Populating Culture

Growing Cities and Growing Media

We can describe nineteenth-century America in one word: Expanding. The nation’s landmass more than doubled, its population grew exponentially, and new media to explore the identity of this new nation was ever-evolving. This expansion not only reflected the increase in the nation’s resources, population, and technology, but it reflected the increase in America’s cultural capital. The 1800s was the first century America experienced as a union. And within that first century, the country sought to establish its own culture to present to the world’s stage.

America’s development of a national identity was undoubtedly dependent upon the growth of major cultural centers. Growing cities such as New York and Philadelphia housed paper presses, theaters, publishing houses, and eventually nickelodeons, movie theaters, and radio stations. The Museum of Early American Pop Culture (MEAP)’s current exhibit, Populating Culture: Growing Cities and Growing Media, explores this relationship between nineteenth-century America’s metropolises and the media that was born in them.

Highlights from this season’s MEAP exhibition include The Yellow Kid comics showcasing tenement life, a variety of early muckraking prose about the scandalous happenings in the urban undergrounds, and early films picturing bustling city life.

Populating Culture is organized by Madalynn Conkle, curator, and supported by Professor Jared Gardner’s autumn 2019 English 4590.08H United States and Colonial Literature class.