VISST 4761

Art and Social Histories

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2014-2015.

Topic for spring 2015: Mass Culture in the Great Depression. This seminar explores public art and popular entertainments as the means for everyday people to politically engage or escape the Great Depression (1929-41).  Discussions include Living Newspapers, the Federal Theater Project, WPA printmakers, FSA photographers (Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Gordon Parks, Arthur Rothstein), and Social Realist painters (Reginald Marsh, Ben Shahn). Connecting these is FDR's New Deal, its controversial government support for the arts, and censorship.  We consider dance as political theater, big bands and swing, "screwball" comedies, Busby Berkeley "gold diggers" musicals, and Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers spectaculars.  We begin with the importance of early radio in the home and how it constructed gender and race through soap operas and serial thrillers, especially the Green Hornet and the Shadow.  Students will draw on the digitized American Memory Project, Ken Burns' documentary The Dustbowl, and the Johnson Art Museum print and photography collections.  Films include Gold Diggers of 1933, Stella Dallas, Sullivan's Travels, and Woody Allen's Radio Days.

When Offered Spring.

Permission Note Not open to freshmen.

Distribution Category (CA-AS)

Comments Auditing not permitted. Interested students should send a brief description of background course work to Professor Meixner at llm4@cornell.edu.

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