Overview

Exploring twentieth-century urban America through trash and artifacts from the 1893 Chicago World's Fair Through archaeological and archival research from sites associated with the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Disposing of Modernity explores the changing world of urban America at the turn of the twentieth century. Featuring excavations of trash deposited during the fair, Rebecca Graff’s first-of-its-kind study reveals changing consumer patterns, notions of domesticity and progress, and anxieties about the modernization of society. Graff examines artifacts, architecture, and written records from the 1893 fair’s Ohio Building, which was used as a clubhouse for fairgoers in Jackson Park, and the Charnley-Persky House, an aesthetically modern city residence designed by Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright. Many of the items she uncovers were products that first debuted at world’s fairs, and materials such as mineral water bottles, cheese containers, dentures, and dinnerware illustrate how fairs created markets for new goods and influenced consumer practices. Graff discusses how the fair’s ephemeral nature gave it transformative power in Chicago society, and she connects its accompanying “conspicuous disposal” habits to today’s waste disposal regimes. Reflecting on the planning of the the Obama Presidential Center at the site of the Chicago World’s Fair, she draws attention to the ways the historical trends documented here continue in the present. Published in cooperation with the Society for Historical Archaeology

Full Product Details

9780813081618

Table of Contents

Reviews

“In this innovative, perceptive, and well-constructed book, Graff successfully demonstrates that we are still living the modernity that was experienced at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893.”—American Antiquity “Provides a novel approach to the understanding of elite 19th-century society to the complex social networks of the urban environment and illuminates the archaeological potential to understanding those interactions.”—Historical Archaeology “This handsome and impressive volume . . . is a meditation on American modernity focused, through the lenses of history, philosophy, and archaeology, on Jackson Park—site of the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893—and the contemporaneous Gold Coast residential neighborhood of Near North Side Chicago. . . . The author has complemented systematic excavation with equally thorough archival research in order to put forth informed assertions about practices of modern life, then and now.”—Journal of Anthropological Research “Links between historic content and contemporary notions of modernity are strong throughout, making this text pertinent for those interested in consumption and modernity today.”—Choice

Author Information

Rebecca S. Graff is associate professor of anthropology at Lake Forest College.

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