Kathy Peiss is a historian and scholar of American culture, with a particular focus on the history of gender and sexuality. She is the author of several books on these topics, including "Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York" and "Hope in a Jar: The Making of America's Beauty Culture."
Peiss received her Bachelor's degree from the University of Pennsylvania and her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. She began her academic career as an assistant professor of history at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and has also taught at the University of Pennsylvania, where she is currently a Professor of History.
One of Peiss' most influential works is "Cheap Amusements," in which she explores the leisure activities of working-class women in New York City at the turn of the 20th century. She argues that these women, who were often immigrants or the daughters of immigrants, used leisure activities such as dancing, theater-going, and beauty culture as a way to assert their independence and create a sense of community. Peiss also examines the ways in which these leisure activities were shaped by gender, class, and race, and how they helped to create a new urban culture in the United States.
Peiss' second book, "Hope in a Jar," looks at the history of the beauty industry in the United States from the late 19th century to the present. She traces the development of the industry and its impact on women's lives, as well as the ways in which it has been shaped by cultural ideals of femininity and beauty. Peiss also examines the influence of advertising and the media on women's beauty practices, and the role that race and ethnicity have played in the beauty industry.
In addition to her work as a historian and scholar, Peiss is also actively involved in public history and the promotion of women's history. She has served as a consultant for museums and exhibitions on the history of women and has given numerous talks and lectures on these topics.
Overall, Kathy Peiss is a leading figure in the field of American cultural history, with a particular expertise in the history of gender and sexuality. Her work has made significant contributions to our understanding of the ways in which leisure activities, beauty culture, and the media have shaped the lives and identities of women in the United States.
Kathy Lee Peiss (born January 25, 1953), American history educator
Do you see similar things in magazines like Field and Stream, and Car and Driver; in terms of editorial texts deliberately appealing to products on the market? Information Hunters: When Librarians, Soldiers, and Spies Banded Together in World War II Europe. Question 2: You talked about things like Carnation milk appearing in ads instead of things like cream. At Penn, Peiss served as Chair of the History Department from 2008 to 2011. The magazine was forced to suspend print publication in 2013, but a group of volunteers saved the archives and relaunched it in digital form in 2017. Their leisure activities —dancing, movies, theater —also gave them this sense that their lives were going to be very different in the 20th century.
Kathy Peiss. Information Hunters: When Librarians, Soldiers, and Spies Banded Together in World War II Europe .
Kathy Peiss' oral answers, however, were recorded clearly. The products have generally become safer. At Penn, Peiss served as Chair of the History Department from 2008 to 2011. Because a lot of women were suffragists -- a lot of women supported the vote who were very very conservative women, women in the DAR, for instance, who supported the vote were not feminists. Her new book, Making Faces, examines the history of the mass-market beauty industry and the changing cultural meaning of cosmetics for American women.
Peiss has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, NEH, ACLS, Smithsonian Institution, Woodrow Wilson Foundation, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. The beauty industry has always advertised in terms of aspirational pitches, and that has often led to truly impossible and harmful beauty ideals: the perfect body, the perfect face, the perfect hair. Other publications include Passion and Power: Sexuality in History, co-edited with Christina Simmons 1989 ; Men and Women: A History of Gender, Costume, and Power, co-authored with Barbara Clark Smith in conjunction with a Smithsonian Institution exhibit 1989 ; Love Across the Color Line: The Letters of Alice Hanley to Channing Lewis, co-edited with Helen Horowitz 1996 ; Major Problems in the History of American Sexuality 2001 ; and articles in Daedalus, Library Trends, Business History Review, Enterprise and Society, Genders, American Literary History, and Social Problems. For 70 years, American Heritage has been the leading magazine of U. The falsity that she portrayed! She has been teaching at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst since 1986 and currently serves as Director of the History Graduate Program there. Her research focuses on the history women in the workplace, the history of American sexuality, and gender. To what degree was the political program, and even feminism, of such magazines subverted by the new commercialism? Background Education Bachelor, Carleton College, 1975.
She has also been interviewed on the history of cosmetics and beauty by CNN, the Washington Post, New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Allure, Out, and other publications. Her book Zoot Suit: The Enigmatic Career of an Extreme Style 2011 , received the 2012 Millia Davenport Publication Award of the Costume Society of America. Kathy Peiss follows working women into saloons, dance halls, Coney Island amusement parks, social clubs, and nickelodeons to explore the culture of these young women between 1880 and 1920 as expressed in leisure activities. This began early in the 20th century, but the real attention to the full range of skin tones happened later. It seemed to be a big economic incentive, and certainly by the second half of the century.
Discussing Beauty with Kathy Peiss — The Fashion Studies Journal
. Peiss was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002. Peiss is the author of Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York 1986 and Hope in a Jar: The Making of America's Beauty Culture 1998 , which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award and named one of Amazon's 1999 top ten books in Women's Studies. Peiss attempts to untangle the historical morass of how the Allies, from the West and the Soviet Union, dealt with the millions of volumes of Nazi propaganda, fascist-era popular literature, and usable scholarly and scientific publications. Question 8: I just wanted to ask about home economics courses. Nichols Professor of American History at Penn, where she teaches courses on modern American cultural history and the history of American sexuality, women, and gender.
She is the author of Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York and Hope in a Jar: The Making of American Beauty Culture, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award. Over the 20th century, there is greater sexualization of models and cosmetics, although you can already see it back in the 1920s. Was there a male consumer in the minds of the businesses and the advertisers? Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York What did young, independent women do for fun and how di. Peiss uses tightly packed writing to convey the results of meticulous scouring of archives and government records, weaving a dizzying array of characters and acronyms, some previously known and others newly centered in the grand narrative of World War II. Cosmetics were often seen as signs of immorality, but these young women rejected that. Information Hunters received the 2021 DeLong Book History Book Prize from the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing SHARP.
I think the industry could do better and pitch products using more ordinary, relatable people in their advertising. Librarians and archivists working within the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives MFAA division of the US Army struggled with millions of moldering scrolls and rare books, rescued from caves and bombed-out buildings across the continent, at the Rothschild Library and Offenbach Documents Archive in Frankfurt. Originating in the hidden story of a family member, Information Hunters reveals the efforts of American librarians, scholars, and archivists to find and preserve books and documents for national security, military planning, and postwar reconstruction. I remember that ours in seventh grade used a 1950's textbook that was entirely about buying convenience food. Peiss has consulted on documentary films and museum exhibits, including a Smithsonian Institution show on costume and gender, for which she coauthored the exhibition booklet.
Her research has examined the history of working women; working-class and interracial sexuality; leisure, style, and popular culture; the beauty industry in the U. Nichols Professor Emerita of American History at Penn, where she taught courses on modern American cultural history and the history of American sexuality, women, and gender. Her research has examined the history of working women; working-class and interracial sexuality; leisure, style, and popular culture; the beauty industry in the U. Her research has examined the history of working women; working-class and interracial sexuality; leisure, style, and popular culture; the beauty industry in the U. The marketing of cosmetics to women of color is extremely important.
Kathy Peiss Biography, Age, Height, Husband, Net Worth, Family
In your opinion, what does the beauty industry still need to work on? We talked about women who think subconsciously that they are feminists. So, how much is Kathy Peiss worth at the age of 69 years old? Career Instructor Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1980-1981. She is particularly interested in the ways that culture shapes the everyday lives and popular beliefs of Americans across time. It reflects trends and styles that can change moment to moment. .
