The authors of \u201cMoving Beyond Stereotypes of the Gilded Age\u201d and the \u201cIntroduction\u201d from The Gilded Age and Progressive Era: A Student Companion<\/i> approach discussing the Gilded Age in two distinct ways.\u00a0 Calhoun provides readers with an outline for an argument calling for a reevaluation of the stereotypes associated with the Gilded Age, while the author(s) of the \u201cIntroduction\u201d briefly summarizes key events and issues of the period, presumably in order to contextualize arguments he will make later in the book.\u00a0 Because the authors have different reasons for writing, they present different types of central questions.\u00a0 I find the picture a reader gets when studying these two texts together interesting.<\/p>\n

Calhoun implicitly poses several questions about the stereotypes surrounding the Gilded Age: what are the stereotypes, why do they exist, to what extent are they accurate, and why should the nuances matter? These are all historiographical questions, although in order to understand the answers to them, Calhoun provides readers with some information about the period itself.\u00a0 In this sense, information about the Gilded Age is provided as a vehicle for furthering an argument, and not for the sake of defining the term.\u00a0 For example, in Calhoun\u2019s account of the creation of the term \u201cGilded Age,\u201d he explains that the authors of the book by the same name caricaturized the corruption of the age, and we should therefore distinguish the Gilded Age from its negative connotation.\u00a0 Here Calhoun draws a line between how authors of the time saw their contemporaries, and how we as historians should see them. \u00a0What frustrates me about this reading is Calhoun\u2019s failure to explain why the nuances surrounding the stereotypes of the Gilded Age matter.\u00a0 He argues that historians and students lose something if we understand the Gilded Age as gilded, but does not do more than generalize about why that is.<\/p>\n

The author of the \u201cIntroduction\u201d presents a number of pervading issues of the Gilded Age: what is the government\u2019s role in regulating the economy, how do expansion and imperialism affect international relations, how can we maintain democracy in unstable times, etc.\u00a0 Although he does proffer a few historiographical questions like \u201chow can we define a period of time?\u201d he does so only to provide his own answer to the question and not to explore the topic in any detail.\u00a0 However, I enjoyed reading this text because the pervading questions of the age reveal an advanced public consciousness that refutes my notions about the corruption of the period, and as a result answers Calhoun\u2019s question about why the Gilded Age should be studied without any preconceived notions.<\/p>\n

I enjoyed Nate\u2019s post<\/a> about interdisciplinary studies, and agree that it is impossible to study any event without considering it from several points of view.\u00a0 I would add that it is also impossible to read a text without regard to others we read, as putting texts in conversation can provide us with answers to questions we would not even have if we read each text in a vacuum.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The authors of \u201cMoving Beyond Stereotypes of the Gilded Age\u201d and the \u201cIntroduction\u201d from The Gilded Age and Progressive Era: A Student Companion approach discussing the Gilded Age in two distinct ways.\u00a0 Calhoun provides readers with an outline for an argument calling for a reevaluation of the stereotypes associated with the Gilded Age, while the … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Approaching the Gilded Age: Argumentative vs. Informative”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[204,229,389],"class_list":["post-62","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-historiography","tag-intertextual","tag-stereotypes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his254-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his254-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his254-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his254-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his254-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his254-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1012,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his254-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62\/revisions\/1012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his254-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his254-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his254-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}