Dear friends:
The April 1-2 workshop will be held at ideastream, just down the street
from CSU. My apologies for late notice, completely my fault as I
juggled a bunch of different rooms to find the correct one for Dr.
Liette Gidlow who is leading the workshop. (We are, as you might know,
doing lots of construction on our campus at CSU.)
Overview: Some historians have described the 19th century as a time
when Americans lived in a "producer" society, one in which identity and
life was tied to work and occupation; the twentieth century, they
argue, became a consumer society, one in which identity was bought and
sold in changing marketplaces. For this session, Dr. Liette Gidlow will
explore with us the development of a consumer society in modern
America. We will examine the buying and selling of goods, wars, and
politics. We will also consider how gender mattered in the development
of modern consumer society. The workshop will include some lecture and
discussion, lots of multi-media materials, including especially images
and sounds. We will learn not just about the development of consumer
society, but will be introduced to materials and methods for analyzing
such materials in classrooms, building on our collective repertoire of
knowledge. Finally, there will be time set aside for lesson planning,
in the multi-media computer lab of ideastream.
Start/Finish: We will serve food, beginning at 8:30. At 9:00, we
start promptly; we anticipate finishing by 3:00pm each day.
Parking: http://www.wviz.org/edsvcs/about/Directions.asp; we will
validate your parking receipt/give you validation.
Reading: We
will
ask you to read one chapter of the book in preparation for the
workshop, about 20 pages. We will read it in the context of a "jigsaw"
discussion. The division of the readings is in the attached file
("April1-2readinggroups.doc).
Links: LINKS to the readings are at: http://academic.csuohio.edu/tah/rrr/workshops/april2008.htm
You will be given a copy of the book, Karal Ann Marling, As Seen on TV: The Visual Culture of Everyday Life in the 1950s (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994). These are: Chapter 1 on consumption
and
environmentalism from Samuel P. Hays, Beauty,
Health, and Permanence: Environmental Politics
in the United States, 1955-1985
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 13-39; Chapter
6 by Michael L. Smith,
"Selling the Moon: the U.S.Manned Space
Program and the Triumph of Commodity Scientism," from Richard Wightman Fox
and T.J. Jackson Lears, eds., The Culture
of Consumption:Critical Essays in American
History, 1880-1980
(NY: Pantheon Books, 1983), 175-209.
LINKS to the above files are at: http://academic.csuohio.edu/tah/rrr/workshops/april2008.htm
*********************************************
Schedule
Tuesday, April 1
** Morning
Session A (90 min)
The Development of a Consumer Society,
1870s-Present
Session B (90 min)
Film/discussion: Selling
WW2
Show Capra,
"War Comes to America"
** Lunch
** Afternoon
Small group discussion/large group sharing
of readings; Gidlow will provide focusing
questions. (See groups above)
Wednesday, April 2
** Morning
Session A
Connecting Consumer Culture to Politics in an Election Year
The Commodification of Politics, 1920s style
Session B (90 min)
Women and political advertising
** Lunch
** Afternoon
Lesson Planning
*********************************************
Assignments for reading groups.
- Group 1: Marling,
chapter 3 on Disneyland
- Group
2: Marling, chapter 4 on cars
-
Group
3: Marling, chapter 5 on Elvis
-
Group
4: Marling, chapter 7 on the 1959
"Kitchen Debate"
-
Group
5: Chapter 1 on consumption and
environmentalism from Samuel P. Hays, Beauty,
Health, and Permanence: Environmental Politics
in the United States, 1955-1985
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 13-39.
-
Group
6: Chapter 6 by Michael L. Smith,
"Selling the Moon: the U.S. Manned Space Program," from Richard Wightman Fox
and T.J. Jackson Lears, eds., The Culture
of Consumption:Critical Essays in American
History, 1880-1980
(NY: Pantheon Books, 1983), 175-209.
LINKS to the above files are at: http://academic.csuohio.edu/tah/rrr/workshops/april2008.htm
