Publications, Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media
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Browsing Publications, Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media by Subject "Collectors and collecting"
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Item Debating Identity and Origins in Early 20th-Century American Commemoratives(Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press, 2012) Brennan, Sheila A.Patriotic commemorations flowered following World War I in the United States, as did campaigns for securing limited- issue federal postage stamps. Beginning in 1920 with the Pilgrim Tercentenary issue, commemorative stamp subjects were moving away from solely advertising world’s fairs as the U.S. Post Office Department (USPOD) celebrated battles, anniversaries, and individuals that were part of greater cultural trends that sought to define Americanness in post–World War I America. Because of the acces- sibility of American commemoratives, both in size and through imagery, these stamps served to reinforce and naturalize an exceptionalist and triumphalist vision of the Ameri- can past that obscured the complicated legacies of conquest and inequality. This article examines imagery from a few commemorative stamps from the inter-war years and the circumstances of their printing that celebrated regional anniversaries held in Plymouth Rock, Mayport, and Minneapolis, as well as stamps honoring Polish military heroes Casimir Pulaski and Theodore Kosciuszko. Conversations revolving around these stamps, in correspondence or in the public media, demonstrate how the USPOD became a powerful institution that legitimized and distributed historical narratives and one that allowed ordinary citizens to engage with its government. Knowing of the postal service’s power to circulate interpretations of the American past to millions of people, some citizens sought commemoratives as part of grander strategies fighting for social and political equality while others wanted stamps to perpetuate a romanticized view of colonial America. These debates over commemorative subjects reflected contemporary struggles over immigration restrictions, constructions of race, and definitions of citizenship in the United States in the 1920s and 1930s.Item ‘Little Colored Bits of Paper’ Collected in the Progressive Era(Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press, 2010) Brennan, Sheila A.While the postal service promotes philately today, it was not until the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1892–1893 that the U.S. Post Office Department acknowledged and capitalized on the growing world of philatelists when it issued the first set of American commemorative stamps. Printing limited-issue collectible stamps generated greater interest in the postal service and for collecting the Department’s most popular product.The Columbian Exposition forever linked the postal service with stamp collectors after years of traveling on separate paths. The USPOD recognized the public presence of philatelists and spoke to them through promoting philately and issuing a decorative series of commemora- tive stamps. Philatelists participated in the world’s fair and perpetuated a dialog that they had begun decades earlier through buying, trading, and collecting stamps. Because philatelists professionalized by forming associations and publishing journals, Postmaster General Wanamaker recognized their presence and understood that the government needed those private organizations to promote good will and help to maintain the fiscal health of the US Post Office Department.