Aula: 5 Data: 2010-09-20 Hora de Início: 16:00 Duração: 2h

Sumário
Introduction to the subject: course description and syllabus,
goals, methodologies, assessment and general instructions about
the course.The legacy of the Great Depression in the present: Ry
Cooder’s concept album My Name is Buddy (2007) as
dramatization of the Great Depression: listening and analysis of
two songs in order to identify Depression types (the worker, the
agitator, etc.) and themes (solidarity, political commitment, labor
issues, ideological persecution).

Aula: 6 Data: 2010-09-22 Hora de Início: 14:00 Duração: 2h

Sumário
Introduction to the study of the Great Depression: the emergence
of the 'common man' as theme and central figure, and its
influence on cultural forms. Analysis of: a) Walt Disney's 1933
animated cartoon The Three Little Pigs: comment on its cultural
work during the Great Depression: its popularity, appeal
(optimistic tone; moral lesson) and strategies of identification
with and representation of the 'common man';b) a series
of Norman Rockwell's covers in the Saturday Evening Post during
the Depression: Rockwell’s style (everyday scenes, warm colors,
detail, humor, optimistic tone) and its influence on the
imagination and signification of the decade; Rockewell’s
representation of the common man.

Aula: 7 Data: 2010-09-27 Hora de Início: 16:00 Duração: 2h

Sumário
Sum-up of previous class. Reading and commentary on
testimonies on the Great Depression, from Studs Terkel's Hard
Times. An Oral History of the Great Depression (selection of four
stories). Oral history and the testimony as historical documents.
The experience of the Depression in the first person – the point of
view of the ‘common man’. The role played by elements of class,
gender, race, age and ethnic conflict in shaping the experience of
the Depression, in these life-stories.

Aula: 8 Data: 2010-09-29 Hora de Início: 14:00 Duração: 2h

Sumário
Sum-up of previous class.Expository class: historical, social and
cultural contextualization of the Great Depression.

Aula: 9 Data: 2010-10-04 Hora de Início: 16:00 Duração: 2h

Sumário
Text analysis of F. D. Roosevelt's First Inaugural Address for an
identification of the main elements of the New Deal ethics and of
Roosevelt's rhetorical strategies to win the people's confidence,
create national unity, with special emphasis on the metaphor of
the war. Film images for Roosevelt’s Inauguration in 1933.

Aula: 10 Data: 2010-10-06 Hora de Início: 14:00 Duração: 2h

Sumário Conclusion of last class. FDR’s first ‘Fireside Chat’ as complementary document to the Inaugural
Address (textual analysis). Exposition of the cultural background of the Great Depression. The
creation of the Works Progress Administration, stressing the arts programs.

Aula: 11 Data: 2010-10-11 Hora de Início: 16:00 Duração: 2h

Sumário This session was replaced by attendance to the colloquium on American Studies.

Aula: 12 Data: 2010-10-13 Hora de Início: 14:00 Duração: 2h

Sumário
The New Deal project towards a renewed American culture and the 'arts for
the millions' project. Based on a magazine article of the time, "Federal
patronage of the arts" (Fortune magazine, 1937), students debated the
strong and weak points of the program, as well as problematic issues
created by the project, such as the nature of art and the relation between art
and politics, and art and the public.

Aula: 13 Data: 2010-10-18 Hora de Início: 16:00 Duração: 2h

Sumário
Conclusion of last class: close-reading of the poem "Invocation to
the Social Muse", by Archibald MacLeish (1932), to discuss the
dilemma between the arts and politics throughout this period.

As examples of art commissioned by the Government, students

watched and commented on images showing WPA murals by
U.S. regionalist painter Thomas Hart Benton. The social-realist
style.

Close reading of Harry Hopkins's speech “Federal Relief”: the

impact of the idea of state-assistance on American culture and
Hopkins's arguments towards a legitimation of relief.

Aula: 14 Data: 2010-10-20 Hora de Início: 14:00 Duração: 2h

Sumário
The impact of the Great Depression on women: discussion of a
text previously read by the students, "The Social Security Act",
extracts of a radio address by Francis Perkins: the shortcomings
of the law and how it evinced a gendered understanding of
society.

Aula: 15 Data: 2010-10-25 Hora de Início: 16:00 Duração: 2h

Sumário
Exposition: the tradition of reform societies and social welfare
and the critiques of the ND as a maternalist program. Women
and economic dependency during the period: socio-cultural
constraints of work and accepted discrimination. The New Deal
programs aimed at unemployed women and the agencies ran by
women.

Analysis and discussion of the poem "Absalom", by Muriel

 Rukeyser, previously prepared by the students. Women poets in
the 1930s: adding gender to political commitment. Rukeyser's
'investigative poetry' and her ideal of the poet, the poem and the
audience as witnesses of events.

Aula: 16 Data: 2010-10-27 Hora de Início: 14:00 Duração: 2h

Sumário Poem analysis and discussion of Muriel Rukeyser's poem "Ann Burlak". The potential of political intervention in women - conclusion
of last class.

Aula: 17 Data: 2010-11-03 Hora de Início: 14:00 Duração: 2h

Sumário Mid-term in-class test (continuous assessment).

Aula: 18 Data: 2010-11-08 Hora de Início: 16:00 Duração: 2h

Sumário
The impact of the Great Depression on African-Americans. Brief
exposition of the emergence of the Harlem Renaissance during the 1920s
and its demise with the coming of the Depression. Reading, listening and
analysis of two cultural documents by African-Americans during this
period: Langston Hughes's poem "Let America be America Again" and
Paul Robeson's performance in "Ballad for Americans" (by Earl Robinson).
The poems/lyrics were also discussed as proposing new readings of
America in a time of crisis in meaning: 'America' as a plebeian
construction.

Aula: 19 Data: 2010-11-10 Hora de Início: 14:00 Duração: 2h

Sumário
Discussion of Nelson Algren’s short-story, “A Place to Lie Down”.
Identification of the characters’ features (the ‘hobo’ as a Depression type)
and of the importance of the relation between the main charaters – what it
implies in terms of race relations and prejudice against poverty during the
Great Depression. The representation of authority in the character of the
policeman and the public beating scene: suggestions about the role of race
and racism in hiding issues of social injustice.

Aula: 20 Data: 2010-11-15 Hora de Início: 16:00 Duração: 2h

Sumário
The Dust Bowl phenomenon and the exodus from the Great Plains:
contextualization by means of a popular ballad, Woody Guthrie's "Blowin'
Down This Road (I Ain't Gonna Be Treated This Way)". The Division of
Documentary Photography of the Farm Security Administration: analysis
of different types of photography reporting the migrants’ and the farmers’
plight during the period: by Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans and Margaret
Bourke-White Discussion: identification of models of representation of the
'people' within the FSA project and of the dangers of this type of
representation, namely the aestheticization of poverty and suffering.

Aula: 21 Data: 2010-11-17 Hora de Início: 14:00 Duração: 2h

Sumário Students watched Pare Lorentz's award-winner documentary film The River. Film discussion: the
combination of pedagogical and artistic aspects in the film: the roles of poetic narration,
music/sound and image. The combination of landscape and history and its effects. The
symbolics of the river: the film as a renewed epic of America?

Aula: 22 Data: 2010-11-22 2ª Hora de Início: 16:00 Duração: 2h

Sumário Considerations regarding the mid-term test and brief correction of most common mistakes.
The documentary aesthetics – sum up of techniques and features as observed in materials so
far.

Instances of popular culture in the Great Depression: the 'superheroes' phenomenon. The case
of Superman: its genealogy, characteristics and appeal to the 'common man': historicization of
the character within the period of the Depression. Superman's stories as 'moralities'. Discussion
was based on a comics: 'The Blakely Coal Mine Disaster', which students had prepared before
class.

24-11 4ª

29-11

1-12 feriado

6-12

8-12 feriado

13-12 teste

15-12 rosie…