During the first decades of the twentieth century, Americans grappled with the idea of what it meant to be a modern society. As in other periods and places, arts, architecture and design played a significant role in expressing and exploring the issues and concerns of the day. In the period 1930 to 1965, and emerging practice called "interior design," in particular, became a potent medium for this purpose.Like modern art and modern architecture, the key to the practice of interior design was its basis in ideas. As curator Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., pointed out in his 1950 explanatory booklet "What is Modern Interior Design?" published by the Museum of Modern Art, interior design's foundation, in contrast to interior decorating, was in "principles rather than effects." To use the word "design" instead of "decoration," in relation to the creation of interiors implied the use of systematic and rational approach based in ideas not personal preferences. By the late 1930s both the discourse and practice of interior design as an alternative to interior decoration had begun to emerge in the United States.This study will explore how the emerging practice of interior design between 1930 and 1965, developed through the efforts of designers from various fields who all embraced this systematic and rational approach to creating interiors based in "principles and not effects." It will discuss how designers such as Ray and Charles Eames, George Nelson, Richard Neutra, Florence Knoll, and Russel and Mary Wright, whose work is highlighted in this study, used interior design as a way to explore and express theoretical considerations that could be learned, understood and disseminated by the designed interior. By doing so it exposes the ideas at work behind the interior designs of this period, which for the most part have not been fully considered by current histories, and presents a richer, more complete and more accurate account of this moment in design history and interior design's contribution to it.

This essay focuses on gender roles, individualism and collectivism in Jack Kerouac’s classic road-trip novel On the Road. In order to put the discussion into a meaningful context, I look at the novel from a historical perspective and examine how it relates to post-war American society. I argue that the novel is, in many ways, representative of a society existing in a field of tension between individualism and collectivism, and that its notion of individual freedom, at the time revolutionary, can be seen as retrogressive with regard to the book’s portrayal and treatment of women. The essay features a discussion of what kind of individual freedom is presented in On the Road and how this freedom relates to typical American individualism as well as American post-war societal norms, the norm of the nuclear family in particular. This is followed by a brief analysis of how the novel influenced future generations, specifically in terms of sexual liberation. This analysis introduces a discussion of the way in which women are portrayed in the book and how this portrayal both represents collective progress in post- war America—women are often described as financially independent—and a phallocentric type of individualism. I then show that this individualism is connected to an unthinking optimism which, I argue, is one of the key causes of the retrogressive view of women exemplified by the book. My study ultimately demonstrates that the novel’s notion of individualism—an individualism which was highly influential for future generations and is usually viewed as progressive—can arguably be seen as retrogressive in terms of Kerouac's representation of gender roles.

Thesis (M.A.)--Indiana University, 2010. / Title from screen (viewed on February 26, 2010). Department of History, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). Advisor(s): Jason M. Kelly, Annie Gilbert Coleman, Monroe H. Little. Includes vitae. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 120-125).

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Before the “sick” comedians arrived onto the comedy landscape political and culturally based humor was considered taboo, but the 1950s witnessed a dramatic transformation to the art of stand-up comedy. The young comedians, including Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl, became critical of American Cold War policies and the McCarthyistic culture that loomed over the nation’s society. The new stand-up comics tapped into a growing subculture of beatniks and the younger generation at large that rebelled against the conservative ideals that dominated the early post-war decade by performing politically and socially laced commentary on stage in venues that these groups frequented. The two comedians that best represent this comedic era are Jewish comics Mort Sahl and Lenny Bruce. Their comedy was more politically oriented than the other “sick” comics, and they started an entertainment revolution with their new style. They became legendary by challenging the status quo during a historically conservative time, and inspired numerous comics to take the stage and question basic Cold War assumptions about race, gender, and communism.