Primary Sources by Region:
North America
In 1928, Margaret Mead published Coming of Age in Samoa, an anthropological work based on fieldwork she had conducted on female adolescents in Samoa. In 1925, Mead observed, interviewed, and interacted with 68 girls between the ages of 9… [more]
Motivated by wartime hysteria and racial sentiments following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 that ordered the removal of Japanese Americans on the West Coast to… [more]
Theodore de Bry included this colorful engraving in his publication of Hariot's, A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (1590). It was based on a [more]
Published around 1853, Little Eva, The Flower of the South is an anonymously written children's story based on Eva, the enormously popular character in Harriet Beecher Stowe's anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852). Aiming… [more]
This oil on canvas painting by an unknown American folk artist was painted around 1840. It depicts two siblings at play. While their mother is absent from the picture, she presided over the "private sphere" of the home as prescribed by the… [more]
This engraving was included in the 1705 edition of Robert Beverley's The History and Present State of Virginia, In Four Parts. A similar engraving had appeared in Thomas Hariot's A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of… [more]
In 17th-century New England, Puritan beliefs about "infant depravity" (born with "original sin") generated anxieties about "eternal damnation" that shaped methods of childrearing and notions of death. Puritan beliefs can be "read" on the… [more]
Lydia Maria Child included this selection on how to jump rope in The Girls Own Book, a book published in 1833. Why did girls in early 19th-century America need instructions on how to jump rope? Why did Child's feel the need to caution… [more]
Whether known as Saint Nicholas, Sinterklaas, Father Christmas, Kris Kringle, Babbo Natale, Christkind, Père Noël, Santa Claus ("Santa") or by many other names, this legendary gift-giver in European folklore and hagiography is well known around… [more]
Pocahontas, a legendary figure in American history, was the daughter of a powerful 17th-century Powhatan chief. Allegedly seeking retribution for the murder of two tribesmen by the English, Powhatans captured John Smith, one of the founders of… [more]