>US History Component

This history component brings together artworks studied in previous lessons with historical writings, photographs and films that express and typlify many of the social struggles at large at the turn of the century. As students will be relating artworks to both literature and history, learning standards for all three fields of study are pertinent to this lesson.

Students will study the increasing urbanization and industrialization of the United States, beginning in the l890s and transforming the country by the l920s.

Groups of three or four students will be assigned sections in their text American Voices by Berkin:

Chapter 6: America's Economic Transformation, l860-l900; Chapter 7: Politics and Daily Life in the Gilded Age, l870-l900; Chapter 8: The Progressive Era, l900-l9l7.

Each student expert group will be assigned one section and will outline on transparencies the key concepts, people, and events in their section. The class will take notes from the transparencies and ask clarification questions of the student readers.

Students will view the documentary video America and Lewis Hine which traces the photographer's career from photographing Ellis Island immigrants, through his documentation of child labor for the National Child Labor Committee, to his dignifying labor during the Great Depression in his photographs of the construction of the Empire State Building. The following questions can be used to guide students' viewing and they can also be used for student discussion:

Video: America and Lewis Hine- A series of questions and responses.

Writing assignment: Ask students to select one Lewis Hine photograph and to "inhabit" it and write about it as if from the eyes, ears, nose, mind, and heart of one of the photographed subjects.

Students will read Candaele's "The Assembly Line--Efficiency or Dehumanization?" and evaluate Henry Ford's defense of the electric assembly line in contrast with Russian visitors' criticism of the dehumanizing aspects of such efficient production.

Students will view the Fritz Lang's silent l927 film Metropolis (available on video) and evaluate how well this film depicts the dehumanization of industrial capitalism, the social inequities found in densely urban populations, and the spiritual vacuum of material possessions and pleasures. The following questions can be used to guide students' viewing and they can also be used for class discussion:

Video of the film: Metropolis. directed by Fritz Lang, l927- A series of questions and responses.

Lewis Hine Photographs

Students will read primary sources that give voice to the faces in Lewis Hine's photographs, including Rose Pastor Stokes's "I Belong to the Working Class" (in Marcus: pp. 63-78); and Otis G. Lynch's "Testimony on Child Labor" (in Marcus: pp. 79-90); and Chapter 5: Life and Labor in Industrial America (in Binder: pp. 90-l06).

Art Making

American Literature Component