| Unit name | The Birth of Modern America: The United States, 1917-29 (Level C Special Topic) |
|---|---|
| Unit code | HIST14030 |
| Credit points | 20 |
| Level of study | C/4 |
| Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24) |
| Unit director | Emeritus Professor. Coates |
| Open unit status | Not open |
| Pre-requisites |
None |
| Co-requisites | |
| School/department | Department of History (Historical Studies) |
| Faculty | Faculty of Arts, Law and Social Sciences |
Special Topic units place students in direct contact with the research interests of academic tutors and allow them to explore issues surrounding the current state of research in the field. They introduce students to working with primary sources and place those sources in context. This particular unit aims to introduce students to the dynamics of change during a crucial watershed in American history.
Between US entry into World War One in 1917 and the ‘Great [stock market] Crash’ of 1929, consumerism, popular culture and mechanization modernized the American dream. Contemporaries were convinced that they were living through an era of profound social and cultural change that extended to relations between the races and the sexes. And subsequent commentators have often claimed that the (global) foundations of modern living were laid and that the essential features of mass popular culture emerged during this period. The 1920s (as we can conveniently refer to these seminal years) had its backward-looking side and, like any era, its share of continuities. Nonetheless, this Special Topic concentrates on the period’s innovative and forward-looking aspects (unapologetically privileging New York City over Des Moines). Drawing extensively on contemporary sources (including novels), our overall goal is to acquire an intimate knowledge of the period’s modernity by viewing it from a wide range of perspectives - social, cultural, political, and literary - and as well as from the standpoints of male and female, white and black, Anglo-American and immigrant. A more specific objective is to assess the validity of the claim that the United States in the 1920s witnessed the world premiere of the way we live now.
Seminars 1. Introduction: life in the fast lane 2. Machine civilization (Henry Ford and the automobile revolution) 3. Consumer culture I (advertising, newspapers, magazines, radio) 4. Consumer culture II (movies, sport and the cult of celebrity) 5. ‘Revolution in manners and morals’: youth 6. ‘New woman’ (flappers and feminists) 7. ‘New Negro’ and black culture in the Negro Mecca (Harlem) 8. Business of politics: Prosperity & Republicans in an ‘age of normalcy’ 9. Revolt of the intellectuals: literature of the Jazz Age I 10. Literature of the Jazz Age II & Conclusion (the morning after the night before)
Set Primary Texts Include: Frederick Allen, Only Yesterday (1931)
R & S. Lynd, Middletown: A Study in Contemporary American Culture (1929)
Harold Stearns, Civilization in the United States: An Inquiry by Thirty Americans (1922) Preston Slosson, The Great Crusade and After (1930) F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise (1920) and The Great Gatsby (1925) Sinclair Lewis, Main Street (1920) and Babbitt (1922) Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises (1926) Carl Van Vechten, Nigger Heaven (1926)
By the end of the unit students should have:
Weekly 2-hour seminar Access to tutorial consultation with unit tutor in office hours
2-hour unseen written examination (summative, 100%)
The examination will assess students’ understanding of key themes in the social and cultural history of the United States during the 1917-29 period, the related historiography as developed during their reading and participation in / learning from small group seminars, and relevant primary sources. Further assessment of their handling of the relevant primary sources will be provided by the co-requisite Special Topic Project (HIST 13003).
Lynn Dumenil, The Modern Temper; American Culture & Society in the 1920s (1995) Stanley Coben, Rebellion against Victorianism (1991) Roderick Nash, The Nervous Generation: American Thought, 1917-1930 (1970) Nathan Miller, New World Coming: 1920s & the Making of Modern America (2004) Gilman Ostrander, American Civilization in the First Machine Age (1970) David Goldberg, Discontented America: The United States in the 1920s (1999)
