American Urban History

Background readings from the Oxford Encyclopedia of American Urban History or other reference book, to provide context on the topics for the week. Note that while these articles tend to be relatively uncontroversial in their coverage of the topics, no source is absolutely “neutral” or free from interpretive slant, and you may at times find that the authors have allowed their own historical or political agendas to slip into the discussion; if so, note it, reflect on it, and bring your thoughts to our discussion.

Academic articles or book chapters written by historians recounting, describing, analyzing, interpreting, revealing, or otherwise “making sense” of some aspect of the past, related to the week’s topic.

Week #: 1 · Topics: Introduction · READINGS: No readings

Testimony of Richard Croker to the Mazet Committee (1900).

Hays, Samuel P. “The Politics of Reform in Municipal Government in the Progressive Era.” Pacific Northwest Quarterly (October 1964): 157-168.

Merton, Robert K. Social Theory and Social Structure . New York, NY: Free Press, 1968, pp. 60-82. ISBN: 9780029211304.

Gusfield, Joseph R. Symbolic Crusade . Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1966, Introduction, chapters 1 and 7. ISBN: 9780252745188.

Fogelson, Robert M. Big-City Police . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977, chapters 1-5, and 11. ISBN: 9780674072817.

Clark, Ramsey. Crime in America: Observations on its Nature, Causes, Prevention, and Control . Introduction by Tom Wicker. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1970, chapter 9. ISBN: 9780671204075.

Wilson, Jerry V. Police Report . Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1975, chapter 8. ISBN: 9780316944939.

Week #: 4 · Topics: Discussion of Paper Topics · READINGS: No readings

Ryerson, Ellen. The Best Laid Plans: America’s Juvenile Court Experiment . New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 1978, chapters 1, 2 and 4. ISBN: 9780809029051.

Gault, In re. “President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice.” Task Force Report: Juvenile Delinquency . Washington, DC, 1967, pp. 57-76.

New York State Supreme Court, Appellate Division. In the Matter of the Investigation of the Magistrates’ Courts . New York, NY: Lawyers Press, Inc., 1932, pp. 13-56.

Smith, Reginald Heber. “Small Claims Procedure is Succeeding.” Journal of the America Judicature Society 8: 247-257.

Pagter, Carl R., Robert McCloskey, and Mitchel Reinis. “The California Small Claims Court.” California Law Review 52: 876-898.

Schrag, Philip. “Bleak House 1968: A Report on Consumer Test Litigation.” N. Y. U. Law Review 44: 115-158.

Rice, J. M. “Our Public School System.” Essays on Boston and New York City from The Forum (1894).

Tyack, David B. The One Best System . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974, parts 3 and 4. ISBN: 9780674637801.

Rogers, David. 110 Livingston Street . New York, NY: Percheron Press, 2006, chapter 8. ISBN: 9780975273838.

Ehrenhalt, Alan. The Lost City: Discovering the Forgotten Virtues of Community in the Chicago of the 1950s . New York, NY: Basic Books, 1995, chapter 11, pp. 229-249. ISBN: 9780465041923.

Chapman, Paul D. Schools as Sorters: Lewis M. Terman, Applied Psychology, and the Intelligence Testing Movement, 1890-1930 . New York, NY: New York University Press, 1988, chapters 2 and 4, pp. 39-64, and 83-106. ISBN: 9780814714201.

Katz, Michael B. In the Shadow of the Poorhouse . New York, NY: Basic Books, 1987, chapter 1-3. ISBN: 9780465032259. (Out of print.)

Melville, Herman. The Piazza Tales . New York, NY: Hendrick’s House, Inc., 1962, pp. 19-65. ISBN: 9780875320052.

Elman, Richard. The Poorhouse State . New York, NY: Dell, 1966, part 1, chapters 1 and 3.

Moynihan, Daniel Patrick. “The Crisis in Welfare.” In The Public Interest . Winter 1968, pp. 3-29.

Holt, Glen E. “The Changing Perception of Urban Pathology: An Essay on the Development of Mass Transit in the United States.” In Cities in American History . Edited by Kenneth T. Jackson, and Stanley K. Schultz. New York, NY: Knopf, 1972, pp. 324-343. ISBN: 9780394475585.

Barrett, Paul. “Public Policy and Private Choice: Mass Transit and the Automobile in Chicago Between the Wars.” In Business History Review (Winter 1975): 473-497.

Mallach, Stanley. “The Origins of the Decline of Urban Mass Transportation in the United States.” Urbanism Past and Present (1979): 1-17.

Fogelson, Robert M. The Fragmented Metropolis: Los Angeles, 1850-1930 . Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993, chapter 8. ISBN: 9780520082304.

———. Downtown: Its Rise and Fall, 1880-1950 . New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003, chapter 2. ISBN: 9780300098273.

Caro, Robert A. The Power Broker . New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1975, chapters 28, 33, 37, and 48. ISBN: 9780394720241.

Fogelson, Robert M. Downtown: Its Rise and Fall, 1880-1950 . New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003, chapter 6. ISBN: 9780300098273.

Riis, Jacob. How the Other Half Lives . New York, NY: Dover, 1971, chapters 1-8 and 21. ISBN: 9780486220123.

Lubove, Roy. The Progressives and the Slums: Tenement House Reform in New York City 1890-1917 . Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1962, chapters 2, 4, and 5. (Out of print.)

Tenement House Department and Tenement House Committee of the Charity Organization Society, For You . New York, 1917.

Modell, John, and Tamara K. Hareven. “Urbanization and the Malleable Household: An Examination of Boarding and Lodging in American Families.” In Family and Kin in Urban Communities, 1700-1930 . Edited by Tamara K. Hareven. New York, NY: Franklin Watts, 1977, pp. 164-186. ISBN: 9780531053881.

Firestone, Cinda. Attica , 1973. (Film)

Rothman, David J. The Discovery of the Asylum . Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Co., 1998, pp. 57-109. ISBN: 9780673393494. (Out of print.)

Sykes, Gresham. The Society of Captives . New York, NY: Atheneum, 1965, chapters 1, 2, and 4. (Out of print.)

Testimony of Robert Matthews, in U.S. House of Representatives, Select Committee on Crime, Hearings on American Prisons in Turmoil. Washington, DC, 1972, part 1, pp. 750-773.

Rosenberg, Charles. The Care of Strangers: The Rise of America’s Hospital System . New York, NY: Basic Books, 1992, chapters 4-10. ISBN: 9780465008773.

Coser, Ruth. Life in the Ward . East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 1962, chapters 3, and 6.

Glaser, William H. “American and European Hospitals.” In The Hospital in Modern Society . Edited by Eliot Friedson. Glencoe, IL: Free Press of Glencoe, 1963, pp. 37-72. ISBN: 9780029106907.

Sloane, David Charles, and Beverlie Conant Sloane. Medicine Moves to the Mall . Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002, chapter 1. ISBN: 9780801870644.

Veblen, Thorstein. The Higher Learning in America . New York, NY: Augustus M. Kelley Publishers, 1971, chapters 1, and 3. ISBN: 9780678000557.

Veysey, Lawrence R. The Emergence of the American University . Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1965, chapter 5. ISBN: 9780226854557. (Out of print.)

Downs, Donald Alexander. The New Politics of Pornography . Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1989, chapter 1. ISBN: 9780226161624.

MacKinnon, Catherine A. “Not a Moral Issue.” Yale Law & Policy Review (Spring 1984): 321-345.

Emerson, Thomas I. “Pornography and the First Amendment: A Reply to Professor MacKinnon.” Yale Law & Policy Review (Fall 1984): 130-143.

Dershowitz, Alan. Untitled Article in Film Comment, December 1984, 33-34.

Koberstein, Jennifer A. “Colleges Debating Their Proper Role in Curbing Pornography on Campus,” Chronicle of Higher Education, July 30, 1986, 27-28.

Week #: 14 · Topics: Conclusion · READINGS: No readings