DUE APR 9: 1980s and 1990s Pop Culture

Due Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Create a list of pop culture that defines the 1980s and another list that defines the 1990s. Consider things such as music, television, clothing, films, toys, etc. If you grew up in the 1980s or 1990s what do you remember most about growing up in these decades?

DUE APR 2: Stonewall Documentary

Due Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Watch this PBS documentary about the Stonewall Uprising in 1969, which can be viewed here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/stonewall/player/. Write a paragraph for each of the following questions (three paragraphs total).

1.     TBD

2.     TBD

3.     The Stonewall Uprising spurred much activism for LGBT rights. Are their still rights that are denied to people who are not heterosexual? Should the government enforce laws regarding sex and sexuality in today’s society?

DUE MAR 26: Civil Rights Movement

Due Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Without looking up any information list the women you can name who were involved in the Civil Rights Movement. Then read these two recent posts: http://thegrio.com/2011/08/25/time-for-america-to-honor-black-womens-role-in-the-civil-rights-movement/ and  http://www.womenundersiegeproject.org/blog/entry/a-forgotten-battleground-womens-bodies-and-the-civil-rights-movement.  Answer the question, why have black women been marginalized in the history of the Civil Rights Movement?

Watch this video featuring songs at the time of MLK's assasination. What was the impact of music at this traumatic time?

Listen to these two speech excerpts by Malcolm X in 1964 known as "The Ballot or the Bullet." Do you agree or disagree with his claims? Why or why not? If you are not familiar with Malcolm X you may want to do some background reading on him.

Take a look at the Black Panther website: http://www.blackpanther.org/ and read through their 10 point platform: http://blackpanther.org/TenPoint.html. Your school has blocked this website as being "extremely offensive." Do you agree or disagree? What do you think caused it to be labeled as "extremely offensive"?

DUE MAR 5: Cuckoo’s Nest

Due Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Watch the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which can be viewed online here: http://vimeo.com/23843187. Write one paragraph descriptions of the characters MacMurphy, Nurse Ratched, and the Chief (three paragraphs total). Come up with a discussion question for class.

DUE FEB 19: 1950s Suburbia

Due Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Answer the three questions below with one paragraph each (three paragraphs total).

1.  Read these excerpts from William Whyte's 1956 work The Organization Man: http://personal.ashland.edu/~jmoser1/whyte.htm 

Scholars have described this work as "a book that defined a generation." Answer the questions, how does Whyte define the "Organization Man"? Why do you think this book resonated with people in the 1950s?

2.  Examine these postcards for Levittown (suburban developments built in the 1950s). How do they portray the suburbs? What might have been appealing about the suburbs in the 1950s? Summarize your observations and thoughts into one paragraph.

3. The suburbs have been the subject of popular culture ever since they came into being. What examples can you think of? Write a paragraph describing how the suburbs are typically portrayed. Do you believe these portrayals are accurate? Why or why not?

DUE FEB 12: World War II

Due Tuesday, February 12, 2013

1. First, read this excerpt from President Franklin D. Roosevelt's "Four Freedoms" speech: http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=83

You can also listen to part of the speech here, if you are so inclined: http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/powers_of_persuasion/audio/pres_roosevelts_address.wav

2. Next analyze these paintings by Norman Rockwell and write a paragraph for each image. You can consider questions such as: What are the prominent symbols in the painting? How does Rockwell convey this particular "freedom"? Do they accurately represent what FDR said in his speech? If this "freedom" was represented in artwork today how might it differ from the painting? You do not have to answer every question but you should write a full paragraph for each painting. You can also come up with your own question--be creative!

 "Freedom of Speech"

"Freedom of Worship"

"Freedom from Want"

"Freedom from Fear"

3. Finally, read this editorial about the "four freedoms" and be prepared to discuss it in class: http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2009/01/01/archives/post-perspective/rockwells-four-freedoms.html

DUE FEB 5: Charlie Chaplin

Due Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Watch these three clips from the Charlie Chaplin film Modern Times. Write a paragraph response to each of the following questions (two paragraphs total):

1. In class we discussed the term modernity, which I defined as a dramatic shift in the way people lived due to advanced technology and industrialization. What do these clips reflect about modernity in the 1930s?

2. Consider the fact that this film was released in 1936 in the midst of the Great Depression. How does humor help people cope with their hardships?

[If you would like to watch this film in its entirety, it is available here:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGNYyG8F7WY]

DUE JAN 29: The Lost Generation

Due Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Read these two excerpts from A Moveable Feast—Ernest Hemingway’s memoir about living in Paris in the 1920s. Answer the following questions with one paragraph each

1)    What did Stein mean when she told Hemingway he was part of a “lost generation”? What kind of effect do you think World War I would have had on the youth?

2)    How does Hemingway describe F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda? Does this description tell you anything about the culture of expatriate Americans living in Europe during the 1920s?

“It was when we had come back from Canada and were living in the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs and Miss Stein and I were still good friends that Miss Stein made the remark about the lost generation. She had some ignition trouble with the old Model T ford she then drove and the young man who worked in the garage and had served in the last year of the war had not been adept, or perhaps had not broken the priority of other vehicles, in repairing Miss Stein's ford. Anyway he had not been serieux and had been corrected severely by the patron of the garage after Miss Stein's protest. The patron had said to him, ‘you are all a generation perdue.'

'That's what you are. That's what you all are,' Miss Stein said. 'All of you young people who served in the war. You are a lost generation.'

'Really?' I said.

'You are,' she insisted. 'You have no respect for anything. You drink yourselves to death . . .'

'Was the young mechanic drunk?' I asked.

'Of course not.'

'Have you ever seen me drunk?'

'No. But your friends are drunk.'

'I've been drunk,' I said. 'but I don't come here drunk.'

'Of course not. I didn't say that.'

'the boy's patron was probably drunk by eleven o'clock in the morning,' I said. 'That's why he makes such lovely phrases.'

'Don't argue with me, Hemingway,' Miss Stein said. 'It does no good at all. You're all a lost generation, exactly as the garage keeper said.'

Later when I wrote my first novel I tried to balance Miss Stein's quotation from the garage keeper with one from Ecclesiastes. But that night walking home I thought about the boy in the garage and if he had ever been hauled in one of those vehicles when they were converted to ambulances. I remembered how they used to burn out their brakes going down the mountain roads with a full load of wounded and braking in low and finally using the reverse, and how the last ones were driven over the mountainside empty, so they could be replaced by big fiats with a good h-shift and metal-to-metal brakes. I thought of Miss Stein and Sherwood Anderson and egotism and mental laziness versus discipline and I thought who is calling who a lost generation?

Then as I was getting up to the Closerie des Lilas with the light on my old friend, the statue of Marshal Ney with his sword out and the shadows of the trees on the bronze, and he alone there and nobody behind him and what a fiasco he'd made of Waterloo, I thought that all generations were lost by something and always had been and always would be and I stopped at the Lilas to keep the statue company and drank a cold beer before going home to the flat over the sawmill. But sitting there with the beer, watching the statue and remembering how many days Ney had fought, personally, with the rearguard on the retreat from Moscow that Napoleon had ridden away from in the coach with Caulaincourt, I thought of what a warm and affectionate friend Miss Stein had been and how beautifully she had spoken of Apollinaire and of his death on the day of the armistice in 1918 with the crowd shouting 'a bas guillaume' and Apollinaire, in his delirium, thinking they were crying against him, and I thought, I will do my best to serve her and see she gets justice for the good work she had done as long as I can, so help me God and Mike Ney. But the hell with her lost-generation talk and all the dirty, easy labels.

When I got home and into the courtyard and upstairs and saw my wife and my son and his cat, F. Puss, all of them happy and a fire in the fireplace, I said to my wife, 'you know, Gertrude is nice, anyway.'

'of course, tatie.'

'but she does talk a lot of rot sometimes.'

'I never hear her,' my wife said. 'I'm a wife. It's her friend that talks to me.'

* * *

“Scott Fitzgerald invited us to have lunch with his wife Zelda and his little daughter at the furnished flat they had rented at 14 Rue de Tilsitt. I cannot remember much about the flat except that it was gloomy and airless and that there was nothing in it that seemed to belong to them except Scott's first books bound in light blue leather with the titles in gold. Scott also showed us a large ledger with all of the stories he had published listed in it year after year with the prices he had received for them and also the amounts received for any motion picture sales, and the sales and royalties of his books. They were all noted as carefully as the log of a ship and Scott showed them to both of us with impersonal pride as though he were the curator of a museum. Scott was nervous and hospitable and he showed us his accounts of his earnings as though they had been the view. There was no view.

Zelda had a very bad hangover. They had been up on Montmartre the night before and had quarreled because Scott did not want to get drunk. He had decided, he told me, to work hard and not to drink and Zelda was treating him as though he were a kill-joy or a spoilsport. Those were the two words she used to him and there was recrimination and Zelda would say, 'I did not, I did no such thing. It's not true, Scott.' Later she would seem to recall something and would laugh happily.

On this day Zelda did not look her best. Her beautiful dark blonde hair had been ruined temporarily by a bad permanent she had got in Lyon, when the rain had made them abandon their car, and her eyes were tired and her face was too taut and drawn.

She was formally pleasant to Hadley [Hemingway’s wife] and me but a big part of her seemed not to be present but to still be on the party she had come home from that morning. She and Scott both seemed to feel that Scott and I had enjoyed a great and wonderful time on the trip up from Lyon and she was jealous about it.

'When you two can go off and have such simply wonderful times together, it only seems fair that I should have just a little fun with our good friends here in Paris,' she said to Scott.

Scott was being the perfect host and we ate a very bad lunch that the wine cheered a little but not much. The little girl was blonde, chubby-faced, well built, and very healthy-looking and spoke English with a strong cockney accent. Scott explained that she had an English nanny because he wanted her to speak like Lady Diana Manners when she grew up.

Zelda had hawk's eyes and a thin mouth and deep-south manners and accent. Watching her face you could see her mind leave the table and go to the night's party and return with her eyes blank as a cat's and then pleased, and the pleasure would show along the thin line of her lips and then be gone. Scott was being the good cheerful host and Zelda looked at him and she smiled happily with her eyes and her mouth too as he drank the wine. I learned to know that smile very well. It meant she knew Scott would not be able to write.

Zelda was jealous of Scott's work and as we got to know them, this fell into a regular pattern. Scott would resolve not to go on all-night drinking parties and to get some exercise each day and work regularly. He would start to work and as soon as he was working well Zelda would begin complaining about how bored she was and get him off on another drunken party. They would quarrel and then make up and he would sweat out the alcohol on long walks with me, and make up his mind that this time he would really work, and would start off well. Then it would start all over again.

Scott was very much in love with Zelda. And he was very jealous of her. He told me many times on our walks of how she had fallen in love with the French navy pilot. But she had never made him really jealous with another man since. This spring she was making him jealous with other women and on the Montmartre parties he was afraid to pass out and he was afraid to have her pass out. Becoming unconscious when they drank had always been their great defence. They went to sleep on drinking an amount of liquor or champagne that would have little effect on a person accustomed to drinking, and they would go to sleep like children. I have seen them become unconscious not as though they were drunk but as though they had been anaesthetized, and their friends, or sometimes a taxi-driver, would get them to bed, and when they woke they would be fresh and happy, not having taken enough alcohol to damage their bodies before it made them unconscious.

Now they had lost this natural defence. At this time Zelda could drink more than Scott could and Scott was afraid for her to pass out in the company they kept that spring and the places they went to. Scott did not like the places nor the people and he had to drink more than he could drink and be in any control of himself, to stand the people and the places, and then he began to have to drink to keep awake after hew ould usually have passed out. Finally he had few intervals of work at all.

He was always trying to work. Each day he would try and fail. He laid the failure to Paris, the town best organized for a. writer to write in that there is. And he thought always that there would be some place where he and Zelda could have a good life together again. He thought of the Riviera, as it was then before it had all been built up, with the lovely stretches of blue sea and the sand beaches and the stretches of pinewoods and the mountains of the esterel going out into the sea. He remembered it as it was when he and Zelda had first found it before people went there for the summer.

Scott told me about the Riviera and how my wife and I must come there' the next summer and how we would go there and how he would find a place for us that was not expensive and we would both work hard every day and swim and lie on the beach and be brown and only have a single aperitif before lunch and one before dinner. Zelda would be happy there, he said. She loved to swim and was a beautiful diver and she was happy with that life and would want him to work and everything would be disciplined. He and Zelda and their daughter were going to go there that summer. I was trying to get him to write his stories as well as he could and not trick them to conform to any formula, as he had explained that he did.

'You've written a fine novel now,' I told him. 'and you mustn't write slop.'

'The novel isn't selling,' he said. 'i must write stories and they have to be stories that will sell.'

'Write the best story that you can and write it as straight as you can.'

'I'm going to,' he said.

 

But the way things were going, he was lucky to get any work done at all. Zelda did not encourage the people who were chasing her and she had nothing to do with them, she said. But it amused her and it made Scott jealous and he had to go with her to the places. It destroyed his work, and she was more jealous of his work than anything. All that late spring and early summer Scott fought to work but he could only work in snatches. When I saw him he was always cheerful, sometimes desperately cheerful, and he made good jokes and was a good companion. when he had very bad times, I listened to him about them and tried to make him know that if he could hold onto himself he would write as he was made to write, and that only death was irrevocable. He would make fun of himself then, and as long as he could do that I thought that he was safe.”

DUE JAN 22: Washington and Du Bois

Due Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Read Booker T. Washington’s 1895 Atlanta Compromise Speech l(ocated here: http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/39/) and W. E. B. Du Bois’s “Chapter 3: Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others" from The Souls of Black Folk (1903) (located here: http://www.bartleby.com/114/3.html)

Write one paragraph for each question below (two paragraphs total).

1) What are the similarities and differences between Washington and Du Bois’s arguments?
2) What do you think motivates each argument?

DUE JAN 15: Gilded Age

Due Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Read the excerpt from Laura M. Westall’s 1908 book A Common-Sense View of the Mind Cure and respond to each question with one paragraph (two paragraphs total):

1.     What does Westall believe that the human mind has the power to do? What does she suggest will allow individuals to access that power?

2.     Do you agree with her assertions? Why or why not?

“The first step in rational mind-cure is unquestionably to change the mode of thought; but it is not enough to stop thinking depressing thoughts--a positive attitude must be taken in order to render the mind buoyant. And this may be done in several ways:

The method of "suggestion "--the daily affirmation of ideal health, hope, and courage--is good, for the reason that the mind feeds upon such ideas as harmonize with the inherent instinct of self-preservation. One is working with nature.

The use of the imagination is equally good; it is a molding force. But it requires mental concentration, which few practise or fully understand, and therefore the simple self-suggestion is easier, generally speaking.

The spiritual uplift which we call prayer is also an aid. For whatever uplifts the soul exhilarates the mind, and we thus get a better mental reaction. Its effect, however, is temporary, and it can not be relied upon to effect a cure; else why were not our martyred presidents restored to health?

Finally, one may try to cultivate a saner philosophy of life. Most of us are too self-centered; we dwell too much upon our personal discomforts. If therefore we can bring ourselves to see that suffering in some form is the common lot; that it is a part of the discipline of life, which chastens the soul and fits it for a nobler sphere of thought and action, we shall go far toward cultivating a cheerful stoicism in regard to our ills.

The second step in self-help is to reform the mode of life, thus securing a better adjustment to external conditions. And here are needed common sense and self-control. The man who persistently fritters away his energy in emotional excesses; who delivers himself up to self-indulgence; who deprives himself of fresh air, sunshine, sleep, pure food, and pure water, or who works each day to the point of exhaustion, must suffer the penalty. The law of compensation can not be escaped. The dyspeptic who persists in "bolting" his food, overloading his stomach, or eating when fatigued can not be cured by any method known to man. If you should have a sore on your hand and removed the scab as fast as it formed, how long would it take for the sore to heal?

Finally, one must by a combined mental and physical treatment build up the brain and thus improve the vitality.

To begin with, the brain is the hardest-worked part of the body, and the tendency of our time is to overwork it. So then one should learn to rest the brain. When the first symptoms of fatigue appear, stop; throw yourself back in an easy chair or couch and relax the muscles. This takes the tension off the brain. Every one knows that when the leg muscles begin to ache, after walking some distance, how refreshed he feels after a halt of a single moment. Having relaxed the muscles, close the eyes, and let the thoughts drift; or, better still, make the mind a blank. Five minutes, even three minutes, will prove refreshing, and it should be resorted to at frequent intervals daily in nervous exhaustion. The celebrated Dr. Pepper, of Philadelphia, trained himself to fall asleep for two or three minutes at frequent intervals throughout the day, and thus accomplished a vast amount of work without fatigue. Just to relax the muscles, hold the brain steady, and stop thinking gives this cerebral rest.

The second measure, both hygienic and mental, is stimulating the brain, but this involves the third, which is breathing.

Some men and nearly all women breathe improperly. With the latter, tight clothing which crowds the vital organs together and diminishes lung space, and the wrong habit of sitting and standing, are responsible. Only a small portion of the lungs is used, and there is residual air which is rarely changed. And yet "breath is life." We can live a number of days without food, several days without water, but only a few moments without air. …

It should be made a habit. If one is obliged to live an indoor life, he should make it a practise to go to the door or window at frequent intervals and take each time at least seven full, deep inhalations, filling the lungs to their utmost capacity. With head erect, and chest lifted, hold the inspired air for a few seconds, to extract all the oxygen from it.

An excellent exercise is to place the feet side by side, clasp the hands, and inhale and exhale regularly for several moments. The brain is thus electrically charged.

Another: Stand erect, inhale deeply, then holding the breath drop the head forward slightly, clench the hands, and tense all the muscles. This stimulates the circulation of the brain.

For nervous debility and mental depression, deep breathing is unexcelled, particularly if one applies imagination. Thus: when inhaling imagine that you are taking into your system the life-giving oxygen; that the invigorated blood is circulating in the brain, stimulating the exhausted cells, and imparting to them new life. With a little practise, one will soon be able to perceive the quickened circulation, which will be followed by a sense of exhilaration.

Local self-treatment comes next in order. We have seen how the vital force leaving the brain spreads throughout the body by means of nerve-fibers; that it is the life-stimulus, since it keeps the internal fires burning; that if it depreciates or is unequally distributed, the weakest spot will be the first to suffer; and that only through its activity can the circulation be kept normal and also the nutrition of each and every part.

Manifestly, then, it is necessary to get control of this life-energy; and it is by no means as difficult as at first appears.

Simply concentrating the attention or fixing the mind upon any organ or part will, as before explained, direct the vital current to that spot. … If one applies imagination or "suggestion" results are quicker. Thus: One may form a mental picture of the vital force directed to a given spot, as the gardener turns his hose at will upon the plants under his care, and one may follow in imagination the course of the blood. And, finally, the purpose of all this: a mental picture of the desired result. …

A little practise will bring any part of the body into almost instant communication with the mind. …

It means work--daily, persistent work--to get results. But if pills and powders fail to cure you, what are you going to do about it? Live at a "poor dying rate" or muster up courage to take a hand in your own salvation? …

It is a matter which each person must decide for himself--whether or not he has the necessary knowledge and courage to attack his case single-handed. Some friend or physician may put him on his feet, but, when all is said, the permanence of his cure depends upon himself; for if he drops back into the old habit of thought and life, he will gradually reinstate the conditions which first laid him low, and will naturally relapse into a similar state. He is wise, therefore, in any event, if he sets about his own regeneration.

Moreover, it is a fine discipline for the mind. It strengthens the will, develops self-reliance, self-control, and self-confidence. And when the victory is won, it is virtually self-mastery.

And "whoso conquereth his own soul is greater than he who taketh a city." ”

The full text of this book is available here: http://www.sacred-texts.com/nth/cvmc/index.htm

Assignment Checklist

Due Date	Assignment
Jan 8	Chapter 14: Now That We are Free
	Chapter 15: Conflict and Conquest
	Chapter 16: Wonder and Woe
Jan 15	Response due on Gilded Age
	Chapter 17: Becoming a Modern Society
	Chapter 18: Creating a Democratic Paradise
Jan 22	Response on Washington and Du Bois due
	Chapter 19: Imperial America
Jan 29	Response on the Lost Generation due
	Chapter 20: The Great War
	Chapter 21: A Turbulent Decade
Feb 5	Response on Chaplin due
	Chapter 22: A New Deal for America
Feb 12	Response on WWII images due
	Chapter 23: World War II
Feb 19	Response on suburbia due
	Chapter 24: A Divided World
	Chapter 25: In a Land of Plenty
Feb 26	MIDTERM
Mar 5	Response on Cuckoo’s Nest due
Mar 19	Proposals Due
	Chapter 26: A Nation Divided
	Chapter 27: A Decade of Discord
Mar 26	Response on speeches due
Apr 2	Response on Stonewall due
	Chapter 28: Righting a Nation Adrift
Apr 9	Response on 1980s and 90s due
	Chapter 29: Building a New World Order
Apr 16	FINAL PROJECT DUE