuing political and social significance of Lange’s work, as she recorded persistent injustices such as poverty, labor exploitation, racism, and environmental degradation.
In the twentieth century's first decades, U.S. workers waged an epic struggle to achieve security... more In the twentieth century's first decades, U.S. workers waged an epic struggle to achieve security through unions; simultaneously Americans came to interpret current events through newspaper photographs. Eyes on Labor brings these two revolutions together, revealing how news photography brought workers into the nation's mainstream. The author focuses on images ignored by scholars but seen by millions of Americans in the news of the day. Part visual analysis, part labor and cultural history, Eyes on Labor analyzes over one hundred photographs: stereographs of the Uprising of 1877, tabloid photos of the 1919 strike wave, photo-essays in the nationally popular LIFE Magazine, and even photos taken by a union camera club. Quirke anchors her interpretations in a lively historical narrative that takes readers from Washington D.C. hearings, to small towns in Indiana and Pennsylvania, to local union halls and to New York City boardrooms. Illuminating why unions, employers, and news publishers vied to represent workers with the camera's eye, Eyes on Labor explores how Americans understood the complex and contradictory portrait of labor they produced.
Routledge eBooks, May 1, 2024
Teaching Labor History in Art and Design Capitalism and the Creative Industries, 2024
American Quarterly, 2008
The picture stood again in his mind; two lines like two rows of. .. toy soldiers; move one line u... more The picture stood again in his mind; two lines like two rows of. .. toy soldiers; move one line up into position, stand the other against it, then the first line goes bang, bang, bang and the second line is all knocked down. .. That was the simple picture. Out of that he had to find meaning. 1 | 130 American Quarterly | 131 Reframing Chicago's Memorial Day Massacre | 132 American Quarterly | 135 Reframing Chicago's Memorial Day Massacre
Routledge International Handbook of Working-Class Studies, 2020
Essay examines postwar representations of labor, particularly those by Walker Evans, Arthur Leipz... more Essay examines postwar representations of labor, particularly those by Walker Evans, Arthur Leipzig, Danny Weiner, and Robert Frank. The author argues that the accepted chronology of the documentary becoming depoliticized in the postwar era is challenged when examining images of labor appearing in corporate employee magazines and in photojournals.
Activist History Review, 2019
Like Jacob Riis's immigrant tenement sweatshop workers, or Lewis Hine's industrial or child labor... more Like Jacob Riis's immigrant tenement sweatshop workers, or Lewis Hine's industrial or child laborers, Depression-era photographs of migrant labor are woven into the nation's collective memory. This memory often reveres the subjects' fortitude, while repressing migrants' life exigencies then and now. Dorothea Lange's photos of migrant workers, taken for the New Deal under the Farm Security Administration (FSA), are emblematic; "Migrant Mother," a photo of a mother and her children, stuck in a dreary, California pea field, is iconic.[1] [Fig. 1.]
Radical History Review, 2018
Local 65 United Warehouse Workers Union (1933–1987), which became District 65 United Auto Workers... more Local 65 United Warehouse Workers Union (1933–1987), which became District 65 United Auto Workers, promoted photography with a camera club, and a member-edited newspaper New Voices, featuring photographs taken by members. This left-led, New York City distributive industry union began in 1933 on the Lower East Side, and it became the city’s second largest local. The union utilized photography to normalize the role of African American members within the union and to advance a civil rights and anti-racism agenda. This article includes photographs taken by member-photographers, and photo-reproductions of New Voices. New Voices’ photographs included African Americans in the everyday life of the union, challenged race-based labor segmentation, supported community struggles, and defied racial norms in midcentury America.
Most of us rely on written sources in our teaching, but we know there are many mediums and genres... more Most of us rely on written sources in our teaching, but we know there are many mediums and genres through which the story of our nation can be told. In this issue, History Now focuses on one of these: reading our past through the visual arts. We have asked five scholars and artists to show the ways in which photographs, statuary, monuments, and paintings reveal critical events, eras, or controversies in our history. In our first essay, "'The Strange Spell That Dwells in Dead Men's Eyes': The Civil War, by Brady,"Harold Holzer examines both the impact of the photographs of the horrors of war and the role of two men who brought these stark realities into the lives of millions far from the battlefield. Although these photographs bear the name of Mathew Brady, Holzer reveals to us the name of the actual photographer, Alexander Gardner, and provides fascinating portraits of both men. The photographs taken by Brady and Gardner not only preserved this tragic moment in our national history, they also changed forever the way Americans-and the world-looked at the cost of war. Linda S. Ferber looks at the art produced during the first wave of nineteenth-century nationalism. In"'Nature's Nation': The Hudson River School and American Landscape Painting, 1825-1876,"Ferber brings to life the artists of New York whose "sketching expeditions" in the Hudson River Valley, the Catskills, the Adirondacks and the White Mountains, and later in the West, introduced the beauty and majesty of America's natural landscape to both American citizens and to the world. As Ferber notes, American identity has always been rooted in the vast physical landscape of the United States. Borrowing from the visual traditions of Europe, the painters of the Hudson River School like Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand, and Frederic Church captured the sense of unique destiny shared by many nineteenth-century Americans. How did Confederate leaders come to be enshrined in the National Statuary Hall? Bess Beatty explains the politics behind their inclusion in "Why Are They There? The Confederate Statues in the National Statuary Hall Collection." The idea of a gallery of notables, originally conceived of in 1857 as a way to fill an available empty chamber in the Capitol, soon caught on. Men-and an occasional woman-were nominated by their home states to be immortalized in what came to be known as Statuary Hall. Until the twentieth century, however, no southern statesmen or women were proposed for the Hall. When Virginia nominated Robert E. Lee in 1903, both Union veterans and African Americans protested. Although the right of Virginia to select who it wished was upheld, the statue of Lee was added quietly and without fanfare. But when Mississippi nominated Jefferson Davis in 1931, the unveiling ceremony included a Marine band playing Confederate favorites. There were few Union veterans left to protest. To this day, Beatty notes, no state has chosen an African American for the Hall. Photography returns as a medium for telling our history in Carol Quirke's moving account of Dorothea Lange's coverage of the Great Depression. In "'Ditched, Stalled, and Stranded': Dorothea Lange and the Great Depression," Quirke analyzes what Lange's camera eye records: what Lange herself calls a record of how a person "stood in the world." Through photographs like "White Angel," and "Man Beside Wheelbarrow," Lange made visible the effects of an economic and social crisis that could not be captured by mere statistics or charts and graphs. Her photographs of southerners are especially arresting and serve, Quirke notes, as a visual comment on southern history, while her photos of dispossessed families on the road west are an ironic commentary on the nineteenth century's optimism about manifest destiny. Quirke provides the background story for
Socialism and Democracy, 2013
Encyclopedia of Activism and Social Justice, 2007
Encyclopedia of Activism and Social Justice, 2007
Encyclopedia of Activism and Social Justice, 2007
Oral History Review, 2016
Blog post that describes oral history of SUNY Old Westbury
New Labor Forum, Jul 2003
Book review of Moe Foner's oral history at Columbia Oral History Center
Reviews in American History, 2008
... Carol Quirke Reviews in American History, Volume 36, Number 4, December 2008, pp. 557-565 (Re... more ... Carol Quirke Reviews in American History, Volume 36, Number 4, December 2008, pp. 557-565 (Review) Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press DOI: 10.1353/rah.0.0045
Journal of Southern History, 2021
Ethnic and Racial Studies
ining any mixed neighbourhood, one that has some form of diversity. The book will be a valuable r... more ining any mixed neighbourhood, one that has some form of diversity. The book will be a valuable resource for researchers and students and perhaps journalists covering disciplines of geography, political science, sociology, and even criminology. A second volume is much wanted, and the reader is left with many more questions than they started. For now, however, with little exploration of diverse, mixed communities in empirical research, this book provides ideas and new debates of critical discussion.
Journal of American History, 2021
Review of essays addressing journalism and the women's suffrage movement.
Journal of American History, 2022
Survey Course on the Web, http://historymatters.gmu.edu, publishes regular reviews of digital his... more Survey Course on the Web, http://historymatters.gmu.edu, publishes regular reviews of digital history projects. The reviews appear both in the printed journal and at History Matters. History Matters provides an annotated guide to more than one thousand projects for teaching U.S. history. The goal is to offer a gateway to the works in digital history and to summarize their strengths and weaknesses with particular attention to their utility for teachers. The digital history reviews are edited by Jeffrey McClurken.
Western Historical Quarterly, 2019
The Journal of American History, Dec 1, 2021
Reviews National Portrait Gallery exhibition in 2018 of imagery of labor: paintings, photographs,... more Reviews National Portrait Gallery exhibition in 2018 of imagery of labor: paintings, photographs, sculpture, video, etc, from colonial era through contemporary times
Documentary film addressing Chicago's Memorial Day Massacre, and Paramount News's attempt to bury... more Documentary film addressing Chicago's Memorial Day Massacre, and Paramount News's attempt to bury the footage. Served as historical advisor, Greg Mitchell, Director.