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Events
Jan. 9 | Call for papers: Identities and Technocultures
A 2-day conference about American culture and technologies that examines how new technologies dominate and define Americaness in the US and abroad. Co-sponsored by the University of Iowa Center for Ethnic Studies and the Arts (CESA) and the Mid-America American Studies Association (MAASA).
Resources: Abstracts of American Studies Dissertations
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Henthorn, Cynthia Lee. "Commercial Fallout: The Image of Progress, the Culture of War, and the Feminine Consumer, 1939-1959," Program in Art History, New York University, May 1, 1997.
This dissertation explores consumer culture during World War II by examining how wartime advertising and commercial propaganda forged a link between the home, the middle-class housewife, and the theatre of war, thereby setting a precedent for the military rhetoric found in many Cold War advertisements promoting a super-powered domesticity that affirmed the presumed moral authority of American capitalism. Wartime business leaders sought to ensure that consumerism and free enterprise would prevail over New Deal regulations by advertising an image of postwar progress in which a “new and improved” America would emerge from the innovations produced for war.
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