Gender and Modernity in Transnational Perspective: Hugo Münsterberg and the American Woman
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
10-1-1998
Abstract
In one of the first and best-known collections of cultural criticism in America, Civilization in the United States (1922), Harold Stearns begins his chapter on “The Intellectual Life” with this widely quoted passage:
When Professor Einstein roused the ire of the women's clubs by stating that “women dominate the entire life of America,” and that “there are cities with a million population, but cities suffering from terrible poverty – the poverty of intellectual things,” he was but repeating a criticism of our life now old enough to be almost a cliché. Hardly any intelligent foreigner has failed to observe and comment upon the extraordinary feminization of American social life, and oftenest he has coupled this observation with a few biting remarks concerning the intellectual anaemia or torpor that seems to accompany it.
Publication Information
Sanderson, Rena. (1998). "Gender and Modernity in Transnational Perspective: Hugo Münsterberg and the American Woman". Prospects: An Annual of American Cultural Studies, 23285-313. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0361233300006359