Fall 2005
Dr. Nordquist
nordqudi@mail.armstrong.edu
Independent
Study Readings
A Depression Photo Essay
TIMELINE (from
SparkNotes)
1920-1928
The Politics of Conservatism
1920-1929
The Roaring Twenties & the Jazz Age
1919-1929
The Conservative Backlash
1928-1932
The Onset of the Depression
1933-1934
The First New Deal
1935-1938
The Second New Deal
1935-1939
The Demise of the New Deal
A Depression Art
Gallery
"Dark
Was The Night (Cold Was the Ground)" by Blind Willie Johnson
Great Depression Web Sites
America in the 1930s
(University of Virginia)
Bud, Not Buddy
(Christopher Paul Curtis)
The Great
Depression
(Modern American Poetry)
The
Great Depression
(Mr. Horwitz)
History of Super-Hero Comic Books
(Jamie Coville)
The New Deal
Era & Its Origins
(H-Net)
A New Deal for
the Arts
(National Archive)
The New Deal Network
(Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute)
Photographs of the Great
Depression
(About.com)
Race
Relations in the 1930s and 1940s
(Library of Congress)
Songs
of the Great Depression
(Catherine Lavender)
Surviving the Dust Bowl
(PBS)
Voices from the Dust
Bowl
(The Library of Congress) |
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Roadside stand near Birmingham, Alabama, 1936. Photographer: Walker
Evans.
© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Great Depression
Study Guide to ENGL 4900U
Life & Literature in America's
Great Depression
CONTENTS
American Culture in the
1930s
American Popular Music
of the 1930s
Articles on the Great
Depression
Books on the Great Depression
Down & Out in Paris and
London
The Glass Menagerie
essay
topics
perspectives
discussion questions
study guide
The Grapes of Wrath
Great Depression Web Sites
Hemingway and the Jazz Age
Short Stories:
"Battle
Royal," Ralph Ellison
"The
Chrysanthemums" John Steinbeck
Their Eyes
Were Watching God
study questions
metaphors
and questions
chapter-by-chapter
questions
reading
group discussion questions
teacher's
guide
Tom Browning's
Perfect Game
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.
Watch a scene from the 1940
film The Grapes of Wrath
The Grapes of Wrath,
by John Steinbeck
The Grapes of
Web
(Librarians' Index)
The Grapes of Wrath
(plot summary, maps, images, and more)
The Grapes of Wrath
(SparkNotes)
The Grapes of Wrath:
Scrapbooks & Artifacts
(Linda and David Lackey, 2001)
Present at the
Creation:
The Grapes of Wrath
(National Public Radio)
Study
Questions
(Dr. Fajardo-Acosta, Creighton University)
Understanding The Grapes of Wrath
(I. Lee, 2005)
Down
& Out in Paris and London
by George Orwell
Down
& Out in Paris and London
(full text)
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INDEPENDENT STUDY READINGS
6 October
According to my notes, you're reading chapters 4-6 of McElvaine's book for this week and
TW's Glass Menagerie (which I also encourage you to watch) for next. Your take on
McElvaine should be primarily from an economist's point of view--so I'll leave it to you
to question and/or critique his views from that perspective.
If you'd like some prompts to get you thinking about Glass Menagerie, I encourage
you to follow the various links I've provided under GM on the Depression course site (www.nt.armstrong.edu/GD.htm ). But don't
feel restricted in any way by these materials: coming up with good questions is more
challenging than answering somebody else's questions. And because this is an independent
study, the most valuable questions (even those that remain unanswered) are those you
compose yourself.
Looking ahead, I'd suggest reserving the week of Oct. 16 (when I'll be
out of town) for a good examination of some of the popular culture of the 1930s (and
considering the relation of films, radio, sport and so on to the economic climate). Take
advantage of the resources at
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~1930s/INDEX/index.html#film (be selective, of
course--there's an awful lot there), and plan on viewing Chaplin's Modern Times
as well as the film I lent you a few weeks ago.
That means we start Grapes of Wrath the last week of October.
Again, at the course web site you'll find links to plenty of supplementary resources
(including discussion questions and--more importantly--background info on the dust bowl).
Because I'd also like you to watch the John Ford film version of GoW, let's plan on taking
three weeks to cover it all--Steinbeck's novel, the historical background to it (including
Chapters 7 and 8 of McElvaine as well as the online resources), and Ford's film version.
That will take us to mid-November, and from there we'll finish up with a
few short stories (two of which are online and already linked to our course site), some
music of the period (I'll give you a CD or two: the key word is "jazz"), and
finally Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. Keep following the journal model
you've set for yourself & you'll be fine. Your final project will be
to compose a fairly informal but I hope thought-provoking essay in which you reflect on
the advantages and the limitations of trying to comprehend a single historical period (in
our case, the 1930s) from a multi-disciplinary perspective.
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