A Town Without Steel
eBook - PDF

A Town Without Steel

Envisioning Homestead

  1. English
  2. PDF
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

A Town Without Steel

Envisioning Homestead

About this book

Photographs by Charlee Brodsky

In 1986, with little warning, the USX Homestead Works closed. Thousands of workers who depended on steel to survive were left without work. A Town Without Steel looks at the people of Homestead as they reinvent their views of household and work and place in this world. The book details the modifications and revisions of domestic strategies in a public crisis. In some ways unique, and in some ways typical of American industrial towns, the plight of Homestead sheds light on social, cultural, and political developments of the late twentieth century. In this anthropological and photographic account of a town facing the crisis of deindustrialization, A Town Without Steel focuses on families. Reminiscent of Margaret Byington and Lewis Hine's approach in Homestead, Charlee Brodsky's photographs document the visual dimension of change in Homestead. The mill that dominated the landscape transformed to a vast, empty lot; a crowded commercial street turns into a ghost town; and an abundance of well-kept homes become an abandoned street of houses for sale. The individual narratives and family snapshots, Modell's interpretations, and Brodsky's photographs all evoke the tragedy and the resilience of a town whose primary source of self-identification no longer exists.

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Yes, you can access A Town Without Steel by Judith Modell in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in History & North American History. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Contents
  2. Preface. Envisioning Homestead: Anthropology and Photography
  3. Acknowledgments
  4. 1. Envisioning Homestead: The Place
  5. 2. Setting the Stage: Three Generations in a Mill Town
  6. 3. The Curtain Comes Down: Living Without a Mill in a Mill Town
  7. 4. Women's Activities and Men's Work: The Division of Labor in a Steel Town
  8. 5. Raising a New Generation in an Ex-Steel Town
  9. 6. Harmony and Discord: Interpretations of Ethnicity and Religion in a Steel Town
  10. 7. Steel and Segregation: Race Relations in Homestead
  11. 8. Outside the Mill: Recreation and Residence in Homestead
  12. 9. Responses in the Valley: The Aftermath of the Closing
  13. 10. Beyond the Closing: Changes in Homestead
  14. Notes
  15. Bibliography
  16. Index