Powerful Impressions: Culture and Politics in the Post-1945 United States - HIS00149I
Module summary
Over the past eighty years the United States has become both an unparalleled hegemon in economic and military terms, and a global popular culture powerhouse. American power has, however, been challenged consistently from within by a range of dissenting voices, which in the mid twentieth century rapidly moved from the fringes of political discourse into the mainstream. In this module we will look at how American society was reshaped between 1945 and 1980, when Ronald Reagan was elected US President, through the lens of art and visual culture, including documentary filmmaking and graphics. We will focus on the state of California, which raises specific issues around place and culture, looking at a range of issues including architecture and urban planning to ask who gets to claim these places as ‘theirs’? We will look at how groups including the Black Panther Party, the Chicano Movimiento, the Feminist Studio Workshop, the Mattachine Society, and the Daughters of Bilitis used the power of media and image making to challenge the status quo in the United States in ways that are still felt today.
Module will run
| Occurrence | Teaching period |
|---|---|
| A | Semester 2 2026-27 |
Module aims
The aims of this module are:
- To provide students with the opportunity to study particular historical topics in depth
- To develop students’ ability to examine a topic from a range of perspectives and to strengthen their ability to work critically and reflectively with secondary and primary material
Module learning outcomes
Students who complete this module successfully will:
- Have acquired a deep knowledge of the specific topic studied
- Have developed their ability to use and synthesise a range of primary and secondary sources
- Be able to evaluate the arguments that historians have made about the topic studied
- Have developed their ability to study independently through seminar-based teaching
Module content
Students will attend a 1-hour briefing in week 1. Students will then attend a 1-hour plenary/lecture and a 2-hour seminar in weeks 2-4, 6-8 and 10-11 of semester 1. Weeks 5 & 9 are Reading and Writing Weeks (RAW) during which there are no seminars. Students prepare for and participate in eight 1-hour plenaries/lectures and eight 2-hour seminars in all.
Seminar topics are subject to variation, but are likely to include the following:
- Cities: Los Angeles as city of the future, San Francisco as city of the past
- Watts: Growing from the Watts Rebellion
- Aztlan: The Chicano Movimiento and beyond
- Freedom: The Free Speech Movement and the American War in Vietnam
- Woman: Cultural Feminism in California
- Conservation: The Whole Earth Catalogue and ecological systems
- Out: The gay liberation movement in California
- Backlash: The return of social conservatism
Indicative assessment
| Task | % of module mark |
|---|---|
| Essay/coursework | 100.0 |
Special assessment rules
None
Additional assessment information
For formative assessment, students will complete a referenced 1200 to 1500-word essay relating to the themes and issues of the module. This will be submitted in either the Week 5 or Week 9 RAW week (on the day of the weekly seminar).
For summative assessment, students will complete an Assessed Essay (2000 words, footnoted). This will comprise 100% of the overall module mark.
Summative assessments will be due in the assessment period.
Indicative reassessment
| Task | % of module mark |
|---|---|
| Essay/coursework | 100.0 |
Module feedback
Following their formative assessment task, students will typically receive written feedback that will include comments and a mark within 10 working days of submission.
Work will be returned to students in their seminars and may be
supplemented by the tutor giving some oral feedback to the whole
group. All students are encouraged, if they wish, to discuss the
feedback on their formative work during their tutor’s student hours.
For more information, see the Statement on Feedback.
For the
summative assessment task, students will receive their provisional
mark and written feedback within 25 working days of the submission
deadline. The tutor will then be available during student hours for
follow-up guidance if required. For more information, see the Statement of Assessment.
Indicative reading
For term time reading, please refer to the module VLE site. Before the course starts, we encourage you to look at the following items of preliminary reading:
- Elissa Auther and Adam Lerner eds, West of Center: Art and the Counterculture Experiment in America, 1965–1977 (University of Minnesota Press, 2011).
- Reyner Banham, Los Angeles: The architecture of four ecologies (Allen Lane, 1971).
- Mike Davis and Jon Wiener, Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties, (Verso, 2020).