STRUCTURE

Thesis/Open:
World War II sparked an age of revolution, both in electronics (cameras, television, phones, computers), but also social revolutions rooted in the concept of individualism and personal rights. This project fixates on the ever-evolving actions of grassroots America in the postwar period, drawing a broad link between the construction of collective and individual identity to technology, paying particular attention to the proliferation of imagery.


1940s to 1960s:
The Postwar Revolution in Technology in Tandem With Self-Identity
1. Abstract expressionism as a tangible expression of the confluence of image and self in the postwar period.
2. Abstract Expressionism in tandem with the ascendency of the U.S. as the world’s predominant and most profligate superpower.
3. A glance at imagery in the context of American postwar consumption, individualism, and Military Industrial Complex.


1960s to New Century:
Image in Culture War
A concise audit of grassroots use of imagery in the 1960s:
Black nationalists
Feminists
Anti-war imagery and Vietnam


The New Century:
Hysteria and Transnational Capitalism
1. 9/11 as image and collective identity
2. TV to Internet and the paradox of corporations in media
3. Image and Internet: “high” and “low” degrees of freedom
4. Belarusian and Iranian social media in contrast to the U.S. (my sense of loyalty to NSSR obligates me to dip my pen in the transnational well).

The New Century: The Future of History
1. How the afore mentioned exegesis of postwar imagery and identity will shape the academy of history.
2. How these technological and social changes will shape the next generation of historians (digital natives).

Pedagogy

Howard Gardner, the John H. and Elisabeth A. Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, developed the theory of multiple intelligences in 1983. The theory suggests that the traditional notion of intelligence, based on I.Q. testing, is far too limited. Instead, Gardner proposes multiple intelligences to account for a broader and overlapping range of human potential and learning capability.

The technological skill set displayed in this project was developed earning an MS in Design and Technology. My pedagogy is heavily influenced by digital technology used didactically in regards to MI theory.

Gardner's model of Multiple Intelligences at a glance:

Linguistic: enjoy writing, reading, telling stories or doing crossword puzzles.

Logical-Mathematical: interested in patterns, categories and relationships; are drawn to arithmetic problems, strategy games and experiments.

Musical: often sing or drum to themselves; are usually quite aware of sounds others may miss; often discriminating listeners.

Bodily-Kinesthetic: process knowledge through bodily sensations; are often athletic, dancers or good at crafts such as sewing or woodworking.

Spatial-Visual: think in images and pictures; may be fascinated with mazes or jigsaw puzzles, or spend free time drawing, building with Leggos or daydreaming.

Interpersonal: leaders among their peers; good at communicating; seem to understand others' feelings and motives.

Intrapersonal : often shy yet very aware of their own feelings and are self-motivated.

Why this project and paper in this Class
The class, paper and project provided an opportunity to better grasp the role postwar technology and sociology played shaping imagery and identity in capitalist America in the decades after the disintegration of the New Deal.

Michael Jordan and my Historicism/aesthetic
My current scholarly passion/obsession is honed to cultural symbols, such as athletes and the products and cultural fetishes they signify and represent. Jordan was a transnational, “post-racial” and apolitical figure long before the Obama brand name.
Jordan and the transnational cultural and economic shift he represents is an entry point and filter to explore the transformation of a New Deal socioeconomic order reliant on labor, to a culture of mass consumption dependent on credit in the last quarter of the 20th century.
Interest in History I’m interested in how oppressed people empower themselves with whatever resources available to them. I don’t think of the past as separate from the present, just as I don’t consider a trough of a wave to be separate from the crest. Therefore my interest in history is keyed to what the trough can tell us about the crest, and how the crest might break. In other words, my interest in history is in how it can aid one in better calculating the present and shaping the future.