Application Date: 02/3/23
CUID: 5056311
Email: mrr227@cornell.edu
Name: Madeline Rosenberg 
Honors or Independent Study: 2022-23 Honors Thesis
Project Title: My research is on the Better Homes in America campaign (1922-1935) and how the movement imagined U.S. citizenship through the lens of gender, race and sexuality.
Project Supervisor: Prof. Larry Glickman 
Funding Amount: $160
Budget:
I requested scans of files relevant to my research from the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum in West Branch, Iowa. I received an invoice from an archivist at the end of the scanning process, and the scanning totaled to $160.

Statement of Research Plan:
I have been able to access most of the sources for my Honors Thesis through Cornell Library and interlibrary loans, as many of the relevant materials have already been digitized. 

To access sources such as letters from Herbert Hoover and government-related files about the Better Homes White House conference, I needed to request them from the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum. I decided early on in my research that the best use of my time would be to not to travel to Iowa, but rather to request scans of materials relevant to my research. After several months of emailing back and forth with an archivist, I've finally received all the materials I requested.

Regarding the details of my project, I've attached a preliminary abstract: 

I am researching the Better Homes in America campaign (1922-1935) led by a partnership between the women’s magazine The Delineator, Herbert Hoover as U.S. Secretary of Commerce and national civic organizations. By examining government records, newspaper and magazine articles, and other prescriptive sources, I explore why and how the federal government endorsed private efforts that advocated for single-family home ownership across the U.S., while tracing how this campaign envisions the ideal, reproductive American family life. Ultimately, I argue that Better Homes in America was more than a housing and home economics campaign. The campaign also represents a project of social control that envisioned the model citizen through intervention in home ownership and improvement. 

I plan to answer in my project: What factors led the Department of Commerce to adopt this campaign in the early 1920s? How does the campaign envision the home as a racialized and gendered space, considering both architectural aesthetics and homemaking labor dynamics? What was the legacy of the Better Homes campaign, given that this movement offers an early example of the government’s endorsement of the single-family home as a unique source of national stability?

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