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WORK TITLE: Charleston and the Emergence of Middle-Class Culture in the Revolutionary Era
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
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CITY: Minneapolis
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http://independent.academia.edu/JenniferGoloboy * http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/guide-to-literary-agents/new-literary-agent-alert-jennie-goloboy-of-red-sofa-literary * https://thewayofimprovement.com/2016/10/20/the-authors-corner-with-jennifer-goloboy/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: n 2008004704
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/n2008004704
HEADING: Goloboy, Jennifer L.
000 00364cz a2200121n 450
001 7408055
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008 080122n| acannaabn |n aaa
010 __ |a n 2008004704
040 __ |a DLC |b eng |c DLC
100 1_ |a Goloboy, Jennifer L.
670 __ |a Perspectives in American social history industrial revolution, c2008: |b CIP t.p. (Jennifer L. Goloboy)
953 __ |a se40
PERSONAL
Female.
EDUCATION:Harvard, Ph.D.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer. Independent scholar specializing in the history of the early American middle class.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Jennifer L. Goloboy is a writer and independent scholar specializing in the history of the early American middle class. She received her Ph.D. in the history of American civilization from Harvard University. Goloboy lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Charleston and the Emergence of Middle-Class Culture in the Revolutionary Era
In Charleston and the Emergence of Middle-Class Culture in the Revolutionary Era, Goloboy examines the financial growth of nineteenth century Charleston, South Carolina, to illustrate the ways in which middle-class culture emerged out of market forces. She posits the notion that middle-class identity is a fluid concept, rather than one bound by specific character traits or codes of morality.
In redefining middle-class emergence, Goloboy questions the claim that the early middle class was inherently morally bound. Vaughn Scribner, writing in the Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, noted how Goloboy underscores that middle-class life was “largely based upon men’s ability to alter their own values and practices to most effectively navigate the shifting market economy.” This assertion is a foil to previous academic perspectives, which highlight unwavering morality in middle-class development.
Writing in Journal of Southern History, Nora Doyle asserted: “Goloboy’s study offers an important challenge to the vision of a static middle-class identity that has emerged from scholarship on the antebellum North.” Much of historical scholarly work depicts the middle class as northern, socially progressive, and defined by an impulse toward moral integrity, with an emphasis on self-restraint. Goloboy asserts that middle-class identity was a result of external economic factors, and therefore subject to change and shift in response to the economic climate.
Goloboy opens the book in colonial Charleston. She describes a society in which merhants’ survival was dependent on their relationship-building skills. Success was the result of a combination of expert knowledge of business and deference to the established power structure. These traits, along with successful interpersonal relationships between merchants, led to business prosperity.
Following the Revolution, the market fell into economic chaos, and the characteristics that earlier would have led a middle-class merchant to success were left in the past. With money tight, rashness, risky business gambles, aggression, and scheming became the defining traits of successful merchants. This new middle class differed from the prewar class in its ambition as well, with successful merchants seeking political clout rather than maintaining deference toward class structure.
A shift occurred again, Goloboy explains, following the War of 1812. The merchant class had developed a reputation for being dishonest, sneaky, and aggressive. Doyle explained that the “merchants self-consciously developed a new image intended to restore their social standing.”
It was only after the war and the intentional merchant class image reformation that the widely accepted depiction of the middle class, as professional, nice, and moral, began to form. Goloboy’s book focuses specifically on middle-class emergence in the southern United States. Thus, the described transformations in middle-class identity are not necessarily universal to other regions of the country.
Industrial Revolution
Goloboy’s Industrial Revolution: People and Perspectives examines the history, key figures, and development of the Industrial Revolution. Events are presented chronologically. Each chapter contains two biographies, highlighting individuals that were influential for the development of the Industrial Revolution in that period.
The book includes explanations of lifestyle changes that occurred during each period, suggesting the causes for industrial developments. Goloboy’s chapter titles, such as “White Male Artisans,” “Free Women Workers,” and “Slaves,” are indicative of the focus of the book. While Goloboy details historical events and timelines, the book is also focused on lifestyle and individuals, looking at how individual Americans influenced or were affected by the industrial developments.
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Journal of Southern History, Volume 83, number 3, 2017, Nora Doyle, review of Charleston and the Emergence of Middle-Class Culture in the Revolutionary Era, p. 665.
Reference & Research Book News, February, 2009, review of Industrial Revolution: People and Perspectives.
Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, Volume 115, number 4, 2017, Vaughn Scribner, review of Charleston and the Emergence of Middle-Class Culture in the Revolutionary Era, pp. 670-672.
School Library Journal, June, 2009, Beth McGuire, review of Industrial Revolution, p. 72.*
Jennifer L. Goloboy is an independent scholar based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, specializing in the history of the early American middle class. She is the editor of Industrial Revolution: People and Perspectives. Goloboy earned her PhD in the history of American civilization from Harvard University.
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Print Marked Items
Charleston and the Emergence of
Middle-Class Culture in the
Revolutionary Era
Nora Doyle
Journal of Southern History.
83.3 (Aug. 2017): p665+.
COPYRIGHT 2017 Southern Historical Association
http://www.uga.edu/~sha
Full Text:
Charleston and the Emergence of Middle-Class Culture in the Revolutionary Era. By Jennifer L.
Goloboy. Early American Places. (Athens: University of Georgia Press. 2016. Pp. xiv, 197.
$54.95, ISBN 978-0-8203-4996-1.)
Jennifer L. Goloboy seeks to reevaluate the history of the American middle class by exploring
how market forces defined middle-class identity. In doing so, Goloboy challenges the vision of
the middle class that has dominated historical scholarship. She notes that historians have
typically painted the middle class as northern, as rooted in progressive social causes and
Protestant morality, as characterized by an ethic of self-restraint, and as emerging more or less
fully fledged in the 1830s. To counter this image, Goloboy offers a portrait of Charleston, South
Carolina, merchants as exemplars of a middle-class identity that began to emerge as early as the
late colonial era and underwent several periods of change in response to market forces. "To be
middle class," she argues, "was to be possessed of the values that enabled survival in the market
economy, and these values shifted under external pressure" (pp. 4-5).
Goloboy begins her story with a colonial generation of Charleston merchants whose success
depended on their ability to cultivate personal relationships with business partners. They fostered
these relationships by demonstrating deference to hierarchy alongside expert knowledge of
business. Analyzing the correspondence of these men, Goloboy argues that they worked to
embody "middleclass values such as diligence, deference, and cosmopolitanism" (p. 30). But the
Revolution and its aftermath wreaked havoc on this middle-class ethic of hard work, discipline,
and deference. In the midst of economic tumult, conservative business practices that had served
merchants well led to financial ruin, while risky practices were richly rewarded. New
opportunities in the postwar years raised the fortunes of men who had previously been at the
margins of trade and created a new generation of merchants who valued rashness, mthlessness,
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and a rather coarse and exuberant masculinity. Moreover, as political power became increasingly
accessible to men of the middle class in the aftermath of the Revolution, these merchants sought
political clout as well, thus definitively separating themselves from the colonial generation of
merchants who had studiously kept their place in the social hierarchy.
As Goloboy argues, this new version of the middle class "should lead us to question our
assumptions about the inherent progressivism, morality, and, above all, niceness of middle-class
culture" (p. 54). In fact, as Goloboy shows, a middle class defined by "niceness" only evolved in
the years after the War of 1812. Trade declined precipitously during this conflict and with it the
reputation of the merchant class, which was increasingly impugned as aggressive, dishonest, and
uncouth. Consequently, Goloboy argues, in the aftermath of the war, merchants self-consciously
developed a new image intended to restore their social standing. As a result, "the ideal
antebellum businessman was professional, restrained, and self-consciously moral," thus aligning
him with the values historians have most frequently associated with the nineteenth-century
middle class (p. 122).
Goloboy's study offers an important challenge to the vision of a static middle-class identity that
has emerged from scholarship on the antebellum North. Instead, she argues that we should view
the middle class as dynamic and rapidly evolving in response to market forces. However,
Goloboy's narrative also leaves some lingering questions; perhaps most important is the question
of whether this rapidly evolving middle-class identity was uniquely southern (or even
Charlestonian) or reflected national trends. Goloboy ties her arguments to specific market
changes in Charleston and South Carolina, leaving the reader to wonder whether the evolution of
Charleston's merchants from deferential, to rash, to moral can be connected to broader market
forces and to a larger regional or national middle-class culture. Nevertheless, Goloboy's work
raises important questions and offers a strong case for the importance of examining middle-class
identity through the lens of the market.
Nora Doyle
Salem College
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Doyle, Nora. "Charleston and the Emergence of Middle-Class Culture in the Revolutionary Era."
Journal of Southern History, vol. 83, no. 3, 2017, p. 665+. General OneFile,
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u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=34217a1b. Accessed 25 Dec. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A501078125
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Industrial revolution; people and
perspectives
Reference & Research Book News.
24.1 (Feb. 2009):
COPYRIGHT 2009 Ringgold, Inc.
http://www.ringgold.com/
Full Text:
9781598840650
Industrial revolution; people and perspectives.
Ed. by Jennifer L. Goloboy.
ABC-CLIO
2008
224 pages
$85.00
Hardcover
Perspectives in American social history
HC105
The cottage factory was declining in favor of mass production, and also declining was the
relationship between those who owned the cottage and those who worked for them. At the same
time, regional and global economic forces were creating conflicts, overt or hidden, between the
working class and the middle class, natives from immigrants, and free men from slaves. Aimed
at the general readership, this looks at how ordinary people from all parts of American society
influenced and were affected by each other and pivotal events in U.S. history. Contributors
examine the characteristics of white male artisans, free women workers, slaves, manufacturers,
consumers, readers and writers, the working class, and the middle class, with boxed material
about key figures, events and concepts. Includes primary documents including reports on
manufacturing poetry, essays by such literary lights as Melville, period illustrations and a
glossary.
([c]2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Industrial revolution; people and perspectives." Reference & Research Book News, Feb. 2009.
General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A196720283/ITOF?
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Goloboy, Jennifer L., ed.: Industrial
Revolution: People and Perspectives
Beth McGuire
School Library Journal.
55.6 (June 2009): p72.
COPYRIGHT 2009 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc.
No redistribution permitted.
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
GOLOBOY, Jennifer L., ed. Industrial Revolution: People and Perspectives. 224p. (Perspectives
in American Social History Series). notes. ABC-CLIO. Tr $85. ISBN 978-1-59884-065-0. LC
2008002366.
WYATT, Lee T., III. The Industrial Revolution. 263p. (Greenwood Guides to Historic Events,
1500-1900 Series). charts. Web sites. Greenwood. Tr $45. ISBN 978-0-313-33769-7. LC
2008029501. ea vol: photos, reprods, bibliog, chron. index. CIP. 2008.
Gr 9 Up--Goloboy follows her opening chronology with a section called "Work and Daily Life."
Other chapters cover "White Male Artisans," "Free Women Workers," "Slaves,"
"Manufacturers," and "Consumers." The second part, "Politics of the Public Sphere," provides
chapters on "Readers and Writers," "Working Class," "Middle Class," and "Immigrants." This
work approaches history from the ground level, and the two short biographies in each chapter
(Solomon Northup, author of Twelve Years a Slave; Chauncey Jerome, manufacturer of metal
clocks) reflect this nature. Wyatt's chronology covers from von Guericke's 1654 atmosphericpressure
machine experiments to Queen Victoria's 1901 death. Opening chapters, "Historical
Overview," "The Way We Were: On the Eve of the Industrial Revolution," and "The Agricultural
Revolution in Great Britain," set the stage, and the era is addressed in chapters on Britain, the
United States, mainland Europe, and the non-Western world. Fifteen biographies (Henry
Bessemer, Edmund Cartwright) and 21 annotated primary sources (excerpts from Jacob Riis's
How the Other Half Lives; a period article on railroad statistics) are provided. The
straightforward, unbiased, but scholarly works are accompanied by source notes and black-andwhite
images. Goloboy's volume incorporates biographies in the chapters that cover the
individual's lifetime, whereas Wyatt offers more detailed biographies in a separate section. Both
books detail the lifestyle changes that characterized the era and offer numerous viewpoints on it.
They are worthy general purchases depending on need. While Goloboy focuses on the Industrial
Revolution in the United States, Wyatt also looks at the period prior to it and addresses global
ramifications.--Beth McGuire, Fannett-Metal School District, Willow Hill, PA
McGuire, Beth
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
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McGuire, Beth. "Goloboy, Jennifer L., ed.: Industrial Revolution: People and Perspectives."
School Library Journal, June 2009, p. 72. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A201711815/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=61a1b5d4. Accessed 25 Dec. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A201711815