An Exploration of Modern American Cultural History: An Undergraduate American Studies Course Proposal
Graduation Date
Spring 2009
Document Type
Master's Thesis
Document Form
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Program Name
Humanities
First Reader
Thomas Burke, MFA
Second Reader
Cynthia Taylor, PhD
Abstract
This project develops the curriculum for an undergraduate level American Studies course that uses three themes as its basic organizational structure. Through an interdisciplinary humanities methodology, the project specifically examines the way in which American cultural products (art, literature, and film) are intertwined with America’s Post-World War I social and political history. This project suggests that these “high” and “low’ cultural products are not only an outcome of the American social and political landscape, but also influence that landscape. Each chapter explores one theme using three different examples. The first theme is Confinement. Isolation and Disillusionment, which investigates Ernest Hemingway s A Clean Well-Lighted Place" (1926), Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks (1942), and the noir film Detour (1945). The second theme is Anxiety and Fear, which explores Abstract Expressionism and the first gestural drip paintings of Jackson Pollock (circa 1947), Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible (1953), an the Science Fiction film Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). The third and final theme is Identity and Representation, which examines the Wonder Woman comic books in the 1940s and 1950s, Margaret Atwood’s novella The Penelopiad (2005), and the Academy Award-winning film Juno (2007).