Remaking American Cities Project
In this semester-long project, students trace how American cities grew and changed between 1880 and 1950. Groups of students research the history and transformation of cities such as Pittsburgh, Denver, or San Francisco. Students look at their city from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, analyzing census data to measure population changes, using maps and photographs to illustrate the rapid expansion of streetcar lines or the rise of skyscrapers, and searching historical newspapers for stories about political battles and everyday urban life. This project is often supplemented by a field trip to Minneapolis to study its growth during the same time period.
Immigrant Experiences
America is a nation of immigrants, but their experiences were as distinct as the countries from which they came. St. Olaf College was founded by and for Norwegian immigrants who settled in farming towns in the Upper Midwest and the Great Plains. Meanwhile, greater numbers of Irish, Italian and Eastern European immigrants abruptly changed places like New York and Chicago. This unit focuses on the varied experiences of 19th- and 20th-century immigrants, from the dangers they faced in their workplaces and neighborhoods, to the labor and social movements they formed to fight for security and rights, to the dance halls, amusement parks, and other new ways in which they sought entertainment.
Vaudeville, Cinema and American Theater
Does culture reflect a society’s values or does it he
lp create those values? This is one of the questions posed in our examination of the new forms of popular entertainment that emerged at the turn of the twentieth century – Vaudeville and the movies – and their high-culture counterpart, the American theater. Vaudeville gave working class immigrants a means to represent themselves and to speak back to their social “superiors.” Cinema shaped and allowed widespread access to new American identities. Alongside the rise of these new popular forms emerged an American avant-garde theater. In this unit, students consider the complex “conversations” between American society and the theatrical forms that represented it.
Jazz and the Harlem Renaissance
For African-Americans who came north during the Great Migration, art was a means of survival. In an America in which African-Americans who resisted second-class status were terrorized by the white majority, literature and music became important ways to express their humanity and thoughtfulness. In the 1920s, African-American literature and music flourished, with Harlem and Chicago as magnets for emerging black artists. Students read poems and stories by Langston Hughes, Zora Neal Hurston, and others and listen to music by Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong.
You must be logged in to post a comment.