Screening America: United States History through Film since 1900

by James Lorence

Overview

By combining the study of films with the text-based primary sources, Screening America gives students clear guidance in studying, interpreting, and understanding the motion picture's significance as a primary source in investigating U.S. History.Students will come to understand history as not only the record of what governments did, but also the way in which people lived their lives, experienced the wider world, and engaged in leisure pursuits, from which we can learn much about the society in which they lived.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780321143167
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	09/09/2016
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	7.50(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

James J. Lorence, Eminent Scholar of History, Gainesville College

Table of Contents

Preface.Introduction: THE ANALYSIS OF PRIMARY SOURCES: AN INTRODUCTORY COMMENT.I. PROGRESSIVE AMERICA: MILITANT REFORM AND POSTWAR REACTION. 1. Social Protest: A Corner in Wheat (1909) as Muckraking Film. 2. Cultural History Through a Cloudy Lens: The Birth of a Nation (1915) and the Racial Climate of Progressive America. 3. Social Change and Sexual Politics: Dancing Mothers (1926) and Moral Ambiguity in the Jazz Age. 4. The End of Romantic War: All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) and Disillusionment in the Interwar Era II. A NATION UNDER STRESS: FROM THE DEPTHS OF ECONOMIC DESPAIR TO THE BRINK OF WAR. 5. Making It in Depression America: The Streets or the Stage as Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933) 6. The Resilient People: The Grapes of Wrath (1940) Exposes Poverty in the Land of Plenty. III. A DEMOCRACY OF WAR. 7. Thinking of Intervention: Foreign Correspondent (1940) and the Winds of War. 8. Government Persuasion: Prelude to War (1943), The Negro Soldier (1944), and the Issues of the War. 9. Social Unity in a Nation at War: Since You Went Away (1944) and Women's Mobilization for Victory. IV. COLD WAR AMERICA: DOMESTIC ANTICOMMUNISM AND FEAR OF FAILURE. 10. Hollywood's Cold War: The Suppression of Salt of the Earth (1954). 11. A Cautionary Tale: Dr. Strangelove as a Vision of Nuclear Endgame. 12. The Alienation Films of the 1960s: Alice's Restaurant (1969), The Graduate, and Social Fragmentation. V. LEGACIES: TOWARD MODERN AMERICA. 13. Worker Solidarity and Human Dignity: Norma Rae (1979) and Southern Labor Activism. 14. Coming Home (1978): Vietnam and the Uncertain Future of American Foreign Policy. 15. Unfinished Business: Do the Right Thing (1989) and the Escalation of Social Tension. 16. Suburban Anxiety in Modern America: American Beauty (1999) and the Pitfalls of Prosperity.