Take-Home Final Exam, due December 12
Choose two of the following four questions. Write 4 double-spaced pages answering each of the two chosen questions (8 pages total). Use examples from materials you read and viewed in class to support your argument. Use 2-3 brief examples to support each point you make. When you quote from or refer to published sources make sure to use footnotes, which should include the author, title of the book, article, or film, publication date, and page number.
1. Historians have dubbed the 1920s the "Jazz Age" in American history. What do they mean? Describe aspects of the Jazz Age in terms of economy, status of women, fashion, music, and business culture. Did the popularity of jazz, an African-American musical form, mean there was a marked improvement in race relations in the 1920s?
2. During the Great Depression FSA photographers traveled across the country documenting social conditions. What New Deal policies did their work promote? Do you think President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's reforms and new policies such as Social Security were justified during the 1930s economic crisis? How does FSA photographers' portrayal of the crisis compare to Charlie Chaplin's portrayal of life during the 1930s in his film Modern Times?
3. Historians have argued that World War II marked the beginnings of the civil rights movement in the United States. Would you agree? How did wartime culture affect the rise of social movements for the rights of women and racial minorities in the United States? Consider Japanese internment, zoot suit riots, "double V", participation of women in wartime industries, and media constructions of wartime obligation.
4. Between 1920 and 1945 the U.S. government on several occasions curtailed civil liberties of U.S. citizens and aliens. How did popular and legal concepts of civil liberties evolve between 1920 and 1946? You may discuss, among others, such aspects as Oliver Wendell Holmes's reaction to the Red Scare, FDR's legislation on the right of workers to unionize and strike, Huey Long's and Father Coughlin's populist movements, and the controversy about Japanese internment.