Description
In this seminar, the seventh of the series Intellectual and Cultural History of the United States, 1890–1945, Professor Casey Nelson Blake elucidates the impact of the Great Depression, the radical critiques that arose in response, and the legacy of a new form of cultural celebrating "the people."

Between the 1890s and the middle of the twentieth century, the United States underwent dramatic transformations. Our economic, political, and social landscapes changed irrevocably; so too did our intellectual and cultural life. In his nine-seminar series Intellectual and Cultural History of the United States, 1890–1945, Columbia professor of history Casey Nelson Blake describes how Americans abandoned Victorian complacencies to confront secularism and science, pragmatism and pluralism, the rise of consumer culture and the shock of the Depression, and the international challenges posed by fascism, communism, and the emergence of the United States as a world power.

In this eighth e-seminar, The Culture of "The People" Blake begins by describing the extent of the Depression and its overall impact. He then discusses the solutions proposed by such figures as Edmund Wilson and Lewis Mumford, who advocated a union of democratic political traditions and socialism, as well as those of Sidney Hook and W. E. B. Du Bois, who looked to Marxism for answers. The next section of the seminar explores the role of the American Communist Party in the culture of the 1930s, and the rise of a popular front against fascism. It is followed by a discussion of the new cultural focus on "the people," through documentary, government-sponsored writing projects, and the new understanding of culture as a people's way of life. The seminar ends with a discussion of the film The Grapes of Wrath and how it expresses the dual legacy—both radical political critique and cultural celebration—of the 1930s.