Seminar: American Design in the Atomic Age

Instructor: Dr. Monica Penick

Email: mpenick@wisc.edu

Prerequisites

The course is open to graduate students in Design Studies, Art History, History, and related fields. Completion of the design history survey sequence is recommended.

Course Description

This graduate seminar investigates the relationship between American design and culture in the two decades following World War II.  Advancing technologies, expanding economies, shifting social paradigms, and the cultural-political struggle between emerging world superpowers impacted the designed environment in a multiplicity of ways, at both the “high” and “low” levels. As modernism (broadly interpreted) became the dominant language of design (in architecture, interiors, furnishings, and decorative arts), it was simultaneously tasked with representing American capitalism, democracy, and the quest for cultural supremacy. The fear of communist domination – under the looming shadow of the atomic bomb – added yet another layer of complexity to the postwar world view, and provided a new set of challenges to which designers were compelled to respond.

We will begin the course by establishing the historical and cultural context, the “mood,” of the postwar decades. Students will absorb the moment as those who lived during the time period; we will use film, television, literature, popular magazines (for acquaintance with both print images and graphic design), advertisements, fashion, and music to develop a “period eye.” We will then examine a range of commercial, residential, institutional and leisure-themed architecture and interiors in concert with furnishings, decorative arts, and objects of popular culture. Though this, we will investigate the ways in which designers responded to a changing society and evolving tastes, and how these practitioners struggled to represent complex concepts (and ideologies) in built form. The aim of this course is to provide students with a broad context that will enable them to understand the ways in which the Atomic Age and the Cold War affected the designed environment.