Lois

=Beare US History Research Wiki Journal Prompts = = =


 * Journal Entry 1: ** Topic and ideas -- What are you investigating? What are the questions that are guiding your investigation.

I am investigating the role and development of advertising in the 1920s. The 1920s was an era of consumerism where “men and women could afford not merely the means of substance, but a considerable measure of additional discretionary goods and services.” Americans were becoming more consumer-oriented which therefore encouraged advertisement agencies to expand.

During my research I have focused on two specific advertising and public relations firms: N.W Ayer and J. Walter Thompson. Both of these firms were big and very successful during the 1920s. I would like to expand my research to include the transformation of these firms during the 1920s.

Personally, I find the emergence of new advertising techniques and methods to be the most interesting. Publicist went beyond simply conveying information; they created products with a certain image.

An additional reason for the success and transformation of the advertising industry was the emergence of new communication methods. For example, newspapers and mass-circulation magazines began to be received by a much wider audiences.


 * Journal Entry 2: ** A comment on your process to date, a brief discussion of your sources, and a listing of sources you are currently working with (correct Turabian format). This should be a significant step forward from your initial bibliography.

So far I have been doing a lot of reading on the development of advertising firms and advertisements as a reflection of the culture during the 1920s. I have decided to explore the effects that advertisements had on enforcing the stereotype of the “American Dream.”

Advertisements could be viewed as “a form of therapy” because “they provided simplifying, reassuring answers to modern complexities.” [1] During the 1920s, American culture was developing rapidly. Many American were concerned about the social advancements and were nostalgic for the past. Advertisements served as a way to “cope with contemporary society” [2] and retain “traditional images of the good life.”[3]

Despite their therapeutic effect, advertisements enforced stereotypes and in some cases distorted the reality of America.[4] Advertisements conveyed gender, socio-economic class, and race in a stereotypical manner, which therefore affected the perspective of Americans.

Sources: Advertising the American Dream : Making Way for Modernity Pretty much the best source ever! Marchand is amazing! He talks about the techniques of advirtisment and more importantly discusses its effects on the culture of America. Marchand believes that advertisement could be considered a form of therapy. The evidence for this is great for my counter argument. In the back of the book is a very extensive annotated bibliography that can provide me to many other sources on my topic.

[]  This website has a ton of great primary documents. It’s a lot harder to look at an old document and draw a conclusion from it myself, rather than have an expert explain it, but the documents contain a lot of valuable information that I can use to support my argument. This site is a little over-whelming and hard to navigate.

//American History A Survey. // McGraw-Hill Humanities Social, 2006. Blake, Casey. "Review: [Untitled]; Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920-1940." //Journal of Social History //  20, no. 4 (1987): 800-803.. Herbert Hess. "Productive Advertising "(1915). Journal online. Available from @http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/eaa.Q0034/pg.1/. Horowitz, Daniel. "Review: Cultural History and Consumer Culture; Inarticulate Longings: "the Ladies' Home Journal", Gender, and the Promises of Consumer Culture; Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America." //Reviews in American History //  24, no. 2 (Jun. 1996): 310-315. Lears, T. J. Jackson,. //Fables of Abundance : A Cultural History of Advertising in America. //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> [New York]: Basic Books, 1994. Marchand, Roland. //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Advertising the American Dream:Making Way for Modernity, 1920-1940. //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985. Pope, Daniel,. <span style="font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: 12px;">//<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The Making of Modern Advertising. // <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> New York: Basic Books, 1983.

[1] Pope, Daniel [2] Ibd. [3] Blake, Casey [4] Horowitz, Daniel

As I continued to collect research, my counter argument (from above) turned into my thesis. I found that it was easier to defend a rare opinion with a few specific example. Since I had so much information on advertising in the 1920s, I had to narrow my topic down to one specific aspect. I decided to convey advertisements as a bridge to connect nostalgic Americans with modern cultural development. The following paragraph is directly from my essay and I think it accurately summarizes what I discovered from extensive research.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Journal Entry 3: **<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> What is your Thesis?

<span style="font-family: Arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Cumulatively, advertisements offered “simplifying, reassuring answers to modern complexities,”[1] which helped apprehensive Americans cope with the modern transformation of the culture of the nation. Imagery and visual clichés provided “comforting reassurance to those who anxiously watched the institutions of their society assume a more impersonal scale.”[2 ] Consumers could learn to appreciate the benefits of the present society without disregarding their values of the past, such as a neighborly and family-oriented community.[3] This paper will explore different techniques and methods that advertising agencies used to establish the balance between the “public’s embrace of industrial progress” and the “memories of a small-town community."[4] Through the analysis of personal relations, communal connections, visual clichés, and image, this paper will show that __in addition to educational and economic functions, advertisements served as a therapeutic method to “sooth of pains of modernity .”[5] __

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> [1] Daniel Pope, //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> The Business History Review // <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">60, no. 3 (Autumn 1986): 512-514. [2] Casey Blake, "Review; Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity," //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> Journal of Social History // <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">20, no.4 (1987) [3] Pope, 512-514. [4] Blake, 800-803. [5] Daniel Horowitz,"Review; Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity," //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">American Historical Review // <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">91, no.3 (1986)