"THE ROARING '20's:  BECOMING MODERN IN THE U.S."

Fulfills Historical Perspectives Discovery requirement; History Major/Minor Elective

“The world broke in two in 1922 or thereabouts.”  So said the novelist Willa Cather, capturing the view of many Americans that the 1920s ushered in a distinctly modern age.  Everything seemed new and exciting: automobiles, radios, ‘moving pictures’, Harlem jazz clubs, flappers, speakeasies, skyscrapers.  But not all Americans embraced modernity.  The resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan, racial violence, the Scopes “Monkey” Trial, the Red Scare, massive immigration restrictions, a widening generation gap, debates over the “new woman” – all revealed deep cultural divides in what some have called an “age of anxiety.  Relying heavily on a variety of cultural sources of the era – films, famous trials, literature, art, advertisements, cartoons,  commentaries – we will explore the tensions and contradictions of the 1920s as Americans struggled over what becoming “modern” meant for their personal lives, and for the nation as a whole.