Course Description

The 1920s was a decade much like our own, a kind of technological modernity with inventions
such as radio, sound film, the automobile, the telephone, airplanes, and more, rapidly changing
people’s lives. Socially and culturally, the rise of the modern advertising industry, the
industrialization of music, the suffrage movement and more greatly challenged Victorian modes
of life, propelling Americans firmly into the twentieth century. This course examines a variety of
musics in this period, and how they participated in, and registered, a new and fast-changing
American culture.