History 476

Devine

Spring 2007

MIDTERM EXAM STUDY QUESTIONS

 

  1. Randolph Bourne believed that “youth” was not exclusively a function of age; it was therefore possible to live in a state of “perpetual youth.”  According to Bourne, how might one achieve “perpetual youth”?
  2. What were reformers in the early 1900’s referring to when they spoke of the “boy problem”?  What steps did psychologists such as G. Stanley Hall suggest for solving the “boy problem”?
  3. Why did advertisers begin marketing to boys in the early 1900’s when consumerism had been associated with women throughout most of history? How did advertisers seek to “de-sissify” boy consumerism?
  4. Why did boys prove to be “remarkably influential salesmen” in middle-class families? Why did admen conclude that boys would be a profitable “target market”?
  5. Many historians have argued that working-class attitudes about female sexuality were far less strict than those of middle-class Protestant reformers. How does Mary Odem’s article, “Teenage Girls, Sexuality, and Working-Class Parents” refute this view?  
  6. How did the urban environment, changes in the economy, and the availability of “cheap amusements” contribute to the weakening of traditional limitations that working class families and communities had put on adolescent girls?
  7. Why were poor and working class parents so concerned about their daughters’ desire for more freedom and independence?
  8. How did the new “female adolescence” (described in Ruth Alexander, “Going Around With a Bad Crowd of Girls”) differ from Victorian girlhood?
  9. What were “commercial amusements” and why were reformers like Jane Addams so critical of them?
  10. Young people could have “privacy in the midst of the millions” at turn-of-the-century Coney Island.  How was this “anonymity of the crowd” both liberating and potentially dangerous?
  11. According to David Nasaw, how and why were girls’ experiences in the early 20th century city different than boys’?
  12. Why was having money important for the children of the city?
  13. According to John Carter in “These Wild Young People,” what effect did World War I have on the younger generation?
  14. According to James Wechsler in Revolt on Campus, what forms did student rebellion take during the 1920s?  What did the radical or rebellious students find most disturbing about American society during the 1920s?
  15. From reading Vincent Sheean’s memoir “The Modern Gothic,” what impression do you get of college students and college life during the 1920s?
  16. Why does Kevin White argue that the sexual liberation of the 1920s had unintended (and negative) consequences for relationships between men and women?  If people gained the right to be more “sexually liberated” what did the have to give up in exchange?
  17. Were adults of the 1920s correct in believing that the “wild” younger generation lived in a “state of anarchy” and did not adhere to any social standards or rules?  What evidence is there that this view was incorrect?
  18.  During the 1920s, how did young flappers and sheiks prove to themselves, their parents, and their friends that they were “modern”?
  19. What opportunities did the NYA offer unemployed and disadvantaged teenagers?  How did it transmit values to young people?
  20. What was the purpose of the CCC?  How did those who joined the CCC respond to the program? Why does Thomas Hine’s chapter “Dead End Kids” argue that the value of the CCC was “limited”?
  21. Why did many American adults believe they had good reason to fear young people during the 1930s?
  22. What challenges did schools face during the Depression?  Why does Thomas Hine argue that educators dealt poorly with working-class students?
  23. In what ways did the CCC help those who joined it?  In what ways did CCC recruits help the nation?
  24. In his chapter on swing music and youth culture, what evidence does Lewis Erenberg cite to demonstrate that swing fans were not just uncritical “passive receivers” of musical entertainment, but took an active part in creating a democratic culture around swing music?
  25. How did technological advances – radio, jukeboxes, and movies with sound – make swing music more inclusive and break down barriers between urban and rural and black, white, and brown young people?
  26. Were “bobby soxers” typical American teens?  During the 1930s, why did advertisers try to portray them as typical?
  27. How did the style and behavior of the Mexican-American “pachucos” and “pachuquitas” contrast with that of the “bobby soxer”?  In what ways were the two groups similar?
  28. How was Russell Baker a different kind of person than his mother?
  29. How did Russell Baker’s upbringing leave him at something of a disadvantage when he got to college?
  30. How did growing up during hard times affect Russell and his sister’s childhood?
  31. How did the members of Russell Baker’s family help each other survive during the depression (both economically and emotionally)?
  32. What were some of the reasons teenagers left home to ride the rails?
  33. How did their experiences riding the rails shape the worldviews of these teenagers for the rest of their lives?
  34. How did World War II affect the emotional lives of families?  In what various ways were young children in particular affected?
  35. Many historians have maintained that traditional gender roles were challenged and undermined on the homefront during World War II.  What evidence does William Tuttle (Chapter 9, Daddy’s Gone to War) introduce to argue that wartime popular culture actually reinforced traditional gender roles?
  36. What were “V-girls”?  How did their own self-image differ from the way that adults saw them?  How did the reaction to the “V-girls” reveal the persistence of the sexual double standard?
  37. How did adult perceptions of teenage behavior help spark rising concerns about “juvenile delinquency” during World War II?  If teens weren’t necessarily engaging in criminal behavior, why did many adults still consider them “delinquent”?
  38. How were “teen canteens” a departure from traditional adult-sanctioned forms of recreation? How did their establishment mark a new approach to dealing with juvenile delinquency?
  39. What were some of the aspects of the “zoot suit culture” of the 1940s?  According to Robin Kelley, why might one consider the zoot suit culture an “oppositional culture”?
  40. Who and what were the members of the zoot suit “oppositional culture” opposing?  What did these “opponents” think of the zoot suiters?
  41. Why did zoot suiters like Malcolm X avoid wage labor and the draft and turn to “hustling”?  Why was “hustling” a double-edged sword?
  42. Why was “dressing up” important to young working class blacks like Malcolm X and his friends?  How did it restore both a sense of individuality and community?
  43. What factors led to the zoot suit riots in Los Angeles?
  44. According to James Gilbert, why were Americans in the 1950s so concerned about the possibly adverse effects of mass culture on young people?  What social and cultural conditions of the postwar period helped fuel this concern and made mass culture a scapegoat?
  45. How were middle class parents’ fears about juvenile delinquency linked to their hostility toward working class culture and mores?
  46. Why were teenagers and the new mass media-driven youth culture “threatening” to many Americans in the 1950s?  Of course, the younger generation has always been viewed somewhat suspiciously by the older, but why in the 1950s did this suspicion reach crisis proportions?
  47. Why did the psychologist Frederic Wertham launch a crusade to ban comic books?  In his view, what threat did comic books pose?
  48. Why were juvenile delinquency films subject to sharp criticism and yet also so popular?
  49. Why were figures like James Dean and Marlon Brando so attractive to young people during the 1950s?  In what ways did the characters these actors played articulate what young people were feeling?
  50. How does the story of the Catholic “SDS” undermine the claim that an “all-powerful marketing establishment” dictates what will be popular among young people?
  51. Who was Eugene Gilbert?  What role did he and Seventeen magazine play in furthering the notion of a “youth market”?