Browse: Keyword: Mass Production

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American Consumer Culture, Fall 2001

Abstract:: Examines how and why twentieth-century Americans came to define the "good life" through consumption, leisure, and material abundance. Explores how such things as department stores, advertising, mass-produced cars, and suburbs transformed the American economy, society, and politics.

American Consumer Culture, Fall 2007

Abstract:: This class examines how and why twentieth-century Americans came to define the “good life” through consumption, leisure, and material abundance. We will explore how such things as department stores, nationally advertised brand-name goods, mass-produced cars, and suburbs transformed the American economy, society, and politics. The course is organized both thematically and chronologically. Each period deals with a new development in the history of consumer culture. Throughout we explore both celebrations and critiques of mass consumption and abundance.

Read the Fine Print

Abstract:: This course will focus on the emergence and evolution of industrial societies around the world. The student will begin by comparing the legacies of industry in ancient and early modern Europe and Asia and examining the agricultural and commercial advances that laid the groundwork for the Industrial Revolution. The student will then follow the history of industrialization in different parts of the world, taking a close look at the economic, social, and environmental effects of industrialization. This course ultimately examines how industrialization developed, spread across the globe, and shaped everyday life in the modern era. Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to: identify key ideas and events in the history of industrialization; identify connections between the development of capitalism and the development of modern industry; use analytical tools to evaluate the factors contributing to industrial change in different societies; identify the consequences of industrialization in the 19th and 20th centuries in different societies; critique historical interpretations of the causes and effects of industrialization; and analyze and interpret primary source documents describing the process of industrialization and life in industrial societies. (History 363)

Abstract:: This course is an introduction to the consideration of technology as the outcome of particular technical, historical, cultural, and political efforts, especially in the United States during the 19th and 20th centuries. Topics include industrialization of production and consumption, development of engineering professions, the emergence of management and its role in shaping technological forms, the technological construction of gender roles, and the relationship between humans and machines.

Abstract:: A survey of America's transition from a rural, agrarian, and artisan society to one of the world's leading industrial powers. Treats the emergence of industrial capitalism: the rise of the factory system; new forms of power, transport, and communication; the advent of the large industrial corporation; the social relations of production; and the hallmarks of science-based industry. Views technology as part of the larger culture and reveals innovation as a process consisting of a range of possibilities that are chosen or rejected according to the social criteria of the time.