Ardis Cameron – författare

Ardis Cameron focuses on the textile workers' strikes of 1882 and 1912 in this examination of class and gender formation as drawn from the experience and language of the working-class neighborhoods of Lawrence, Massachusetts. Using the neighborhood perspective to explore the role of women in worker militancy, Cameron reveals the importance of female networks and organizational life in working-class culture and politics. Unionized women were labeled "radicals of the worst sort" because, in fighting for equality, they also rebelled against traditional economic and sexual hierarchies. Oral histories and detailed maps illuminate the setting and the dramatic story behind the famous Bread and Roses strike of 1912.

Published in 1956, Peyton Place became a bestseller and a literary phenomenon. A lurid and gripping story of murder, incest, female desire, and social injustice, it was consumed as avidly by readers as it was condemned by critics and the clergy. Its author, Grace Metalious, a housewife who grew up in poverty in a New Hampshire mill town and had aspired to be a writer from childhood, loosely based the novel's setting, characters, and incidents on real-life places, people, and events. The novel sold more than 30 million copies in hardcover and paperback, and it was adapted into a hit Hollywood film in 1957 and a popular television series that aired from 1964 to 1969. More than half a century later, the term "Peyton Place" is still in circulation as a code for a community harboring sordid secrets. In Unbuttoning America, Ardis Cameron mines extensive interviews, fan letters, and archival materials including contemporary cartoons and cover images from film posters and foreign editions to tell how the story of a patricide in a small New England village circulated over time and became a cultural phenomenon. She argues that Peyton Place, with its frank discussions of poverty, sexuality, class and ethnic discrimination, and small-town hypocrisy, was more than a tawdry potboiler. Metalious's depiction of how her three central female characters come to terms with their identity as women and sexual beings anticipated second-wave feminism. More broadly, Cameron asserts, the novel was also part of a larger postwar struggle over belonging and recognition. Fictionalizing contemporary realities, Metalious pushed to the surface the hidden talk and secret rebellions of a generation no longer willing to ignore the disparities and domestic constraints of Cold War America.Open Access edition funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities

Looking for America: The Visual Production of Nation and People is a groundbreaking collection that explores the “visual” in defining the kaleidoscope of American experience and American identity in the 20th century. Covers enduringly important topics in American history: nationhood, class, politics of identity, and the visual mapping of “others” Includes editorial introductions, suggested readings, a primer on how to "read" an image, and a guide to visual archives and collections Well-illustrated book for those in American Studies and related fields eager to incorporate the visual into their teaching—and telling—of the American story.

Looking for America: The Visual Production of Nation and People is a groundbreaking collection that explores the “visual” in defining the kaleidoscope of American experience and American identity in the 20th century. Covers enduringly important topics in American history: nationhood, class, politics of identity, and the visual mapping of “others” Includes editorial introductions, suggested readings, a primer on how to "read" an image, and a guide to visual archives and collections Well-illustrated book for those in American Studies and related fields eager to incorporate the visual into their teaching—and telling—of the American story.