Cultural Studies of Delaware and the Eastern Shore – serie

A Delaware Album, 1900-1930 contains over 300 postcard photographs from the entire state taken during the period from 1900 to 1930. Arranged by subjects—City and Town Views; Delaware Beaches; Amusements; Industry and Agriculture; Signs of the Times; Trains, Trolleys, and Automobiles; Water Transportation; Schools; Religion; Businesses; Hotels and Motels—each photo has a caption ranging from a sentence or two to several paragraphs. The book''s introduction details how the cards were produced, analyzes the subject matter depicted on the cards, documents the history of several of the most prominent local photographers in the state whose work is found almost only on postcards, and traces the evolution and popularization of postcard photography. Through the photographs readers can witness the development of Delaware agriculture and fisheries, the expansion of the railroad into southern Delaware, the declining days of steamship service on Delaware rivers and creeks, the fate of Middletown''s last trolley, and Delaware''s unsuccessful campaign against "King Alcohol." They can see how Delawareans worshiped, worked, and shopped. They can visit local amusement parks and beaches from New Castle county to Sussex county. For the early decades of the twentieth century the postcard recorded every aspect of American life. As local historians will tell you, the photographic record of small town America during the period from 1900 to 1930 exists almost only on postcards. That is why historical societies, libraries, and museums have begun to amass postcard collections. In the last twenty years, historians and scholars have increasingly turned to the postcard as a way of seeing what our past literally looked like, what we enjoyed doing, where we worked and played, how we viewed one other, what we thought was important, and what prejudices we held.

The Delaware Naturalist Handbook is the primary public face of a major university-led public educational outreach and community engagement initiative. This statewide master naturalist certification program is designed to train hundreds of citizen scientists, K–12 environmental educators, ecological restoration volunteers, and habitat managers each year. The initiative is conducted in collaboration with multiple disciplines at the University of Delaware, the University of Delaware Cooperative Extension, the Delaware Environmental Institute (DENIN), the state Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation (DNREC), the state Division of Parks, the state Forest Service, the state Division of Fish and Wildlife, and local nonprofit educational institutions, including the Mount Cuba Center, the Delaware Nature Society and Ashland Nature Center, Delaware Wildlands, Northeast Climate Hub, Center for Inland Bays, and White Clay Creek State Park.Published by University of Delaware Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.

Votes for Delaware Women is the first book-length study of the woman suffrage struggle in Delaware, placing it within the rich historical scholarship of the national story. It looks especially at why, despite decades of suffrage organizing and an epic struggle in Dover, in the spring of 1920, the legislature refused to make Delaware the final state to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment. The book traces how, starting in the 1890s, white and African American women organized and advocated for "votes for women," first by revising the state constitution and then through a federal amendment. Within the state's two major suffrage organizations, the Delaware Equal Suffrage Association (DESA), an affiliate of the National American Women Suffrage Association (NAWSA), and the Delaware branch of the National Woman's Party (NWP), divisions over strategy and tactics widened into fissures, especially during the Great War, making it difficult to unite in a common endeavor. Delaware was unusual as a border state that was segregated but did not disfranchise African Americans. In the end, the book argues, a combination of racial and class issues doomed the ratification effort.

Twenty years ago, Margaret Mulrooney's history of the community of Irish immigrant workers at the du Pont powder yards, Black Powder, White Lace, was published to wide acclaim. Now, as much of the materials Mulrooney used in her research are now electronically available to the public, and as debates about immigration continue to rage, a new edition of the book is being published to remind readers of the rich materials available on the du Pont workers, and of Mulrooney's powerful conclusions about immigrant communities in America. Explosives work was dangerous, but the du Ponts provided a host of benefits to their workers. As a result, the Irish remained loyal to their employers, convinced by their everyday experiences that their interests and the du Ponts' were one and the same. Employing a wide array of sources, Mulrooney turns away from the worksite and toward the domestic sphere, revealing that powder mill families asserted their distinctive ethno-religious heritage at the same time as they embraced what U.S. capitalism had to offer.

Twenty years ago, Margaret Mulrooney's history of the community of Irish immigrant workers at the du Pont powder yards, Black Powder, White Lace, was published to wide acclaim. Now, as much of the materials Mulrooney used in her research are now electronically available to the public, and as debates about immigration continue to rage, a new edition of the book is being published to remind readers of the rich materials available on the du Pont workers, and of Mulrooney's powerful conclusions about immigrant communities in America. Explosives work was dangerous, but the du Ponts provided a host of benefits to their workers. As a result, the Irish remained loyal to their employers, convinced by their everyday experiences that their interests and the du Ponts' were one and the same. Employing a wide array of sources, Mulrooney turns away from the worksite and toward the domestic sphere, revealing that powder mill families asserted their distinctive ethno-religious heritage at the same time as they embraced what U.S. capitalism had to offer.