The Problem we All Live With (original) (raw)

Using Norman Rockwell Paintings as a Window to the Black Experience

Social Studies Research and Practice, 2014

This article explores engaging student learning concerning the Black Experience during the Civil Rights Era through the analysis of Norman Rockwell paintings. Focusing on pedagogy and content, the article highlights an instructional framework to encourage an inclusive view of American History while appealing to a variety of learners. After emphasizing the importance of providing a balanced, representative view of American history that weaves the experiences of marginalized groups throughout the historical fabric, we highlight the highlight the instructional benefits of facilitating arts-based learning in the classroom. While a variety of artists’ work could be selected to portray historical events of this time period, we address the symbolic reasoning behind the selection of Rockwell, as well as the realistic depictions in his paintings that directly relate to historical events. The article concludes with a sample lesson that provides two options for instructional delivery: (1) a te...

AMERICAN CULTURAL IDENTITY AND ENDURING VALUES IN NORMAN ROCKWELL'S ILLUSTRATIONS

TEHNICI ȘI STRATEGII DE SPECIALITATE ÎN DINAMICA LIMBAJELOR DE SPECIALITATE, 2017

Starting from the fundamental rights it fought for: Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness, the American nation has built through history a whole system of inalienable values its citizens hold dear, which have shaped their way of life and their beliefs. Around these cornerstone values, they have built their religion, business, work and play, politics, and their culture and education, creating an American identity. Their art has also nourished on these values, in the meanwhile contributing to the completion of American cultural identity. Norman Rockwell is one of the best-loved such artists, his works speaking to his fellow Americans of the values they cherish and also reminding them what makes America great.

The View from Outside: Rockwell and Race in 1950

American Art, 2007

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Signposts on the Road Less Taken: John Newton Hyde’s Anti-Racist Illustrations of African American Children

J19: The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists, 2013

A few years ago, I taught a cultural studies course on US imperialism in the nineteenth century. Students gamely dug into Metamora and the letters of Martin R. Delany, but when we got to the bluntly white supremacist Liberia by Sarah Josepha Hale, they balked. Many of my students wanted to like Hale, editor of Godey's Lady's Book, advocate of the celebration of Thanksgiving, and author of the poem now known as "Mary Had a Little Lamb." Some accused me of judging her by contemporary standards, an unfair act because, as they explained white supremacy, "That's just what people thought back then." "Really?" I said. "Did Frederick Douglass think that?" "Well, no," they said. "But he was African American." They looked at me as if I were daft. "Also, he was ahead of his time because he was a genius." "How about John Brown, then?" I said. "Did he think white people were inherently superior?" "No, but he was a radical. Ordinary people, they just thought that because that's what everyone thought back then." My students were so anxious, I think, because they heard the hollowness in their own claims. Our conversation about Hale confronted a discomforting truth: in the United States, the range of available racial beliefs has changed relatively little from the nineteenth century through the present. In the 1850s, some people held racially egalitarian beliefs while others espoused white supremacy. The same is true today. What has changed is less the array of thinkable thoughts than the proportion

American Queerer: Norman Rockwell and the Art of Queer Feminist Critique

Despite, or perhaps because of, the continued popularity of his work with U.S. audiences and the active circulation of his art in both material and digital forms, public memory regarding Norman Rockwell remains a site of contestation. For example, while some critics frame Rockwell's work as reinforcing normative expectations regarding race, class, gender, and sexuality, others interpret Rockwell as a powerful advocate for social justice, particularly with respect to race. Analyzing the epideictic functions of an intertextual assemblage of Rockwell's images, this article contributes to the ongoing debates about the ideological implications of his art. Specifically, this article argues that many of his paintings offer valuable resources for queer feminist criticism.