32101

SoSe 19: New Deal Art: The Visual Culture of Thirties America

Laura Rhonda Katzman

Information for students

Please register at: culture@jfki.fu-berlin.de with your name, matriculation number, study program, zedat email address or email address of home university, and type of exchange program (if applicable). Deadline for registration is April 8, 2019. Self-enrollment in Campus Management and Blackboard is not possible. A final list of participants will be published in the first session of the course on April 10. close

Additional information / Pre-requisites

Comments

This seminar examines the visual culture of 1930s America, in the context of the economic crisis of the Great Depression and the rural devastation wrought by the Dust Bowl that ravaged much of the American South and the Midwest. We will investigate the unprecedented role the New Deal government played as art patron, with the establishment of federal art programs that commissioned artists to create public murals, sculpture, graphic art, photography, film, theatre, and music, which aimed to bring art to the “masses” and construct a national artistic culture. Contemporaneous and controversial debates about government support for the arts and the role of art in a Western capitalist democracy will also be studied, along with recent scholarly approaches to New Deal art that consider perspectives of race, class, and gender. Other topics of discussion will include the political radicalization of artists, art as weapon against war and fascism, and art and the labor movement. We will analyze artistic styles ranging from Midwestern regionalism to urban social realism and the phenomenon of American scene painting. Particular attention will be given to the documentary aesthetic, as exemplified by the now iconic photography commissioned by the legendary Farm Security Administration (FSA). Please register at: culture@jfki.fu-berlin.de with your name, matriculation number, study program, zedat email address or email address of home university, and type of exchange program (if applicable). Deadline for registration is April 8, 2019. Self-enrollment in Campus Management and Blackboard is not possible. A final list of participants will be published in the first session of the course on April 10. close