The Past Recaptured: Photographs, Facts and Fictions, 1935-1943

The Past Recaptured: Photographs, Facts and Fictions, 1935-1943 is a crosslisted Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies/Interdisciplinary Arts/Social Science class taught by Michael Lesy.

Course Description
This course will study the United States, 1935-1943, using an array of primary and secondary visual and written sources. These sources will include: (1) One hundred and forty-five thousand black and white images made of the American people by a team of documentary photographers employed by the US government (These photographs are in the FARM SECURITY/OFFICE OF WAR INFORMATION COLLECTION. This collection is available on-line, through the Library of Congress? American Memory website). (2) The Historical NEW YORK TIMES and the Historical CHICAGO TRIBUNE, available as on-line data bases. (3) David M. Kennedy?s Pulitzer Prize winning FREEDOM FROM FEAR, THE AMERICAN PEOPLE IN DEPRESSION AND WAR, 1929-1943. (4) Period novels and oral histories (e.g. Lorena Hickock?s ONE THIRD OF THE NATION). Students will learn to choose and use excerpts from this array of images and texts to build narrative sequences of words and pictures that like movies with soundtracks tell true stories about this country and our shared pasts. Students will be expected to create sequences of words and images that from week to week will be the work product of this course. This course is designed for artists who are intellectuals, and intellectuals who are artists. Prerequisite: Secondary school Advanced Placement in American History, and/or American Literature courses OR: College courses in American history and/or American Literature. This course DOES NOT satisfy Division I distribution requirements.