Karen V. Hansen

Sociability and Gendered Spheres: Visiting Patterns in Nineteenth-Century New England

In her diary entry of 24 December 1862, Harriet Anne Severance, a domestic worker, detailed the activity surrounding the seasonal slaughter of hogs: ‘‘It has been grease, grease all day, the hog is most taken care of. Henry, Meroa & I got started forMr. Henry’s this afternoon,Wells came after Henry overtook us at Uncle Chester’s, took him home with him, & Meroa and I went on had a good visit, & we have been to Mr. Child’s this evening.’’ While her day was unusually busy, it was not unusual in the way that it intertwined the lives of many people, men and women included.

Historical Sociology and the Prism of Biography: Lillian Wineman and the Trade in Dakota Beadwork, 1893–1929

How can researchers learn about the social lives of people and cultures who leave little or no written record of their lives? This article introduces the idea that one persons partially documented life story can serve as a kind of prismatic tool, illuminating a multitude of historical and sociological paths of inquiry about her contemporaries which might otherwise prove elusive. Breaking with traditional historical and sociological methods, it shifts the focus from how biography can illustrate social theory or serve as a case to represent a group, treating it instead as a critical “point of entry” into a newly refracted, freshly observed array of social processes and relationships.

Surveying the dead informant: Quantitative analysis and historical interpretation

We recently began a study of a set of interesting theoretical questions that grew out of an analysis of the diaries of working people in nineteenthcentury New England. As we sought to make the transition from an indepth interpretive study to a specific quantitative test of several hypotheses, we ran into complications. Rather than present the findings of our quantitative study, this article discusses the methodological challenges we faced in the process of designing and implementing the study. In part these problems are unique to historical interpretation, and in part they are endemic to simplifying complex lives so they fit into precise and narrow categories for statistical analysis.

Immigrants as settler colonists: boundary work between Dakota Indians and white immigrant settlers

ABSTRACT With territorial expansion of the US came dispossession of Native Americans, supported by policies that made white immigrants settler colonists. On Indian reservations, the federal government encouraged land-taking by allotting land to Indians and making land available to homesteaders, many of them recent immigrants. Few scholars have studied relationships between Natives and newcomers. This paper draws on the concept of boundary work to analyse intergroup relations at the Spirit Lake Dakota Indian Reservation, where white settlers (principally Scandinavians) lived alongside Dakotas. To survive and coexist, Indians and immigrants marked and interpreted boundaries of belonging and exclusion. By establishing common practices, they enacted a mutuality that both reflected and subverted racial–ethnic hierarchies.

“HELPED PUT IN A QUILT:” Men's Work and Male Intimacy in Nineteenth-Century New England

By examining the case of one man in the early nineteenth century, this article challenges the assumptions of separate work and emotional lives for men and women and raises questions for the study of gender. The experience of Brigham Nims, as revealed in his diaries and letters, demonstrates that men and women did not live their lives in completely separate spheres during this period. Men could ignore the prescriptive adages of advice manuals and ministers, and regularly break gender-role stereotypes, yet still be honored in their communities. They also engaged in special intimate friendships. If the separation of spheres was observed by individuals as rigidly as it was advocated in prescriptive literature, then it is unlikely that Brigham Nims would have sewed, cooked, ironed, and quilted with womenfolk.

Gendered entanglements: Dakotas and Scandinavians at Spirit Lake, 1900–1930

ABSTRACT In this article the author explores the interconnections between the social and the material—as people move to a space on the land, coexisting with one another. By focusing in on one specific place—the Spirit Lake Dakota Indian Reservation (formerly called the Devils Lake Sioux Indian Reservation) in North Dakota—the author analyzes what happened when white immigrants came to homestead and live on land historically reserved for Dakotas. Against the backdrop of Native dispossession, this illustrative case reveals the ways everyday interactions created entanglements through landownership, the gendered division of paid work, neighboring practices, and leasing land. It challenges us to uncover gendered processes, probe denials, and interrogate silences.

Landowning, Dispossession and the Significance of Land among Dakota and Scandinavian Women at Spirit Lake, 1900–29

My father was farming . . . my parents were on a homestead. So, naturally we were there. And that was really good I thought, because I can always remember seeing scenes like my dad used to plow, plow the field, to put in his grain . . . Then when I became about eight years old I think, my grandmother got killed by lightning. My dad’s mother . . . And my dad . . . just couldn’t stand it . . . so we left the homestead, and then some white man got it.2