Our calendar for the rest of the semester

All,

In order to not meet the Monday before Thanksgiving, when many of you will be on the road, I had to make more schedule shifts. The Google Calendar has also been acting up. So you will find a revised schedule on the "syllabus" link at the right, but for those of you who want even easier access, here is the rest of the schedule. NOTE that I have moved test 2 to Nov. 9 because I want more time to discuss the film and the book.

Week 9:

10/26: Lecture: “Joe Louis, Max Schmeling, Charles Lindbergh, and What It Meant to be an American.” Read: GML, Chap. 22 to p. 755. Seldom Disappointed, Chap. 1-9.

10/28: Lecture: “Guns, Bombs, and Explosions: A Shameless and Indulgent Foray into WW2 in Europe. Read: GML, Chap. 22 p.755-end.

Week 10: World War II and Demobilization

11/2: Discussion of Best Years and Hillerman: VIEW Best Years of Our Lives by today.

11/4: Lecture: “Guns, Bombs, and Explosions: A Shameless and Indulgent Foray into WW2 in the Pacific. Read: Seldom Disappointed, Chap. 10-14. 

Week 11: The Cold War

11/9: Test 2

11/11:  Lecture: “Truman, 1948, and Cold War America.” Read: Seldom Disappointed, Chap. 15-17, GML, Chap. 23: Deadline to watch Here I Stand: Paul Robeson.

Week 12: The Emergence of Suburbia & the Dawning of the 1960s.

11/16: Lecture: “The Birth of the Mall Rat.” Read: GML, Chap. 24, Seldom Disappointed, Chap. 18-23.

11/18: Lecture: “JFK, Ardent Cold Warrior, Reluctant Civil Rights Champion.”

Week 13: Tofurkey or Turkey?

11/23: No Class: 

11/25: Thanksgiving, no class

Week 14: The Rise and Fall of the 1960s

11/30: Lecture: “Civil Rights and Vietnam, Guns and Butter.” Read: GML, Chap. 25

12/2:  Lecture: “Nixon, Wallace, and the Emergence of Backlash Politics.” Read: GML, Chap. 26 (VIEW Settin' the Woods on Fire by this date.)

Week 15: “Is the Best of the Free Life Behind Us; Are the Good Times Really Over for Good?”

12/7: Lecture: “Dark Days: Watergate, Carter, and Burning Helicopters in the Desert.”

12/9: Lecture: “Turning up the Heat in the Cold War under Reagan.”

The Road to War and the War in Europe

Today we will look at developments both in Europe in America that converge in war. Then we will look at the war itself in Europe, including strategy, turning points, and "big picture" questions.

Click on the map to see a larger version.

A few key words in today's lecture (for review purposes and so that you have the right spelling when you take your notes.) Sudatenland, Vichy France, Barbarossa, rationing, flying fortress, Dresden, Germany First, ENIGMA, V1 and V2 rockets, Yalta and Potsdam.

A "Willie and Joe" Cartoon by Bill Mauldin

Technology helping unite a nation on the eve of war

Today we will look at the ways in which technological and administrative advances in communications and media distribution helped unite America in the 1930s.

A few lectures ago, we saw the economic impact of new manufactured goods on the American consumer market, and the radio figured prominently in that discussion. We also saw how radio also helped popularize the musical genre of jazz. Yet radio was doing more than just transform American music - it was changing the way Americans shared experiences.

Radio syndication or a "radio network" was first pioneered by AT&T, who had a newr monopoly on the nation's telephone system. Believing that it was not going to be important in its business future, AT&T sold its interest in the network for $1 Million dollars and in 1926, NBC was formed. Syndication was not anything new, newspapers having syndicated columns for decades, but radio syndication meant that Americans of a broad spectrum could enjoy the same entertainment and music from coast to coast like the "Amos n' Andy" show and the Grand Ole Opry which first broadcast live in 1925. Starting in the late 1920s, it also meant that they could also experience live events together, uniting the nation in a common experience in a way that had not before been possible. Radio also enabled people from all over the country to feel like they were part of something greater.

Boxing was a much bigger sport in the 1930s than it is today, and the two heavyweight championship fights between Joe Louis and Max Schmeling were not only landmark national events, but they had profound political overtones both in terms of race in America and the growing antagonism between Nazi Germany and the rest of the Western world.

The syndication of broadcast news also became a powerful weapon in uniting the nation. Newspaper syndication had been joined by radio news syndication as well as newsreels shown before movies. This type of news, shown before popular movies and referenced in Hillerman's Seldom Disappointed, helped shape opinion about the coming war.



Media syndication also intensified the role that celebrity played in America, and in this regard we will look at the rise and fall of one of the country's biggest superstars in the 1920s and 1930s, aviator Charles Lindbergh. 

A video of Lindbergh's famous 1927 Transatlantic Flight.


A much sought-after home movie of the Lindbergh Baby shortly before his kidnapping:

Lindbergh making an anti-war speech:

The Dangerous Neighborhood of the 1930s

There is no mistaking that the collective programs of FDR's New Deal reshaped the way Americans related to their government. The underlying principles of the New Deal remain central today to the debate over government's role in the everyday lives of Americans.

Some programs of the New Deal had lasting positive effects, while others had unintended consequences, both good and bad, while still more unambiguously hurt people. Whatever their impact, they were definitely "New" if not always a "Deal." We will be looking at several case studies regarding the impact of New Deal Legislation:

The Agricultural Adjustment Act (or AAA) was both successful and unsuccessful in achieving its aims. In the process it benefited some while hurt others.  Its administration was also some measure of the strength of the Solid Democratic South's power in New Deal legislation.

The Works Progress Administration employed thousands of unemployed writers, scholars, and artists to produce works in the general interest. This included everything from microfilming the Compiled Service Records of Union and Confederate Soldiers to the memorable WPA Murals and WPA Slave Narratives.

Perhaps one of the greatest successes of the New Deal was its impact on stabilizing America's banking and investment sector. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) established standards that lent a great deal of conservatism to the financial sector's behavior.

Today, we still debate the utility of some New Deal programs such as public housing. New Orleans's Iberville Housing Development was a New Deal Era concept, built on what was once Storyville in the 1940s. Under the segregated terms of the time, the Iberville was white, while the nearby Lafitte projects were black. Recent redevelopments like Rivergardens on the site of the old St. Thomas Projects points one possible direction for the future of the Iberville housing project.

But what of alternatives to the New Deal?

Your textbook talks of FDR's rivals, and there were many on both the right and the left.  Probably the most credible threat in the United States came from Huey Pierce Long and his Share Our Wealth programs. With millions of members willing to contribute to Long's corrupt programs, it makes one wonder at the potential of alternatives to the New Deal.

From an international perspective, we see Europe respond to economic crisis quite differently. Under the leadership of Benito Mussolini, we will see the emergence of Fascism. Under Adolph Hitler's National Socialism, Germany makes a remarkable recovery and attracts the admiration of many Americans.  Meanwhile, the Soviets will suffer under the successive 5-year plans of Stalin.

Calendar Updated

All,

Please check out the updated calendar at the bottom of this blog. All adjustments have been made to make it up-to-date. See you in class this afternoon!

JN

Jazz and Gangster Movies: America's best unsolicited cultural gifts to the world!

Before Jazz became mainstream among sophisticates in the late 1920s, the cultural vanguard went to operas like Verdi's Il Trovatore, from which we find "D'amor sull'ali rosee" sung magnificently by the one and only Marie Callas in 1959. Sometimes Youtube is a blessing!

Here is a mulitmedia link from the Times-Picayune on Buddy Bolden.

King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band was one of the more successful groups to head out of New Orleans to Chicago, distributing the sound up the Mississippi River. In New Orleans, this sound also took on new dimensions with Italian-American groups such as Nick LaRocca's Original Dixieland Jazz Band (embedded below.)



In northern cities and on the radio, white audiences fell in love with the form. Soon, major white performers (and bands) began to mimic this style and create their own sounds. Perhaps most emblematic was the tragic musical genius of Bix Beiderbecke.

By the late 1920s, Jazz had become a widely accepted form of pop music - and its play ranged the gambit from the transcendental to the profoundly banal - not unlike most forms of modern music. Paul Whiteman dubbed himself the "King of Jazz" by hiring all of the best (white) talent available and assembling it into his orchestra. This over-the-top production of orchestral jazz reached its zenith with the making of The King of Jazz, a feature-length film featuring Whiteman's orchestra and a host of extras including the Rhythm Boys whose lead man was a youthful Bing Crosby. It also was the premiere of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, which Whiteman commissioned for the film.





Gangster movies really began to take off as the Depression deepened. Along with the longstanding love of westerns, Americans loved the escapism of the gangster movies. Most were made to reinforce the old saw that crime doesn't pay, but sometimes that message would get lost on audiences. James Cagney's performance in Public Enemy (1931) is an iconic execution of this genre. Here is the famous "grapefruit scene:"



Lastly, while there probably weren't all that many "flappers," they were conspicuous for what they represented to main-stream Americans.

Class Today

Class today has been canceled. We will cover the second half of the 1920s on Wednesday. Adjustments to the course's Google calendar to follow.

The 1920s in all of their contradictory glory

A 1926 Cadillac Coupe (from the 2008 Fernie to Victoria Tour - a rally in British Columbia, Canada - www.vccc.com)

The next two lectures will look at 1920s America and the varying interpretations about what they meant for the nation at the time and what they continue to mean today.

Your textbook's author makes a general portrayal of the 1920s as a time when fiscal and social conservatism and corporate greed ran amok - and ultimately ran the country into the Great Depression. Along the way he laments the weakening of labor unions (his pet cause) and the "unequal distribution" of wealth. Yet between today's lecture and the next, we will look at a time in America marked by enormous cultural ferment and the emergence of a modern credit and consumer economy - however weak that economy's foundations were.

A 1920s Radio Ad from an interesting but mostly defunct website on 1920s radio from the University of Virginia. 

In particular, we will consider to what degree governmental conservatism and a lack of corporate regulation fed economic disaster, and to what degree uncontrollable market forces and underlying global economic weaknesses were responsible. 

Your author also enumerates in particular a fairly concise and accurate list of reasons for the coming of the Great Depression on pages 690-691. Do these square in emphasis and scale with what he sets forth in the rest of the chapter?