Herbert Gans papers, 1944-2004

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Series II: Subject Files, 1944-2004

This series contains correspondence, news clippings, research notes, article drafts, policy papers, meeting minutes, and documents related to Gans's six decades a scholar, planner, teacher, writer, and activist. Explanatory notes written by Gans accompany several subject files.

Some files are arranged chronologically by decade, which reflects their approximate order at the time of accession. Together, these files provide a snapshot of what Gans was doing at any given time at the peak of his activity in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. In 1968, for instance, he was thinking and writing about the interplay of culture and class, about the future of the suburbs, and about equality in America; he was testifying before the Kerner Commission and in an obscenity trial regarding a Swedish film; he was participating in the Society for the Study of Social Problems, the League for Industrial Democracy, Americans for Democratic Action, and the American Sociological Association. Other materials include the 1955 accusations of communist-related activities levied against Private Seymour Smidt, whose friendship with the allegedly leftist Gans was among the pieces of evidence wielded against him; research materials about Yiddish theater from the late 1940s and early 1950s; a 1967 letter signed by Robert F. Kennedy in response to Gans's inquiry about the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation; and materials pertaining to the infamous 1965 report on the black family authored by Gans's erstwhile friend, Daniel Patrick Moynihan. (Among these subject files, numbers within parentheses denote the article number to which the subject corresponds. For instance, the Series II folder labeled "1960s – City and Poverty (#48), 1965," corresponds to Article 48 on Gans's list, which is titled "The City and the Poor" and which can be found in Box 29, Folder 6.)

Other material, some of which was labeled by Gans, is arranged alphabetically. Included here are materials related to the American Sociological Association, of which Gans was president in 1988; a draft manuscript of the influential book by Peter Marris (a friend of Gans's) and Martin Rein later titled "Dilemmas of Social Reform"; a transcript of Gans's testimony as an expert witness in the obscenity trial of Lenny Bruce; Gans's resumes and articles about Gans; material documenting Gans's lobbying efforts in behalf of dissident Hungarian sociologists imprisoned by that country's communist regime; drafts and correspondence related to a festschrift Gans edited about his friend and mentor, David Riesman; and notes, course readers, and syllabi from Gans's time as an undergraduate at the University of Chicago.


1950s



Box 37 Folder 4 Annenberg School, late, 1950s


Box 37 Folder 5 Audience Image Paper (#9), 1956-1958


Box 37 Folder 6 Confidential Magazine Study, 1954-1956


Box 37 Folder 7 "In Defense of American Sociology"--Unpublished, 1954-1960


Box 37 Folder 8 Journal of Informal Sociology (#15), 1957-1961


Box 37 Folder 9 Kibbutz Project, early, 1950s


Box 37 Folder 10 Levenson, Sam, mid-1950s


Box 37 Folder 11 Media Record, 1959


Box 37 Folder 12 Near West Side Planning Project, 1959


Box 37 Folder 13 Popular Culture News, 1950s



Box 38 Folder 1 Research Notes and Memos, 1950s


Box 38 Folder 2 Saturday Evening Post Study, 1957


Box 38 Folder 3 Smidt, Seymour--Allegations Against,1955


Box 38 Folder 4 Urban Planning, 1950s


Box 38 Folder 5 Yiddish Theater Research, 1940s-1950s


1960s


Box 38 Folder 6 American Sociological Association, 1967-1969


Box 38 Folder 7 Automation (#38), 1962-1964


Box 38 Folder 8 Beatles Piece (#44), 1964


Box 38 Folder 9 Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, 1967


Box 38 Folder 10 City and Poverty (#48), 1965


Box 38 Folder 11 to 12 Culture and Class, 1965-1968, (2 Folders)


Box 38 Folder 13 Diversity (#19), 1961


Box 38 Folder 14 Education Planning, 1966


Box 38 Folder 15 Effects of Move (#35), 1962



Box 39 Folder 1 "Equality Revolution" (#71), 1968


Box 39 Folder 2 Federal Role in Urban Problems (#62), 1967


Box 39 Folder 3 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, 1968-1969


Box 39 Folder 4 Jacobs, Jane (#28), 1962


Box 39 Folder 5 to 6 Kerner Commission, 1967-1969, (2 Folders)


Box 39 Folder 7 League for Industrial Democracy, 1969


Box 39 Folder 8 Moynihan Report (#47), 1965


Box 39 Folder 9 Neighborhood Viability, 1964-1965


Box 39 Folder 10 New York Housing Policy--Unpublished, 1961


Box 39 Folder 11 "Organization Man" data, 1960


Box 39 Folder 12 Outdoor Recreation (#30), 1959-1962


Box 39 Folder 13 Planning for People (#77), 1968



Box 40 Folder 1 Politics of Culture (#78), 1968


Box 40 Folder 2 Psychology Today Interview, 1969-1970


Box 40 Folder 3 Research notes, 1950s-1960s


Box 40 Folder 4 Reston New Town Study, 1963


Box 40 Folder 5 Sherman, Allan (#34), 1958-1963


Box 40 Folder 6 Social Accounting (#63), 1967


Box 40 Folder 7 Social and Physical Planning (#33), 1962


Box 40 Folder 8 Society for the Study of Social Problems, 1967-1971


Box 40 Folder 9 Suburbs, Future of (#66), 1968


Box 40 Folder 10 Television News (#79), 1969-1970


Box 40 Folder 11 Testimony for "I Am Curious,", 1968


Box 40 Folder 12 Urban Crisis and Democracy (#76), 1969


Box 40 Folder 13 Urban Poverty and Social Planning (#60), 1962-1967



Box 41 Folder 1 Urban Renewal (#46), 1965


Box 41 Folder 2 Urbanism and Suburbanism as Ways of Life (#26), 1958-1962


1970s


Box 41 Folder 3 Adult Learning and Public TV, 1972


Box 41 Folder 4 "The American Architectural Experience,", 1975


Box 41 Folder 5 Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science,, 1979-1980


Box 41 Folder 6 Dolci, Danilo, 1972-1974


Box 41 Folder 7 Eastern Sociological Society, 1971-1973


Box 41 Folder 8 to 9 General, 1970s, (2 Folders)


Box 41 Folder 10 Harris, Fred—Presidential Campaign, 1974-1976


Box 41 Folder 11 Income Redistribution (#99), 1972


Box 41 Folder 12 Joint Center for Urban Studies, 1969-1971


Box 41 Folder 13 Packard, Vance (#94), 1972



Box 42 Folder 1 Social Science and Policy (#88), 1971


Box 42 Folder 2 Social Science Research Council, 1975



Box 64 Folder 9 Welfare (#86), 1971



Box 42 Folder 3 Young Presidents Association Paper (#92), 1971-1972


Box 42 Folder 4 Ad Hoc Council for New York Planning and Housing Policy, 1966


Americans for Democratic Action



Box 64 Folder 10 Equality Resolution, 1968



Box 42 Folder 5 Futures Project, 1972-1974


Box 42 Folder 6 General, 1971-1977


Box 42 Folder 7 to 10 American Sociological Association, 1973-2003 (4 of 6 Folders), 1973-2003



Box 43 Folder 1 to 2 American Sociological Association, 1973-2003 (2 of 6 Folders), 1973-2003


Box 43 Folder 3 Badillo, Herman, 1977


Box 43 Folder 4 Camp Avodah, 1944


Box 43 Folder 5 Carnegie Commission on Higher Education, 1972


Box 43 Folder 6 Coalition for a Democratic Majority, 1972


Box 43 Folder 7 Columbia University Sociology Department, 1986-1989


Box 43 Folder 8 to 9 "Community Action and the Professional Reformer: A Study of the Evolution of Community Action Projects," by Peter Marriss and Martin Rein--Manuscript, circa, 1966, (2 Folders)


Box 43 Folder 10 Conflict with Rothman and Lichter, 1980s-1990s


Box 43 Folder 11 Cultural Policy--National Endowment for the Humanities and Rockefeller Foundation,, 1978-1979



Box 44 Folder 1 Ethnicity, 1970s


Box 44 Folder 2 Ethnicity--Second-Generation, 1991-1993


Box 44 Folder 3 to 5 Ethnicity--Symbolic, 1970s-1980s, (3 Folders)


Box 44 Folder 6 to 7 Expert Witness, 1960s-1970s, 1982, 1960s-1970s, 1982, (2 Folders)



Box 64 Folder 11 Expert Witness--Trial of Lenny Bruce, 1964



Box 44 Folder 8 Faculty in Support of Columbia Students Who Refuse Military Service, undated


Box 44 Folder 9 Ford Foundation Income Maintenance Panel, 1967


Box 44 Folder 10 Gannett Center for Media Studies, 1984-1997


Box 44 Folder 11 Gans, Herbert--Resumes, circa, 1960s-1970s


Box 44 Folder 12 Gans, Herbert--Writings About, 1962-2001



Box 45 Folder 1 to 3 General Activities, 1980s-1990s, (3 Folders)


Box 45 Folder 4 Hollywood Film Study, 1962


Box 45 Folder 5 Honors, 1982-1987


Box 45 Folder 6 Housing and Urban Development, Department of, 1977-1978


Hungary


Box 45 Folder 7 Correspondence, 1969


Box 45 Folder 8 Research Trip, 1973


Box 45 Folder 9 Szelenyi & Konrad, 1973-1975



Box 64 Folder 12 Kemeny, 1974-1977



Box 45 Folder 10 I.F. Stone's Biweekly-- Final Issue, 1971


Box 45 Folder 11 International Sociological Association, 1980-1981


Box 45 Folder 12 Judaism, 1940s-1950s



Box 46 Folder 1 Moynihan, Daniel Patrick, 1972-1975


Box 46 Folder 2 National Conference on Education and Inequality, 1974-1975


Box 46 Folder 3 National Conference on the Distribution of Wealth, 1973


Box 46 Folder 4 Nyden, Paul, 1974-1976


Box 46 Folder 5 Popular Culture, 1950s


Box 46 Folder 6 to 7 Poverty, Positive functions of, 1964-1994, (2 Folders)


Box 46 Folder 8 to 10 Riesman, David--Festschrift, 1974-1979 (3 of 4 Folders), 1974-1979



Box 47 Folder 1 Riesman, David--Festschrift, 1974-1979 (1 of 4 Folders), 1974-1979


Box 47 Folder 2 Socialism, 1950s-1960s


Box 47 Folder 3 Street Corner Society revisited--Correspondence with and about Marianne Boelen and William Whyte,, 1971-1996


Student Materials--University of Chicago


Box 47 Folder 4 "Methods of Communication Research"--Notes and Essays, 1949


Box 47 Folder 5 "Anthropology-Sociology 240"--Course Reader with Notes by Gans, 1948


Box 47 Folder 6 "Principles in the Sciences"--Course Reader with Notes by Gans, 1944


Box 47 Folder 7 "The Scope and Methods of Social Sciences"--Syllabus with Notes by Gans,, 1946


Box 47 Folder 8 "The Media Sociology of Herbert Gans,", 1992-1994


Box 47 Folder 9 Transaction Magazine, 1968-1973


Box 47 Folder 10 Urban sociology, 2000-2001


Box 47 Folder 11 White House Conference "To Fulfill These Rights,", 1965


Box 47 Folder 12 Worksharing--Correspondence, 1982-1986 (1 of 2 Folders), 1982-1986



Box 48 Folder 1 Worksharing--Correspondence, 1982-1986 (1 of 2 Folders), 1982-1986


Box 48 Folder 2 Worksharing--Talks and Papers, 1980s