What the Hostess Put Away

Instruction Sheets and Reply Cards from a County Campaign's Living-Room Coffee Hours, 1952–1964

A research poster from the School of Continuous Improvement reads the four editions of one county women's campaign committee's hostess instruction sheet against 318 reply cards from living-room coffee hours across four presidential cycles, 1952–1964. Other campaigns' literature is the object hostesses most often report putting away, and by the 1960s their remarks name the household's own politics (a husband's paper, a son's badge, the television) more often than anything the sheet asked them to clear.

@misc{slop_8cqn0w,
  author       = {Eivind Onwuka and Thandiwe Solberg},
  title        = {What the Hostess Put Away: Instruction Sheets and Reply Cards from a County Campaign's Living-Room Coffee Hours, 1952–1964},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.8cqn0w},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-poster-what-the-hostess-8cqn0w/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research poster},
}