An analysis of Betty Smith’s bestselling coming-of-age novel A Tree Grows in Brooklyn reveals how popular literature can serve as an important introduction to signature issues of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. Industrialization, urbanization, and immigration are highlighted in the novel—as well as attendant problems including poverty, machine politics, child labor, and prejudice and discrimination. Profound ignorance about sexuality and conception abound in a religious culture that made premarital sex and birth control sinful and shameful, with unhappy marriages and unwanted children the result. As poverty and deviant sexuality abound, eugenics is touted as a sensible solution. The novel helps to explain why there was no organized rebellion or revolution when the struggling poor found that the promise of upward mobility was elusive. Characters have differing definitions of the American Dream. Some seek respite in religion, leisure activities, or alcohol. Others find hope in a variety of reform measures, including public health and education, settlement houses, and unions. The novel ends as the technology that made the nation’s industrialization and urbanization possible continues to produce new marvels that will transform the lives of the urban poor, bringing the Gilded Age and Progressive Era to a close.

This article considers the political implications of temporal orientations, building on Reinhart Koselleck’s conceptual histories of “progress” and “utopia”. A computational analysis of survey data from the 2016 US election provides a snapshot of the breakdown of the American Dream for some respondents, and its continued relevance for others. Rather than progress from past to future, data shows negative perceptions of the past or present associated with negative expectations for the future, a link especially pronounced among white respondents and those who subscribe to “America first” beliefs. At the same time, to the extent that racial privilege is inversely related to expectations of future progress, the findings suggest that utopian narratives of progress can help smooth over injustice or inequality with view to a better future. Expectations of progress are thus tightly woven into perceptions of injustice or marginalization.

Marketing strategies today often rely on creating an emotional connection to the brand through personalizing or humanizing the business. This article explores how both the American Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey and the British Bertram Mills Circus used this strategy in the early twentieth century to encourage audiences to attend their circus rather than any other. John Ringling and Bertram Mills may best be remembered for totemic images but their celebrity was constructed through a reiterative performance process. In this article Kate Holmes examines the shifts in their representation performed in press, publicity, and anecdote to explore how each iteration of their public identity functioned to publicize their respective circuses at significant points. She also explores how these circus celebrity identities, focused on achieving financial success for a commercial enterprise, activated and perpetuated national self-identities linked to class. Kate Holmes, who has previous experience as a qualified marketer, recently completed a PhD in Drama at the University of Exeter. Her research on circus performance has been published in Early Popular Visual Culture and is forthcoming in Stage Women, a collection of essays on early twentieth-century female performers.

In this article Valerie Lynn Schrader examines the musical Assassins through the rhetorical lenses of public memory and Kenneth Burke's theory of identification. Offering a close textual analysis of the musical's script and cast recording, she argues that Assassins, along with its audiences, serves to co-create a public memory of the men and women who attempted to assassinate Presidents of the United States of America. Her article contends that Assassins creates a chilling consubstantiality between the characters in the musical and theatregoers through Burkean identification, which may cause cognitive dissonance for many audience members. Through identifying key themes in the musical, she argues that these both connect with the assassins' motives and are common human experiences, serving not only to create public memory of the stories, but also to humanize the assassins and create a bond between audience and characters – while the song ‘Something Just Broke’ undermines this connection and encourages audience members to identify with the mourning American public. Valerie Lynn Schrader is Associate Professor of Communications and Interim Director of Academic Affairs at the Schuylkill Campus of the Pennsylvania State University. Her research focuses on rhetorical messages in theatre works, especially musical theatre productions. She is herself a classically trained lyric soprano/soubrette.