Lesson Plan Out of This Furnace by Thomas Bell

Historical Context: The Human Meaning of Migration

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I will evaluate your presentation based on organization and content as well as on the quality of your delivery. Within a week, you should email me an essay of no more than words that reflects the content and analysis of your oral presentation. Select a topic from the period covered in the course that you find to be of interest and do some outside reading on it. Your choice of focus need not be directly related to the material covered in the course. Indeed, this is your opportunity to investigate a subject area that the course may neglect.

I recommend drawing on a variety of book chapters and articles. The paper should be analytical rather than narrative — that is, it should make an argument rather than tell a story. The more sources you incorporate, the more thorough your essay will be. There are no hard and fast rules regarding the number of sources, but anything under five major sources will likely produce a rather thin piece of historical analysis. At week five, I will ask for a tentative annotated bibliography. During weeks ten and eleven, I will schedule individual meetings with each student to discuss his or her topic.

At this point, you should have completed nearly all of the reading for your project and be well on your way toward completing a first draft. I highly recommend submitting a complete draft by the end of week 12 two weeks before the due date.

Though submitting a draft is not required, having the chance to respond to my comments is likely to improve the finished product. In a double-spaced 10 page essay due at the end of the semester, you will answer a question that will be directly related to the major themes of the course. In responding, you will draw only from material in the assigned reading; no outside reading or research will be necessary. On one occasion during the semester, each person will bring a snack for the entire class to enjoy at the break. Creativity and originality are always appreciated.

It is important, and it is expected, that you will attend every session. Inevitably, an occasion may arise when you are unable to attend. Out of fairness to your classmates who do attend every week, however, each absence past the first two will bring down your final grade. Any absences beyond four will put you in jeopardy of failing the course.

Also, given the heavy weight placed on in-class discussion, any absence is likely to detract from your participation grade. I appreciate that most CSUN graduate students are stretching themselves quite thin, often working full time while taking classes at night. If you are feeling overwhelmed, find yourself falling behind, or are having any problems outside of class that are adversely affecting your performance in class, be sure to let me know. Do not wait until the end of the semester when it will be too late.

You will find that as long as you keep me up to speed, I will be very sympathetic. Discussion Topics and Assignments. The Populist Response to Industrialization.

Charles Postel, The Populist Vision. Gender and the Spanish-American War. Kristin Hoganson, Fighting for American Manhood. Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Impulse. Joshua David Hawley, Theodore Roosevelt. The Middle-Class Response to Industrialization. Johnston, The Radical Middle Class. Urban Nightlife and the Decline of Victorian Culture. Life in the Nineties , Chapter Thomas Bell, Out of this Furnace. Rosenberg, Financial Missionaries to the World. Wilsonian Idealism and U. American Society and Culture in the s. Leuchtenburg, The Perils of Prosperity. Kevin Boyle, Arc of Justice.

Building Black Community in Detroit, , Chapter 5. Surviving the Great Depression. McGovern, And a Time for Hope. Another Look at America in the s. Roosevelt and the New Deal. Excerpts from David M.

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Kennedy, Freedom from Fear. To turn back certainly is not necessary. Now be reasonable, etc. Having well convinced myself for twenty miles that I could continue on, I did the opposite. Almost without realizing what I was doing, I made a U-turn on the empty highway. I was following instinct, not reason; I drove into that wet and soggy camp and parked my car like a homing pigeon. I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet.

I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions.

I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction. I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was thirty-two. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food.

There she sat in that lean-to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality about it. The pea crop at Nipomo had frozen and there was no work for anybody. But I did not approach the tents and shelters of other stranded pea-pickers. It was not necessary; I knew I had recorded the essence of my assignment. Look at Migrant Mother. Before reading the excerpts above, tell students the title of the piece and ask what is going on in this picture? This photograph explores themes and images that should be somewhat familiar to students.

See how much they can decipher through a group discussion. Encourage students to identify the evidence that supports their reasoning. Students should likewise be encouraged to share wonderings and voice confusions. After reading the excerpt ask how does this new insight change your understanding of the painting? What additional things do you see now?

Out of This Furnace Overview

Begin with art history. Dorothea Nutzhorn was born in Hoboken, New Jersey in At the age of seven Lange contracted polio which left her with a weakened right leg and a pronounced limp. She also felt that this infirmity made her more approachable to the forlorn people she later famously photographed. I think it perhaps was the most important thing that happened to me, and formed me, guided me, instructed me, helped me and humiliated me. All those things at once. After graduating from high school Dorothea worked as an assistant to Arnold Genthe, an established portrait photographer.

Soon thereafter Lange set off to travel the world but ran out of funds in San Francisco where she settled and opened her own portrait studio.

Even though her studio was successful, Dorothea was restless to photograph the unemployed and homeless people the Depression deposited in the street around her studio. Her photographs caught the eye of Paul Taylor, an economics professor who was observing and documenting the impact of the Depression. With funding from the State Emergency Relief Administration, Taylor hired Lange to help him document rural poverty and the exploitation of sharecroppers and migrant laborers. It was on one of these trips that Lange photographed her portrait Migrant Mother, a picture of Florence Owens Thompson and three of her children interview with one of the grown children.

Migrant Mother has become an iconic image of the Great Depression. With her children clinging to her for emotional and physical support, Migrant Mother expresses nobility and resilience in the face of adversity. With her hand raised to her mouth in anxious thought and her eyes fixed in a stare of weary searching she is an image of stoic resolve. Migrant Mother not only came to define the deserving poor displaced by the Great Depression, but she also symbolized the exhausted landscape and depleted resources that uprooted her and thousands of other migrant workers.

Lange rushed this photograph out to the media and its widespread distribution did eventually inspire political action.

Lange went on to create politically sensitive photographs of the Japanese internment camps established in the United States during World War II. Look like an art critic. Point out and discuss: Titles contribute to the meaning of a work of art. Consider the role titles play in your interpretation of this photograph. Turn, Talk, and Report Back Possible answers: It is narrowly specific and detailed. As Taylor intended it would put a face to the statistics and trends he unearthed. It would compliment and add another dimension to his scientific report. In contrast, Migrant Mother is more universal, than specific.

Because Migrant Mother is less detailed it encourages the viewer to use their imagination and insights, which makes the reading more personal. The title Migrant Mother is less scientific and more emotionally charged than the original title. On that rainy night in the pea-pickers camp, Dorothea Lange took five pictures closer and closer from the same direction.

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Because these images were all of the same family at the same time under the same conditions they offer a telling comparison. Comparing the first, middle and last images in the series provides some insight into what makes the final portrait so compelling. How does your reading of these people and their situation change the closer the photographer gets? Why do you think the final portrait became the most publicized of the series?

The first shot provides more context, locating the family in place and time. The surrounding environment seems barren, beaten down, and littered with garbage.

Lesson Plan Index: Theme

The trunk is ajar and the makeshift tent tattered. The people appear as dirty and as disheveled as their surroundings. They all look directly at the viewer in a guarded, and possibly off-putting way. This instills a sense of uncertainty in the viewer. At this distance it is difficult to make out all their features and you are analyzing, and even judging the family, based on their surroundings.

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In the middle picture you clearly see the mother and the faces of two of her children. You can see that their clothing is tattered and hard worn. They huddle together and look away in a beleaguered stare. While they are together, they seem lost in their own thoughts. The stained canvas, the rough-hewn tent pole and the lantern suggest there are minimal modern conveniences or comforts. You can look into her eyes and read her tired gaze. The children lean into her and cling to her like a mass weighing her down.

Her uplifted hand absent-mindedly pulls on her chin as if she is in anxious thought. Her eyes and hand make you see her inner apprehension and angst. This image most clearly reveals the toll on the people and is the most compelling on a human level. That is why it probably was the most publicized image.

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