LIBRARY
ART 330: Contemporary Humanities: 4: The Age of Anxiety: Fascism and Depression, Holocaust and Bomb
This course offers an introduction to the thought, values, and arts of Western culture through an exploration of the fine and performing arts in the twentieth century.
Culture and Context
Module 4 — Economic Depression and World War II: Art in the Age of the Dust Bowl, the Holocaust, and the Atomic Bomb
- Atomic Bomb Newsreel ca. 1945At the start of World War II the United States conducted secret research on nuclear fission in the quest to develop the atomic bomb. On July 16, 1945, the first atomic bomb was successfully tested in New Mexico. On August 6, 1945, President Harry S. Truman authorized the drop of two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, swiftly ending World War II. No atomic weapon has been detonated in wartime since.
- The Dust Bowl by Ken BurnsThe Dust Bowl chronicles the worst man-made ecological disaster in American history, when a frenzied wheat boom on the southern Plains, followed by a decade-long drought during the 1930s, nearly swept away the breadbasket of the nation. Menacing black blizzards killed farmers' crops and livestock, threatened the lives of their children, and forced thousands of desperate families to pick up and move somewhere else.
- The War by Ken BurnsThe War, a seven-part documentary by renowned filmmaker Ken Burns takes a profoundly personal look at the Second World War and examines the myriad of ways in which it touched the lives of every family in America. Through historic footage and face-to-face interviews, this epic film paints a vivid picture of how the war dramatically altered the lives of ordinary men and women
Literature
John Steinbeck: Novels and Stories 1932-1937 (LOA #72) by ISBN: 9781883011017Publication Date: 1994-09-01The Library of America presents for the first time in one volume Steinbeck's early writings, which expressed his abiding concerns for community, social justice, and the elemental connection between nature and human society. In prose that blends the vernacular and the incantatory, the local and the mythic, these five works chart Steinbeck's evolution into one of the greatest and most enduring popular of American novelists. The Pastures of Heaven(1932), To a God Unknown (1933). Tortilla Flat (1935), Dubious Battle (1936) Of Mice and Men (1937).
Architecture
Visual Arts
A Staggering Revolution by ISBN: 9780252092190Publication Date: 2010-10-01During the 1930s, the world of photography was unsettled, exciting, and boisterous. John Raeburn's A Staggering Revolution recreates the energy of the era by surveying photography's rich variety of innovation, exploring the aesthetic and cultural achievements of its leading figures, and mapping the paths their pictures blazed public's imagination. A Staggering Revolution includes individual chapters on Edward Steichen's celebrity portraiture; Berenice Abbott's Changing New York project; the Photo League's ethnography of Harlem; and Edward Weston's western landscapes, made under the auspices of the first Guggenheim Fellowship awarded to a photographer. It also examines Margaret Bourke-White's industrial and documentary pictures, the collective undertakings by California's Group f.64, and the fashion magazine specialists, as well as the activities of the FSA and the Photo League.
Georgia O'Keeffe by ISBN: 9781780422985Publication Date: 2011-07-01During the 1920s O'Keeffe also produced a huge number of landscapes and botanical studies during annual trips to Lake George. With Stieglitz's connections in the arts community of New York - from 1923 he organised an O'Keeffe exhibition annually - O'Keeffe's work received a great deal of attention and commanded high prices. She, however, resented the sexual connotations people attached to her paintings, especially during the 1920s when Freudian theories became a form of what today might be termed "pop psychology". The legacy she left behind is a unique vision that translates the complexity of nature into simple shapes for us to explore and make our own discoveries. She taught us there is poetry in nature and beauty in geometry. Georgia O'Keeffe's long lifetime of work shows us new ways to see the world, from her eyes to ours.
- Magazine IndustryThis program examines the evolution of the magazine industry over the course of the 20th century. General-interest magazines like Life and Look once provided a national forum that helped Americans explore their common interests. After World War II, the tremendous impact of television on audience-share caused the magazine industry to focus instead on developing niche publications aimed at consumers and businesses. Time, Ebony, Cosmopolitan, Sports Illustrated, and People are all spotlighted as examples of magazines that have successfully targeted new audience segments and adapted to changing times and tastes. In addition, the rise of online magazines and their relationship to their print counterparts are examined. (28 minutes)