JAN 124 - Welcome to the Atomic Age!

Modality: In-person
Level: Lower Division (100 Level): For First-Year Students ONLY
Course Times: 9:15am - 11:55am
Note: See the Jan Term website for meeting days if not specified here.
Course Materials Fee: None

Instructor(s): Harter, Wayne
Email: wharter@stmarys-ca.edu

In this course, we study events in the years 1945-1962, a time when expert predictions by scientists and celebrated public figures were reported on the nightly news and became a staple feature of popular monthly magazines. What must it have been like to live when fantastic inventions and new adventures, when staggering achievements in health and happiness were said to be just around the corner?

A short 17 years after the Atomic Future began, however, the “new light on the frontier” was looking more like the fire of an all-consuming holocaust. The final, insane ambition of Dr. Strangelove.

The course is taught in the mode of seminar. Careful analysis and discussion of things Americans read in weekly magazines, watched on TV and at the cinema, listened to on radio, and imagined through popular art provides us insight to living the wild hopes and terrible fears of the Atomic Age!

Prerequisites & Notes
None

Credits: 3-CU