How Work Has Shaped the LGBTQ Community—A Review of “Queer Career: Sexuality and Work in Modern America”

Canaday, Margot. Queer Career: Sexuality and Work in Modern America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2023. Reviewed by Ryan Reft When George Chauncey published Gay New York in the early 1990s, it fundamentally shifted the historical field and, eventually, the public’s understanding of gay life at the turn of the twentieth century. Building on work […]

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Yan Zongo: A Research Note on Accra’s Strangers

The ninth and final post from our 2023 Graduate Student Blogging Contest is from Fauziyatu Moro. She writes about how stumbling onto the important mementos of immigrants, while doing fieldwork in Accra, led her to develop her thesis topic, which broadens understanding of the lives of migrants by looking at their leisure activities. To see […]

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Annexation Politics & Manufacturing Blight in a Black St. Louis Suburb

The seventh entry in this year’s Graduate Student Blogging Contest is by Bridget Laramie Kelly, who won last year’s blogging contest. In this year’s entry, she writes about how a historic Black suburb was perceived by wealthier white residents as a “stumbling block” in the way of protecting and increasing property values. To see all […]

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Stumbling into Submission: How Real Estate and Finance Capital Conquered New York City

The theme for our 2023 Graduate Student Blogging Contest is “Stumble.” Our sixth entrant, Katelin Penner, discusses how leaders in real estate and finance forced New York City government to stumble into a relationship with them that has led the city to subsidize private development projects while reducing public services that support working-class residents. To […]

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Decatur Day and the History of Serial Displacement in an Atlanta Suburb

By David S. Rotenstein “Decatur Day is part of history. It’s a part of Black history. It’s a part of the Black culture,” Chevelle Eberhart-Lee told me in a recent interview. “And if this day discontinues, it’s like erasing a part of history.” Eberhart-Lee’s family has been in Decatur for more than a century. Her […]

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The Neighborhood Nuisance: One Woman’s Crusade to Shape Brooklyn

For our 2023 Graduate Student Blogging Contest, we asked for stories about projects that faced “stumbling blocks.” There were a multitude of them placed in the path of Mabel E. Macomber, a Progressive Era playground advocate, written about by Alexandra Miller in our fifth entry. To see all entries from this year’s contest check out […]

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Bound Aid

Our fourth author in the 2023 Graduate Student Blogging Contest, Allie Goodman, describes the experience of a young woman and her family “stumbling through” efforts to obtain assistance provided by a settlement house but subject to conditions, including surveillance and extralegal work agreements. To see all entries from this year’s contest check out our round […]

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“Jackrabbiting” Away from Urban Spaces

The third entry in our 2023 Graduate Student Blogging Contest is by Julie Haltom. She writes about the myriad of stumbling blocks faced by mid-twentieth-century homesteaders in Southern California’s deserts, and the short- and long-term ramifications of the Bureau of Land Management’s Small Tract Lease program. To see all entries from this year’s contest check […]

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“Just Leave the Churches Alone”: Church Zoning Battles in Post-World War II Dallas

This second entry in our 2023 Graduate Student Blogging Contest, in which we challenged authors to write about instances where city initiatives may have “Stumbled,” is by Benjamin J. Young. He writes about the failed effort of city planners to enact zoning regulations for churches in 1950s Dallas, when faced with the nascent political clout […]

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