Links to Additional Resources on Classic and Contemporary Images

Chapter 3
Classic and Contemporary Images: Does Education Change Over Time?
Zoology Lab, Oberlin College during the 1890s
Tom Stewart, Food Science Lab, University of Maine during the 1990s

For an excellent overview of the history of American education, take a look at this page. There, you'll find the topic broken down into five periods, starting with the Colonial days.

What purpose do women's colleges serve today? How many are there? How many people do they graduate each year? Why were they started in the 19^th century? For the answers to these and many more questions, read this essay about the history of women's colleges in the U.S.

For the answers to many questions similar to those above, but this time in the area of the history of Black colleges, visit the Howard University Digital Learning Lab's homepage about the subject.

Chapter 4
Classic and Contemporary Images: How Do We Respond to Social Events?
Pieter Brueghel the Younger, Rustic Wedding
Vanessa Vick, Photograph from a contemporary wedding reception

Study another picture of Brueghel's. This one also depicts a wedding, but the mood is different from the one in your text. Being as specific as you can, describe the two pictures' moods and what might account for the difference.

Go to a search engine like Google.com and type in the words "wedding photos." How many results do you get? Does this number surprise you? Explain. Browsing through the descriptions of the pages, how many categories can you come up with? Who might the intended audiences be? What does this say about modern weddings?

Think of a wedding you've attended, either as a guest or as a more involved participant. Then, take a look at this timeline, called "The Wedding Disaster Buster." What do you make of this list? Do you think/know that the planners of the wedding you thought about followed such a schedule?

Chapter 5
Classic and Contemporary Images: How Do We Become Americans?
Alice Austin, Immigrants arriving at Ellis Island
Associated Press, Illegal immigrants crossing the border between Guatemala and Mexico, 1999

Read this biography of Alice Austin, and choose one of her photographs on these pages to study. How does it compare to her Ellis Island photo in your text? Be as specific as you can in your answer.

Take a look at this list of immigration scams provided by U.S.A. Immigration Services. How often is the Internet mentioned in this list? Is this kind of deceitful behavior an outgrowth of the World Wide Web, do you think, or has it been going on for longer than that? How can you find out?

Read through this table of contents from the journal Yes! The title of this spring 2002 issue is "What Does It Mean to Be an American Now?" Judging from the summaries of the articles, what topics are covered? How many of the articles can you read online? If you wanted to get a hard copy of the journal, what method would you use?

Chapter 6
Classic and Contemporary Images: Is There Too Much Money in Politics?
Thomas Nast, The "Brains" that Achieved the Tammany Victory at the Rochester Democratic Convention, 1871
Ann Telnaes, Soft Money Raised, 2000

Look through this Thomas Nast gallery. What issues is he raising here? Are they all political? If so, in what sense? If not, why not? How can you compare these cartoons to the one in your text?

Find a cartoon dealing with soft money on this page and compare it to the one on the same subject in your text. What differences did you find?

Interested in learning more about campaign finance reform? Here's a lively discussion from the PBS program NewsHour, which outlines the main issues and also has some photos and sidebar information.

Chapter 7
Classic and Contemporary Images: Will Workers Be Displaced by Machines?
Diego Rivera, Portion of a mural from the Detroit Institute of Arts
George Haling, Photograph of a Chrysler Assembly Line

Interested in learning more about this topic online? Read this essay called "Impacts of New Technology on Employment." You'll also find some tables broken down into employment by country, as well as links to related websites.

Pick one of these murals by Diego Rivera and compare it to the one in your text, being as specific as you can in your description of both. What drew you to the mural you picked?

How can you reconcile this photo of sugar cane workers with the ones in your text? What issues does this photo raise that the others don't? How could you go about finding out more information about the background of this online photo?

Chapter 8
Classic and Contemporary Images: How Do We View Angels and Devils?
Angel and mortal, Islamic art from India
Sir Jacob Epstein, St. Michael and the Devil, Coventry Cathedral

Compare this picture with the two in your text. What do you make of its style and composition? How does the painter view angels and devils? Which picture from your text is more similar? Why?

Study these photographs of Jacob Epstein's The Visitation (you'll need to scroll down to see them). To what event does the title refer? (If you're stuck, type the words "Mary" and "Visitation" into a search engine.) How can you compare it stylistically to the photo of St. Michael and the Devil in your text?

Take a visit to the Internet Movie Database, and do two title searches, one with "angel" as the keyword, and one with "devil" as the keyword. Which word appears in more titles? How many more? What, do you think, accounts for this result?

Chapter 9
Classic and Contemporary Images: What Do Gangster Films Reveal about Us?
Edward G. Robinson in Little Caesar, 1930
Al Pacino in The Godfather, Part III, 1990

As a starting point for further research, take a look at this interactive essay from Filmsite.org. Starting from D.W. Griffith's silent The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912), it traces the development of the gangster film through the classics of the 1930s and 1940s to the present day, touching upon great work from Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese to the Coen brothers and Quentin Tarantino, among others.

Hollywood instituted a self-policing Production Code in 1930, partially in response to public outcry about the depictions of criminality and sexuality in contemporary gangster films. This page about the PBS program Hollywood Censored has more information about the code and some related links. This code is a forerunner to the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA)'s current ratings system for movies.

Use this link to find two online reviews of the movie Scarface, one for the 1932 version and one for the 1983 version. Familiarize yourself with the basic plots of the two versions. What major changes did the filmmakers make to update the more recent film? What conclusions can you draw from these changes, and from the notion that the same basic story was deemed relevant by these filmmakers fifty years later?

Chapter 10
Classic and Contemporary Images: Where Is Science Taking Us?
Flemish School, The Movements of the Sun and Moon, Fifteenth Century
J. Hester and P. Scowen, Photograph of gaseous pillars taken from the Hubble Space Telescope, 1995

Predicting the nature of science's trajectory can be a dicey business. Take a look a these remarks about computers made over the last few decades--from highly reputable sources--and see how much sense they make right now. What, do you think, accounts for the nature of these predictions? Can such things be avoided? If so, how? If not, why not?

"Appropriate technology" usually refers to that which is sustainable into the future and includes technology involved with energy, agriculture, and community planning. Visit the homepage of the National Center for Appropriate Technology for an overview. What did you discover there? Where could you go online to find differing views?

Can we create artificial intelligence and make machines that truly think? Should we? What are the implications of such a goal? Ethically? Spiritually? What progress has been made in this area? If these questions intrigue you, take a look at this Google.com directory on the subject for more information.

Chapter 11
Classic and Contemporary Images: Are We Destroying Our Natural World?
John Frederick Kensett, Along the Hudson, 1852
Michael Brophy, Powerline, 1998

How about a concrete example of human behavior having a negative impact upon the natural world? Study this list of endangered species from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. Does the number of endangered species surprise you? Explain.

Interested in doing some research about environmental issues, but not sure where to begin? This page from the Open Directory Project has the topic subdivided into about two dozen different categories, and will give you plenty of good ideas.

What can be done to help our ecosystem? Take a visit to the homepage of the World Resources Institute, where you'll find links to things like global topics, an environmental newsroom, and a section called "Taking Action."