The 1930s in the US, given the Great Depression, was a period of both extreme national distress and acute self-consciousness. New technologies of radio and sound movies, along with documentary photography and newsreels, gave the country a previously unseen view of itself. There was extreme wealth and extreme poverty, modernity in design but also Colonial Revival. This course investigates material culture and design from the 1920s to the1940s as paradigmatic of these dichotomies. We look at material culture ranging from fashion to sheet music and cars to world fairs alongside streamlining in architecture, furnishings, and appliances by a cadre of newly emerging industrial designers. The course examines FDR’s New Deal utilizing WPA posters and post office murals, Hollywood films both period and retro (e.g., Astaire and Rogers, Frank Capra, Busby Berkeley), the Harlem Renaissance, museum exhibitions at MoMA founded in 1929, and the New School Building on West 12th Street completed in 1931. We ask how and why the country during this restive period held fast to the idea of the American Dream despite severe economic tensions related to capitalism powerfully illustrated and critiqued by influential Mexican and American muralists. Issues of gender, race, class, nationalism and capitalism are all contextualized within this complicated milieu. There will be at least two trips to relevant sites in NYC which, in the past, has included Radio City Music Hall, part of the larger Rockefeller Center, and the U.S. Custom House where Reginald Marsh painted government-sponsored murals in 1937. Readings come from material culture studies, cultural studies, design history, art history, and fashion studies. As this is a seminar, participation in class discussion is essential, with brief in-class presentations expected, and submission of a researched midterm and final paper.