"Becoming Modern"
News Release Date: October 30, 2012
Research Triangle Park, N.C. The National Humanities Center is pleased to announce the launch of a rich, new anthology of primary sources focused on the 1920s. "Becoming Modern: America in the 1920s," the tenth of the Center's online collections designed for classroom use, incorporates over five hundred primary resources in full or excerpted.
Organized thematically to examine the major issues of the era, "Becoming Modern" includes twenty-three nonfiction and nine fiction works (full text or extended excerpts), twenty-six works of fine art, 108 political cartoons, thirteen New Yorker cartoons, twenty New York City subway posters, two full-length silent films, clips from eight silent films, two silent art films, forty-seven newsreel segments, twelve animated cartoons, two silent theater commercials, six music recordings, four live voice recordings, and one full-length radio broadcast.
Nearly all of these primary sources are new to the standard secondary curriculum on the 1920s and over 95% are being offered for the first time on the Web in openly available, user-friendly, and classroom applicable versions.
With background notes, discussion questions, and supplementary sites, this diverse collection will allow teachers and students to closely examine challenging topics such as labor rights and conflicts and the emergence of unions, the national debate over prohibition, women's rights and roles, and technological innovations that radically changed the ways that Americans worked, traveled, and entertained themselves. As with the Center's other online collections, "Becoming Modern" is compatible with Common Core State Standards, with individual texts amply annotated to facilitate student understanding and inquiry.
"Becoming Modern" was made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and a gift from Jonathan Weiss and Barbara Asch in honor of Burton Weiss, Jonathan's father. It was developed by the Center's staff with the scholarly assistance of John Kasson, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Fellow, 1980-81, 2009-10); Karen Lucic, Vassar College; and Sean McCann, Wesleyan University (Fellow, 2001-02).
To learn more about "Becoming Modern: America in the 1920s" visit http://americainclass.org/sources/becomingmodern/.
About the National Humanities Center
The National Humanities Center is the only major independent American institute for advanced study in all fields of the humanities. The National Humanities Center is distinctive among centers for advanced study in its commitment to linking scholarship to improved teaching. Model programs developed at the Center provide teachers with new materials and instructional strategies to make them more effective in the classroom and rekindle their enthusiasm for the subjects they teach.