Synopses & Reviews
Paula Hyman broadens and revises earlier analyses of Jewish assimilation, which depicted "the Jews" as though they were all men, by focusing on women and the domestic as well as the public realms. Surveying Jewish accommodations to new conditions in Europe and the United States in the years between 1850 and 1950, she retrieves the experience of women as reflected in their writings--memoirs, newspaper and journal articles, and texts of speeches--and finds that Jewish women's patterns of assimilation differed from men's and that an examination of those differences exposes the tensions inherent in the project of Jewish assimilation.
Patterns of assimilation varied not only between men and women but also according to geographical locale and social class. Germany, France, England, and the United States offered some degree of civic equality to their Jewish populations, and by the last third of the nineteenth century, their relatively small Jewish communities were generally defined by their middle-class characteristics. In contrast, the eastern European nations contained relatively large and overwhelmingly non-middle-class Jewish population. Hyman considers how these differences between East and West influenced gender norms, which in turn shaped Jewish women's responses to the changing conditions of the modern world, and how they merged in the large communities of eastern European Jewish immigrants in the United States.
The book concludes with an exploration of the sexual politics of Jewish identity. Hyman argues that the frustration of Jewish men at their "feminization" in societies in which they had achieved political equality and economic success was manifested in their criticism of, and distancing from, Jewish women.
The book integrates a wide range of primary and secondary sources to incorporate Jewish women's history into one of the salient themes in modern Jewish history, that of assimilation. The book is addressed to a wide audience: those with an interest in modern Jewish history, in women's history, and in ethnic studies and all who are concerned with the experience and identity of Jews in the modern world.
Synopsis
Architect Carl F. Gould (1873-1939) was one of the major shapers of modern Seattle. In the early part of the century he was responsible for some of the city's most distinguished homes and public buildings. He and his partner Charles Herbert Bebb developed the University of Washington campus plan and designed and executed many of its finest buildings, including the renowned Suzzallo Library and the Henry Art Gallery. Gould founded the university's Department of Architecture; was active in the Washington State Chapter of the American Institute of Architects and the Seattle Fine Arts Society (and its successor the Seattle Art Institute); and was a member of the city's first planning commission. In this first biography of Gould the architect, teacher, civic leader, and family man, authors T. William Booth and William H. Wilson trace his life and work during almost thirty years of architectural practice in Seattle.
Utilizing numerous drawings held in family, university, and Seattle Art Museum collections, the authors explore the full range of Gould's work, from student Beaux-Arts projects to over 150 extant buildings, and other important though unbuilt projects. Gould's homes and commercial buildings are profusely illustrated. Booth and Wilson follow the evolution of Gould's ideas through his publications, lecture notes, correspondence, diaries, speeches, and public activities.
Gould moved from New York to Seattle in 1908, when the city was undergoing vigorous expansion in population, industry, and civic awareness. Well traveled and educated, the 34-year-old Gould brought with him a cosmopolitan sensibility, a gregarious nature, a highly developed civic consciousness, and talent. In the first years of his practice, domestic structures in traditional style formed the major portion of his work. His noble interiors, naturally lighted and elegantly proportioned, remain among the most satisfactory of living spaces.
Essentially a regionalist and traditionalist in the design of homes, in the last decade of his life Gould embraced modernism for commercial structures. These affirm his skill in utilizing new concepts and materials. His consummate achievement in the modern idiom was the Seattle Art Museum in Volunteer Park.
This book explores Gould's intellectual and aesthetic commitment to ideas he considered essential to the life of architecture. He advocated the concept of beauty as fundamental in architecture, comprising elements of balance, site appropriateness, suitability for the client, generosity of spirit, and a human response of ease and delight in the entire architectural ensemble. Gould worked in the great age of the generalist--he concerned himself with site, landscape, and interior design as well as with the architectural envelope. Throughout his career he searched for elements of an American and regional style.
This biography reviews Gould's life and career, capturing the setting in which he worked and thrived, and the vision and sense of obligation that supported his private and public actions.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 171-190) and index.