Age in America: The Colonial Era to the Present
Age in America: The Colonial Era to the Present
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Abstract
This volume brings together scholars of childhood, adulthood, and old age to explore how and why particular ages—such as sixteen, twenty-one, and sixty-five—have come to define the rights and obligations of American citizens. From the colonial period to the present, Americans have relied on chronological age to determine matters as diverse as who can cast a vote, marry, buy a drink, or qualify for a pension. Contributors to this volume explore what meanings people in the past ascribed to specific ages and whether or not earlier Americans believed the same things about particular ages as we do. The means by which Americans imposed chronological boundaries upon the ongoing and variable process of growing up and growing old offers a paradigmatic example of how people construct cultural meaning and social hierarchy from embodied experience. Further, as the contributors to this volume argue, chronological age always intersects with other socially constructed categories such as gender, race, and sexuality. What makes age different from other categories such as whiteness and maleness is that, if we are lucky to live long enough, we will all pass through the chronological markers that define us as first young, then middle aged, and finally old.
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Front Matter
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Introduction
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Part I Age in Early America
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Part II Age in the Long Nineteenth Century
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3
“If You Have the Right to Vote at 21 Years, Then I Have”: Age and Equal Citizenship in the Nineteenth-Century United States
Corinne T. Field
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4
A Birthday Like None Other: Turning Twenty-One in the Age of Popular Politics
Jon Grinspan
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5
Statutory Marriage Ages and the Gendered Construction of Adulthood in the Nineteenth Century
Nicholas L. Syrett
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6
From Family Bibles to Birth Certificates: Young People, Proof of Age, and American Political Cultures, 1820–1915
Shane Landrum
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7
“Rendered More Useful”: Child Labor and Age Consciousness in the Long Nineteenth Century
James D. Schmidt
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8
“A Day too Late”: Age, Immigration Quotas, and Racial Exclusion
Yuki Oda
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3
“If You Have the Right to Vote at 21 Years, Then I Have”: Age and Equal Citizenship in the Nineteenth-Century United States
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Part III Age in Modern America
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9
Age and Retirement: Major Issues in the American Experience
William Graebner
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10
“The Proper Age for Suffrage”: Vote 18 and the Politics of Age from World War II to the Age of Aquarius
Rebecca de Schweinitz
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11
“Old Enough to Live”: Age, Alcohol, and Adulthood in the United States, 1970–1984
Timothy Cole
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12
Age and Identity: Reaching Thirteen in the Lives of American Jews
Stuart Schoenfeld
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13
A Chicana Third Space Feminist Reading of Chican@ Life Cycle Markers
Norma E. Cantú
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14
Delineating Old Age: From Functional Status to Bureaucratic Criteria
W. Andrew Achenbaum
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9
Age and Retirement: Major Issues in the American Experience
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End Matter
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