History 102
Web Module # 4
Post World War II America
Exploring the
Culture and Politics of the United States 1945-1980
Citizens of the United States in the years between 1945 and 1980
struggled to cope with a wide variety of changes taking place
throughout the world and at home. The unchanging certainties
of culture and politics, which many erroneous believed
characterized the years prior to World War II, seemed to dissolve
in an ongoing debate over a host of issues rarely visited in any
meaningful way in the past. Dominating the three and a half
decades after the World War II was a new war described as
“Cold,” which had a disturbing tendency to get hot in
parts of the world only remotely familiar to most Americans.
This threat of nuclear war and the ongoing tensions between the two
Super Powers dominated international relations and reshaped
American politics. At a more fundamental level, many Americans
began to question assumptions and values which most regarded as
unquestionable. Race relations, patriotism, consumer culture
and even the relationship between parents and their children all
underwent the scrutiny of public debate. For most of the
period it seemed that there was nothing that could not or should
not be debated in the American marketplace of ideas. For some
who lived through the Great Depression and the war, the postwar era
of a growing and prosperous Middle Class was a vindication of the
triumph of established attitudes and values. For other
Americans, often economically left behind or marginalized by the
larger society, economic change, international instability, and the
questioning of traditional points of view generated a fear and
frustration which would be manifested in a wide variety of efforts
to maintain the status quo. For still others America failed
to deliver on its promise of freedom, equality, and open access and
was mesmerized by a culture of consumption gone wild. Words
associated with this time period all have the ability to conjure
very diverse attitudes and emotions. To this day reference to
Red Scare, Vietnam, Counter Culture, Beats, Civil Rights,
Affirmative Action, Korea, Watergate, Cuba, Nixon, Woodstock or any
of a long list of groups or events evokes a wide range of
responses. Yet there is one thing most agree: to a varying
degree all of these have had a role in reshaping, for good or bad,
contemporary America.
Web Module Exercise:
This web
module is designed to give students wide latitude to explore a
topic of interest closely associated with the era of the Cold
War. It will also give students the opportunity to locate and
evaluate historical documents available on the World Wide Web and
to draw conclusions about the historical significance of the event
being studied. The exercise is to be carried out in the
following way.
- For the primary analysis report:
- Decide on topic to be explored.
- Identify web sites and documents to be used in exploring your
topic.
- Evaluate the content and value of the documents to be used in
your group project.
- For the final draft each Web Module Analysis Group must submit a
single paper that analyzes and explains what the materials taken
together tell us about the topic under consideration and the
history of the Cold War Era.
The final draft must contain evidence to support your
generalizations.
- Be sure to use complete citations to indicate the sources of
your information.
- What is the historical significance of the topic you have
researched?
Selecting and Event:
-
Decide which decade (The Forties, The Fifties, The Sixties, or
The Seventies) your group wishes to understand more about.
Use a web search engine such as Yahoo or Alta Vista to determine
what materials are available on the World Wide Web for the decade
you are interested in. or…
- Select a cultural or political event in your group’s
decade of interest that you want to analyze and use your search
engine to locate web sites on that topic.
- Select two or more web sites that contain primary
documents relating to the topic you have chosen.
- Select the primary documents from each web site
that best inform you about the event and analyze their content.
Preparing the Report:
- Evaluate the quality of the web site and the documents contained
on that site.
- Who authored the web site and what was the authors purpose for
creating the site?
- Are the documents sufficient to understand the event you are
researching?
- What do the primary documents tell you about the
event?
- What caused the event or activity?
- What happened?
- Who was involved?
- When did it happen?
- What was the outcome?
- Draw a conclusion as to the event’s historical
significance and to its impact on the future.
Web Sites of Interest:
- The Forties: http://www.nhk.or.jp/nuclear/e/text/sumiso.htm
- The Fifties: http://www.joesherlock.com/fifties.html
or http://www.fiftiesweb.com
- The Sixties: http://lists.village.virginia.edu/sixties
- The Seventies: http://www.journale.com/watergate.html
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