Here is a not-necessarily-complete list of things we covered during the course.
Readings:
"Body Ritual Among the Nacerima" by Horace Miner
The Luckiest Generation” by Thomas Hine
“Entering the Fifties”, “Generation in a Spotlight” and “Women, Love and Sex in Eisenhower’s America” by Ronald Oakley
“Rock Hudson’s Body." By Richard Meyer
“Chapter Thirty-Four” and “Chapter Thirty-One” by David Halberstam
“Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book: The Aesthetics of Food in the 1950s" and “Autoeroticism: America’s Love Affair with the Car in the Television Age” by K.A. Maral
and one article you summarized in a study sheet or as an oral. (See study sheets on line)
Slide shows in class:
Marilyn Monroe and James Dean, Art and Design in the 1950s, The Suburbs, and African Americans in 1950s America
Videos and Films:
Advertising and the End of the World, The History of Rock and Roll, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, Atomic Café, The Pill, The Celluloid Closet, and Some Like It Hot.
Topics Covered:
What is Visual Culture? Why does it make us a bit like Miner's alien anthropologist?
How does advertising work? Terms like: Descriptive, Prescriptive, Aspirational, Didactic.
Historic and economic factors that shaped the 1950s—"Luckiest Generation"
Celebrity in the 1950s. Rock Hudson, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Elvis Presley (and others covered in Star-Gazing Assignment)
Communism and Joseph McCarthy. The Space Race and the Cold War.
Gender roles. Sexuality. Marriage. Teenagers. Family Life (also as portrayed on TV).
Advertising in LIFE magazine.
Clothing and fashion
The birth of Rock and Roll
Frozen foods, cake mixes, television and advertising.
1950s automobiles
Sexuality and gender roles in cinema
Topics covered in presentations?
1230 class—sci fi novel covers, Vogue magazine covers, movie posters for musicals, juvenile delinquency on movie posters, the Beats, images of mental institutions, jet airplanes in Popular Mechanics, makeup, communism in articles in LIFE, Disney animated film posters, kids with polio, male rock stars, physical culture, images of the future and space and ads for food bathing suits, alcohol, personal care and hygiene, cigarettes,
230 class—kids in LIFE ads, Vogue and Seventeen magazines, juvenile delinquency in movie posters, Korean War, sci fi novel and magazine covers, outer space, dating, makeup, rock stars, cowboys in movie posters, college life, ads for medicine and hygiene, cigarettes, cars, coca cola, jet travel, and fast food,
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