The Popular Arts and U.S.
History
This is a lengthy, though not exhaustive list of possible topics for your semester project. Some are specific, others more general and you will have to narrow or refine them further. You are certainly not obligated to choose something from this list; it is offered as a way to jump start your thinking about selecting a topic. The primary question that will drive your essay is, “How does learning more about this form of popular art or entertainment that I am examining help my reader to understand more about the culture that produced it?” So keep this in mind as you choose a topic.
Historians have written books and articles on every topic listed here, so you shouldn’t have any difficulty finding sources. I will be available to meet with you one-on-one to help you settle on a topic and give you leads on sources.
American frontier folklore/tale tales as a reflection of American cultural concerns and attitudes
William Brown and the African Grove Theater Company
Slave humor, folklore, and music. Lawrence Levine’s Black Culture and Black Consciousness is a good place to start.
The Second Great Awakening and tent revival meetings
The “Kingdom of Matthias” scandal – religion, sexual deviance, and the sensationalism of the penny press
John O’Sullivan, the Democratic Review and the “Young America” movement (an “ultrademocratic” movement of popular writers in New York City during the Age of Jackson)
American melodrama – how plays such as The Drunkard, Shenandoah, and My Partner reflected contemporary cultural values and priorities
Edwin Forrest – America’s most popular antebellum actor
Ned Buntline – “The Great Rascal,” dime novelist, instigator of the Astor Place Riot, publicist for Buffalo Bill, cultural entrepreneur
Dan Rice – minstrel performer, circus showman. Tried to bridge the growing distance between “high” and “low” culture. Called by one historian “the most famous man you’ve never heard of.”
Nathaniel Park Willis – during his lifetime called the “most talked-about author in America.” A gossip columnist who brought together sentiment and celebrity and had great appeal, particularly among middle class women.
Burlesque and American Culture – gender and morality in 19th century culture
Hoaxes in the 19th century – the automaton chess player, the moon Hoax, Barnum’s “What is it?” exhibit
Themes in 19th century American popular song and music
Foreigners’ impressions of
American culture – Fanny Trollope’s Domestic
Manners of the Americans
Popular literature and poetry
from the Mexican war. Robert Johannsen’s To
the Halls of the Montezumas is good on this topic.
The popular magazine Godey’s Ladies Book and 19th century women (Godey’s was the Cosmopolitan of its day)
Hutchinson Family Singers (antislavery singers – a counterpoint to black face minstrels)
Stowe’s, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (how its reception [and alteration] in North and South reflected growing sectional tensions over slavery)
Phrenology – the “science” of determining character by analyzing the shape of the human skull. It was a popular “hobby” during the 19th Century.
“Scribbling Women” – Popular women novelists of the antebellum period and the culture of Victorian sentimentality
Etiquette books – very popular with 19th century Americans aspiring to the middle class. They turned to such books to tell them what was “proper” behavior. They are often revealing of the evolving notions of what was “good taste” within a particular culture. John Kasson’s Rudeness & Civility: Manners in 19th Century Urban America is a good source and includes numerous excerpts from these etiquette books
The domestication of death (Mid-19th century middle class Americans constructed various mourning rituals surrounding the death of loved ones, particularly children. This was reflected in various elements of popular culture.)
Disguises, masks, and parlor theatricals (middle class Americans enjoyed putting on shows in their own homes, reflecting the domestic turn of popular culture in the North during the mid-1850s) Ann Douglas, The Feminization of American Culture and Karen Haltunen, Confidence Men and Painted Women are excellent on the culture of Victorian domesticity.
“Card sharps and bucket shops” – gambling in 19th Century America. Historians have studied the correlation between the popularity of games of chance and the traits of particular historical periods. (We will address this issue in our discussion of Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon later in the semester.)
The Patent Medicine Show – a favorite to lure in 19th century “suckers.” Historians have approached this topic by asking what was so alluring? To what needs, other than simply physical ones, did these “cure alls” minister?
The Chautauqua, lyceums, and the popular lecture (thousands of people attended lectures on various topics during the 19th Century – part of the oral culture of the period. Many lecturers became “celebrities.”)
The political cartoons of Thomas Nast – the mixture of art and politics
Victoria Woodhull – “high priestess of free love” during the 19th century. A scandalous figure that became involved with the Spiritualist movement that swept the nation in the 1850s and 1860s
Dime novels and pulp fiction as popular entertainment. Michael Denning’s Mechanic Accents: Dime Novels and Working-Class Culture in America is a good source.
Buffalo Bill’s autobiography as an example of popular literature.
Artists of the west – the posters and advertisements for Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Shows that helped create the mythic west
Wild West Shows and the Images of American Indians (Some historians now argue that the Indians were not simply “victims,” but chose to participate in these shows as a way of preserving their culture and escaping the tedium of the reservation. There is a new book called Buffalo Bill and Sitting Bull that addresses this topic.)
Rodeo Queens and the American Dream, a new book by Joan Burbick, examines women’s roles in later Wild West Shows from the 1930s and 1940s
Children’s literature (often very revealing of the attitudes and values of the culture that produced it because it was the medium through which one generation tried to shape the next)
Joaquin Murrieta and popular culture in the old Southwest
Popular art and entertainment in the 19th century West (David Dary, Seeking Pleasure in the Old West is a good source.)
Working class Fourth of July Celebrations (such holiday celebrations are often revealing of cultural values and conflicting views about “true Americanism”) Chapter 3 of Roy Rosenzweig, Eight Hours for What We Will looks at such celebrations.
Romaticism in 19th century popular illustrations and paintings
Prize fighting and the culture of masculinity
The Police Gazette and the “Sporting Gentleman” – the bachelor subculture in the Gilded Age.
Sideshows, Freakshows and Circuses as American cultural artifacts
Secret rituals and manhood in Victorian America. Why did so many men join organizations like the Odd Fellows, Knights of Pythias and other secret orders?
Success manuals for Gilded Age men. Historians argue that the popularity of such manuals indicate that there was a crisis of masculinity during the late Gilded Age.
The “Muscular Christianity” movement – a religious response to the crisis of masculinity
Oscar Wilde and American Aestheticism. See Mary Blanchard, Oscar Wilde’s America: Counterculture in the Gilded Age.
The paintings of Thomas Eakins and the construction of Gilded Age Manhood
The illustrations of Charles Dana Gibson, creator of the famous “Gibson Girl.” A popular artist whose work suggests the arrival of modernity in American popular art.
Science fiction – popular even in the late 19th century. This genre often reveals the fears and preoccupations of the culture that produced it. It also can indicate how a society thought the “future” would look. There are anthologies of 19th century science fiction you can look over to get a sense of what was popular.
Tony Pastor and the origins of Vaudeville – saloon culture made respectable. There are any number of Vaudeville performers upon which you can base your project.
Ethnic and immigrant theater productions – assimilaton or a struggle for cultural autonomy?
The “Yellow Press” and the “selling” of the Spanish-American war
American Orientalism. Historians argue that fascination with the Orient in the late 19th Century reflected many American’s ambivalence about modernity and longing for timeless, traditional cultural influences
The Arts and Crafts movement. An artistic trend in interior design that also represented something of an anti-modern sensibility.
Mark Twain as a popular American literary icon
The 1893 Chicago World’s Fair (a favorite topic among cultural historians)
Frank Norris and the Progressive sensibility in popular literature
Maxfield Parrish (a popular painter during the Progressive era – comparable in popularity to Norman Rockwell)
The “Ash Can” school – American painting and the culture of the Progressive Era
Representations of African Americans in the Jim Crow period. During the 1890s-1920s there was a fascination with the Black Mammy (cf Aunt Jemima) and other stereotypical images of blacks. Many are used in advertising, popular literature (Joel Chandler Harris and the “Uncle Remus” stories), and material culture (lawn jockies, “nigger” banks, etc.) This coincides with the growing concerns, particularly in the south, about keeping blacks “in their place.”
The Saturday Evening Post, America’s most popular magazine, and American middle-brow culture See Jan Cohn, Creating America: George Horace Lorimer and The Saturday Evening Post.
Ethnic and immigrant religious
festivals (the center of popular entertainment for many urban working class
people at the turn of the century) See Robert A. Orsi’s The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian
Harlem
State fairs – a popular source of entertainment for rural Americans during much of the 20th century
The rise of spectator sports at the turn of the 20th Century (There are books on the origins of college football, horseracing, baseball, and boxing.)
Amusement parks such as Coney Island – a place that “rang in the 20th Century” according to one historian. Americans were exposed to new technologies and attitudes at these parks.
The rise of dance halls, cabarets, and nightclubs and the changing notions of “propriety” for women. See Lewis Erenberg, Steppin’ Out or Kathy Peiss, Cheap Amusements.
The “legit theater” – Broadway plays as a reflection of changing American culture
Irene and Vernon Castle. America’s first nationally known dance team are credited with making dancing “respectable” even for upper class people in the 1910s. (Irene was one of the first well known women to “bob” her hair.)
Harry Houdini – one of the most popular performers of the early 20th century
Julian Elting, very famous once, now forgotten. Was the best female impersonator of his day. John Kasson argues his popularity stemmed from his audience’s fascination with the blurring of gender lines (a reaction to developments happening around them at the turn of the 20th century). See Kasson, Houdini, Tarzan, and the Perfect Man
Silent film comedies, westerns, and melodramas (see
bibliography in Cohen, Silent Film)
The Ziegfeld Follies – popular variety act and “girlie” show of the 1910s and 1920s. Florenz Ziegfeld was considered one of the great showmen of his day.
Movie fan magazines and the rise of the culture of celebrity in the 1910s and 1920s
Artists, propaganda and World War I
The Harlem Renaissance
Dance Marathons – a craze of the 1920s. See Carol Martin, Dance Marathons: Performing American Culture
Zane Grey and the literary Western
Comic Strips. See Ian Gordon’s book Comic Strips and Consumer Culture, 1890-1945 which also has a good bibliography on this topic.
The detective novel and American culture. Best source to start with is John G. Cawelti, Adventure, Mystery, and Romance: Formula Stories as Art and Popular Culture. Cawelti has chapters on Hammett, Chandler, and Mickey Spillane (popular during the 1950s for his rabidly anticommunist spy thrillers)
Ragtime music and race relations
Early American jazz (See Burton W. Peretti, The Creation of Jazz: Music, Race and Culture in Urban America)
Representations of African Americans in Film (See Daniel Laeb, From Sambo to Superspade)
Pre-code Hollywood (The Hays code clamped down on the portrayal of sex, immorality, and other “obscene” topics in 1934. Historians have examined pre-code Hollywood and argued that the movies of this period were far more revealing as a window on to American culture.) See Thomas Doherty, Pre-Code Hollywood, and for the best overall cultural history of the movies, Robert Sklar, Movie-Made America
“Fallen Woman” films – a staple of film melodrama in the late 1920s and 1930s.
Mae West as cultural icon. Was she a “feminist” or an anti-feminist stereotype?
The Marx Brothers – cinematic anarchists?
Chaplin and American Culture, see Charles Maland’s book of this title.
The Blues and African American culture
Bert Williams, the first major black comedian to enjoy cross-over success
Segregated Vaudeville. There existed a separate Vaudeville circuit during the 1910s-1940s. Two of its most famous performers were the dance team “Norton and Margot” (See Brenda D. Gottschild’s book on the two, Waltzing in the Dark)
The culture of the Popular Front – left wing political activism mixed with art as the crisis of the Depression inspired dissidents of all artistic stripes
Eddie Cantor – crown price of entertainers in the 1920s and 1930s. An example of the many Jewish entertainers who went from poor immigrant to wealthy celebrity
Entertainment and the New Deal – the Warner Brothers’ relationship with Franklin D. Roosevelt; the Federal Theater Project; New Deal Post Office murals
Radio and American Culture – Orson Wells’ “Invasion from Mars;” Comedians Jack Benny, Burns & Allen, Fibber McGee & Molly, Edgar Bergan & Charlie McCarthy.
Superheroes and American Culture. Often the plots of comic strips, radio shows and comic books addressed contemporary issues through the adventures of such superheroes as Superman, Batman, and the Green Lantern.
Big Band Jazz in New Deal America. David Stowe’s excellent book Swing Changes looks at the connections between the Swing music craze of the ‘30s and the progressive politics of the New Deal
New Deal Photography – the FSA pictures
The 1939 World’s Fair in New York City – ideal images of the future as global war looms. Alice G. Marquis, Hopes and Ashes: The Birth of Modern Times is good on this topic and on 1930s popular culture in general.
The early work of Walt Disney and American values. For an
interesting discussion of “The Three Little Pigs” animated short and the culture
of the Great Depression, see chapter three of Terry Cooney, Balancing Acts: American Thought and Culture
in the 1930s. See also Richard Schickel’s classic, The Disney Version
The Gangster Film and American values during the Great Depression
Propaganda films of World War II
The Carter Family and the origins of country-western music
Popular culture as a weapon in the Cold War – the American Exhibition at Sokolniki (where Nixon and Khrushchev conducted the “kitchen debate.”) There are several good books describing how American popular culture exhibited abroad proved effective as propaganda against the communist system during the Cold War.
The “Domestication” of the Bomb. Atom-bomb related culture is addressed in Paul Boyer’s cultural history of the Bomb, By the Bomb’s Early Light and Elaine May’s Homeward Bound, a study of the middle-class family during the cold war.
Organized crime as represented in fifties popular culture. Lee Bernstein’s new book, The Greatest Menace: Organized Crime in Cold War America is the place to start.
For cold war popular literature as a reflection of American culture, see Morris Dickstein, Leopards in the Temple and Thomas Hill Schaub, American Fiction in the Cold War
Early Cold War Critics: The Beat Generation. There is an extensive literature on the Beats and their critique of the cold war consensus.
Fifties film and the cold war. See Michael Biskind, Seeing Is Believing: How Hollywood Taught us to Stop Worrying and Love the Fifties
Fifties Juvenile Delinquency films. See Thomas Doherty, Teenagers & Teenpics: The Juvenilization
of American Movies in the 1950s
Fifties style and material culture. See Thomas Hine, Populuxe
For an introduction to anticommunism and popular culture, see Stephen J. Whitfield, The Culture of the Cold War.
For studies of American culture and fifties television, see David Marc, Comic Visions: Television Comedy and American Culture and Cecelia Tichi, Electronic Hearth: Creating an American Television Culture. Both books have helpful bibliographies.
Race relations, class relations, and the origins of rock’n’roll.
Comic books and the cold war. Bradford W. Wright, Comic Book Nation: The Transformation of Youth Culture in America builds on William Savage’s work (which we will read at the end of the semester.)
The Quiz Show Scandals of the 1950s. Whitfield, Culture of the Cold War has an interesting chapter on this episode.