Stories From The Stacks

In the wide-open American economy, some people fake it ‘til they make it. Historically, American impostors realized the promise of social mobility. Identifying freely with different ethnic, racial, class, gender, or professional groups allowed some Americans to challenge social norms, and to reinvent themselves in an environment of rapid and disorienting change. In this episode of Stories from the Stacks, historian Clifton Hood, professor at Hobart & William Smith Colleges, discusses the macro-history of the American impostor as a social phenomenon. Hood situates his project in the context of his life’s work, suggesting that it may be a way of accessing subaltern perspectives on social hierarchies by locating and interrogating their attempted transgressions of its strictures. Using Hagley Library collections, including Empire Steel & Iron, Reading Company, Pennsylvania Railroad, Penn Virginia Corporation, and Brandywine Oral Histories, Hood discovered that business and government elites tried a variety of