Arwen Mohun | University of Delaware (original) (raw)

Papers by Arwen Mohun

Transactions of The American Philosophical Society, Sep 1, 2009

IN THE LATE SUMMER OF 1853, Herman Melville spent a few months living just outside the village of... more IN THE LATE SUMMER OF 1853, Herman Melville spent a few months living just outside the village of Pittsfield in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts. Chronically short of money, he was gathering inspiration for short stories that could be sold to popular magazines. The following spring, drawing on his experiences in Pittsfield, he wrote "The Lightning-Rod Man," which appeared in the August 1854 issue oiPutnam's Monthly Magazine.1 Told from the perspective of a nameless householder, Melville's brief narrative recounts the visit of a lightning rod salesman during a summer thunderstorm. Refusing his host's offer of a place near the fire, the visitor plants himself in the center of the room, holding tightly to "a polished copper rod, four feet long, lengthwise attached to a neat wooden staff, by the insertion into two balls of greenish glass, ringed with copper bands [insulators], . . .The metal rod," Melville informs the reader, "terminated at the top tripodwise, in three keen tines, brightly gilt."2 Jupiter Tonans, as the narrator calls him, then attempts to frighten his host into buying his wares. "I warn you, sir, quit the hearth. . . . Are you so horribly ignorant then as to not know, that by far the most dangerous part of a house during such a terrific tempest as this, is the fire-place?"' Both men then fall into an argument about the efficacy of rods and the relative danger of lightning. Finally, the narrator grows so frustrated by the salesman's evasive patter that he breaks the rod and kicks his visitor out into the storm, berating him with a speech about the hubris of testing God's will by employing technology.4 This short story has become fodder for two generations of twentieth century literary critics. Most of them agree that the salesman represents benighted, mean-spirited, intolerant, evangelical Protestantism and the narrator, the forces of rationality.5 In contrast, many nineteenth century readers would have recognized the literal basis of Melville's story. 6At the time of its publication, a growing number of lightning rod salesmen had begun to wander the villages and back roads of America pitching their wares to both the wary and the unsuspecting. Melville himself supposedly encountered such a character during his Pittsfield stay.7 Lightning rod salesmen were a relatively new phenomenon in 1854. Although lightning rods had been around for nearly a century, they had just begun to change from a homemade device erected by knowledgeable farmers, mechanics, blacksmiths, and others to a commodity made in a factory and sold and installed by salesmen or lightning rod companies (fig. 8.1). This transition co-incided with what American historians have called the "market revolution"- a period in which increasing numbers of Americans (including, significantly, small-town and rural Northerners) became more tied to a cash economy and the values of a market society.8 Why would such a technology become commodified? And how did both the technology itself and the social relations around it change as this happened? To answer these questions, it is important to understand something about the nature of the technology itself. Lightning rods (or more accurately, lightning protection systems of which the rod is the most visible and symbolic part) are a safety technology (like seat belts, fire alarms, and radon detectors) that falls into a category of devices primarily useful for mediating risk. As commodities, safety technologies can be quite difficult to sell. People are hesitant to invest their hard-earned money in a form of insurance they may never need. Unlike fire or life insurance (at least in their twentieth century forms), safety technologies can also fail or, if faulty or badly designed, can actually make an accident worse. Nineteenth century lightning rod systems seem to have been particularly prone to failure (or at least the failures attracted the attention of the newspapers). Melville's narrator, for example, brings up the fact that lightning had struck a local church steeple armed with a rod only the week before- a rod the lightning rod man had in fact installed. …

Johns Hopkins University Press eBooks, 1999

Historical Social Research, 2016

Gender & History, Aug 1, 1996

... Charles Austin Bates Syndicate, New York, 1899), a collection of advertisements and advertisi... more ... Charles Austin Bates Syndicate, New York, 1899), a collection of advertisements and advertising advice intended for the use of laundry owners and ... Alice Henry, The Trade Union Woman (Appleton, New York, 1915), p. 186, cited in Sarah Eisenstein, Give us Bread but Give us ...

Journal of Design History, 2001

Abstract This paper uses the design of 'thrill rides' in early twentieth-century Americ... more Abstract This paper uses the design of 'thrill rides' in early twentieth-century American amusement parks to explore the ways in which both gender and distinations between production and consumption help shape new technologies It also offers a contribution to ...

Technology and Culture, 1997

VOL 45 Despite, and perhaps because of, the rapid growth of literature on gender and technology o... more VOL 45 Despite, and perhaps because of, the rapid growth of literature on gender and technology over the past three decades, classroom instructors are still challenged to find a suitable book of readings to present a coherent segment of this work for students. Filling this gap is the objective of Gender and Technology: A Reader. To the seven articles drawn from the special issue of Technology and Culture on gender analysis and the history of technology published in January 1997, the editors have added several equally fine and representative articles to make up the fourteen chapters in the book. The original historiographic essay, "The Shoulders We Stand On," has been brought up to date to form an important coda to the collection. Since the articles were previously published in refereed journals or distinguished collections and have therefore been vetted as scholarly works, I will not evaluate them on this score. Rather, because its intent is a teaching tool, I will assess the book and its contributions in light of this aim. It focuses on the reciprocal relationship between gender and technology in the specific historic and cultural context of North America from 1850 to 1950, during the heyday of industrial capitalism. The book starts with definitions: technology as "people's ways of making and doing things" (p. 2), and gender as "not only a way to sort people . . . [but] also a way to assign power in particular contexts," which operates at the levels of "identity" "structures and institutions" and "in symbolic and representational ways" (p. 4). Exploring the major theme of "Interrogating Boundaries," the book is divided into four parts: the "Entwined Categories" of parts 1 and 2 on how gender and technology construct each other, and parts 3 and 4 on the "Industrial Junctions" of gender and technology as technological change takes place. Several articles illustrate the ways gender analysis not only questions gender boundaries themselves but also interrogates those of race, class, and ethnicity as these identities and power configurations intersect when humans engage in making, using, and shaping technologies. Focusing on technological knowledge, which demands the integration of the technical and social, Nina Lerman examines the technical education of school children in mid-nineteenth-century Philadelphia. She finds not only the split between trades for boys and domestic-oriented subjects for girls but also racial separations within the sexual divisions: colored boys denied technical training and thus apprenticeship opportunities, colored girls slated for domestic service rather than housewifery in their own homes. Rebecca Herzig makes the use of race visible in the interwar period in her study of using x-rays for hair removal, as gendered and class standards prevail for hairless whiteness. For the meatpacking industry in the 1900s,

Choice Reviews Online, Nov 1, 1999

Science in Context, Sep 1, 2005

Page 1. EDITED BY ^r Nina E. Lerman Ruth Olden2iel Page 2. Page 3. Gender & Techn... more Page 1. EDITED BY ^r Nina E. Lerman Ruth Olden2iel Page 2. Page 3. Gender & Technology FOR THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS Thi s One N2ED-67C-UYQ4 Page 4. Page 5. Gender & Technology A READER ...

The American Historical Review, 1999

... Per capita annual retail sales, 1939-1967, Paramus and Hackensack, New Jersey, 203 8.6. Page ... more ... Per capita annual retail sales, 1939-1967, Paramus and Hackensack, New Jersey, 203 8.6. Page from Macy's annual report, 1957, 215 8.7. Cover, employee handbook, Bamberger's Department Store, 1957, 219 Page 10. Page 11. and Page 12. Page 13. Roger Horowitz and ...

The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era

Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews

The American Historical Review

American Historical Review, 2001

Transactions of The American Philosophical Society, Sep 1, 2009

IN THE LATE SUMMER OF 1853, Herman Melville spent a few months living just outside the village of... more IN THE LATE SUMMER OF 1853, Herman Melville spent a few months living just outside the village of Pittsfield in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts. Chronically short of money, he was gathering inspiration for short stories that could be sold to popular magazines. The following spring, drawing on his experiences in Pittsfield, he wrote "The Lightning-Rod Man," which appeared in the August 1854 issue oiPutnam's Monthly Magazine.1 Told from the perspective of a nameless householder, Melville's brief narrative recounts the visit of a lightning rod salesman during a summer thunderstorm. Refusing his host's offer of a place near the fire, the visitor plants himself in the center of the room, holding tightly to "a polished copper rod, four feet long, lengthwise attached to a neat wooden staff, by the insertion into two balls of greenish glass, ringed with copper bands [insulators], . . .The metal rod," Melville informs the reader, "terminated at the top tripodwise, in three keen tines, brightly gilt."2 Jupiter Tonans, as the narrator calls him, then attempts to frighten his host into buying his wares. "I warn you, sir, quit the hearth. . . . Are you so horribly ignorant then as to not know, that by far the most dangerous part of a house during such a terrific tempest as this, is the fire-place?"' Both men then fall into an argument about the efficacy of rods and the relative danger of lightning. Finally, the narrator grows so frustrated by the salesman's evasive patter that he breaks the rod and kicks his visitor out into the storm, berating him with a speech about the hubris of testing God's will by employing technology.4 This short story has become fodder for two generations of twentieth century literary critics. Most of them agree that the salesman represents benighted, mean-spirited, intolerant, evangelical Protestantism and the narrator, the forces of rationality.5 In contrast, many nineteenth century readers would have recognized the literal basis of Melville's story. 6At the time of its publication, a growing number of lightning rod salesmen had begun to wander the villages and back roads of America pitching their wares to both the wary and the unsuspecting. Melville himself supposedly encountered such a character during his Pittsfield stay.7 Lightning rod salesmen were a relatively new phenomenon in 1854. Although lightning rods had been around for nearly a century, they had just begun to change from a homemade device erected by knowledgeable farmers, mechanics, blacksmiths, and others to a commodity made in a factory and sold and installed by salesmen or lightning rod companies (fig. 8.1). This transition co-incided with what American historians have called the "market revolution"- a period in which increasing numbers of Americans (including, significantly, small-town and rural Northerners) became more tied to a cash economy and the values of a market society.8 Why would such a technology become commodified? And how did both the technology itself and the social relations around it change as this happened? To answer these questions, it is important to understand something about the nature of the technology itself. Lightning rods (or more accurately, lightning protection systems of which the rod is the most visible and symbolic part) are a safety technology (like seat belts, fire alarms, and radon detectors) that falls into a category of devices primarily useful for mediating risk. As commodities, safety technologies can be quite difficult to sell. People are hesitant to invest their hard-earned money in a form of insurance they may never need. Unlike fire or life insurance (at least in their twentieth century forms), safety technologies can also fail or, if faulty or badly designed, can actually make an accident worse. Nineteenth century lightning rod systems seem to have been particularly prone to failure (or at least the failures attracted the attention of the newspapers). Melville's narrator, for example, brings up the fact that lightning had struck a local church steeple armed with a rod only the week before- a rod the lightning rod man had in fact installed. …

Johns Hopkins University Press eBooks, 1999

Historical Social Research, 2016

Gender & History, Aug 1, 1996

... Charles Austin Bates Syndicate, New York, 1899), a collection of advertisements and advertisi... more ... Charles Austin Bates Syndicate, New York, 1899), a collection of advertisements and advertising advice intended for the use of laundry owners and ... Alice Henry, The Trade Union Woman (Appleton, New York, 1915), p. 186, cited in Sarah Eisenstein, Give us Bread but Give us ...

Journal of Design History, 2001

Abstract This paper uses the design of 'thrill rides' in early twentieth-century Americ... more Abstract This paper uses the design of 'thrill rides' in early twentieth-century American amusement parks to explore the ways in which both gender and distinations between production and consumption help shape new technologies It also offers a contribution to ...

Technology and Culture, 1997

VOL 45 Despite, and perhaps because of, the rapid growth of literature on gender and technology o... more VOL 45 Despite, and perhaps because of, the rapid growth of literature on gender and technology over the past three decades, classroom instructors are still challenged to find a suitable book of readings to present a coherent segment of this work for students. Filling this gap is the objective of Gender and Technology: A Reader. To the seven articles drawn from the special issue of Technology and Culture on gender analysis and the history of technology published in January 1997, the editors have added several equally fine and representative articles to make up the fourteen chapters in the book. The original historiographic essay, "The Shoulders We Stand On," has been brought up to date to form an important coda to the collection. Since the articles were previously published in refereed journals or distinguished collections and have therefore been vetted as scholarly works, I will not evaluate them on this score. Rather, because its intent is a teaching tool, I will assess the book and its contributions in light of this aim. It focuses on the reciprocal relationship between gender and technology in the specific historic and cultural context of North America from 1850 to 1950, during the heyday of industrial capitalism. The book starts with definitions: technology as "people's ways of making and doing things" (p. 2), and gender as "not only a way to sort people . . . [but] also a way to assign power in particular contexts," which operates at the levels of "identity" "structures and institutions" and "in symbolic and representational ways" (p. 4). Exploring the major theme of "Interrogating Boundaries," the book is divided into four parts: the "Entwined Categories" of parts 1 and 2 on how gender and technology construct each other, and parts 3 and 4 on the "Industrial Junctions" of gender and technology as technological change takes place. Several articles illustrate the ways gender analysis not only questions gender boundaries themselves but also interrogates those of race, class, and ethnicity as these identities and power configurations intersect when humans engage in making, using, and shaping technologies. Focusing on technological knowledge, which demands the integration of the technical and social, Nina Lerman examines the technical education of school children in mid-nineteenth-century Philadelphia. She finds not only the split between trades for boys and domestic-oriented subjects for girls but also racial separations within the sexual divisions: colored boys denied technical training and thus apprenticeship opportunities, colored girls slated for domestic service rather than housewifery in their own homes. Rebecca Herzig makes the use of race visible in the interwar period in her study of using x-rays for hair removal, as gendered and class standards prevail for hairless whiteness. For the meatpacking industry in the 1900s,

Choice Reviews Online, Nov 1, 1999

Science in Context, Sep 1, 2005

Page 1. EDITED BY ^r Nina E. Lerman Ruth Olden2iel Page 2. Page 3. Gender & Techn... more Page 1. EDITED BY ^r Nina E. Lerman Ruth Olden2iel Page 2. Page 3. Gender & Technology FOR THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS Thi s One N2ED-67C-UYQ4 Page 4. Page 5. Gender & Technology A READER ...

The American Historical Review, 1999

... Per capita annual retail sales, 1939-1967, Paramus and Hackensack, New Jersey, 203 8.6. Page ... more ... Per capita annual retail sales, 1939-1967, Paramus and Hackensack, New Jersey, 203 8.6. Page from Macy's annual report, 1957, 215 8.7. Cover, employee handbook, Bamberger's Department Store, 1957, 219 Page 10. Page 11. and Page 12. Page 13. Roger Horowitz and ...

The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era

Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews

The American Historical Review

American Historical Review, 2001