The history department gave a symposium over the influence of popular culture throughout history in the Brewer-Hegeman Conference Center on Oct. 15 to help bring out the highlights in history through pop culture.
The symposium was titled “Popular Culture in History: Conference for Teaching the Social Studies.”
The symposium was a workshop for teachers of history and social studies. Presenters included Randy Roberts, a professor at Purdue University, Kenneth Barnes, the chair of the history department and several UCA professors including David Welky, Roger Pauly, Christopher Craun and James Moses.
“The idea behind the symposium is to show teachers how to use different aspects of pop culture to get behind history” Roberts said.
The symposium began with a presentation by Randy Roberts titled “Popular Culture Goes to War: America in the 1940’s” in which he focused on how different aspects of pop culture of the 1940’s influenced and contributed to the war effort. He gave examples of pop culture in the 1930’s and 1940’s that addressed the war and how it gave America a sense of heroism.
One such example of a hero was Joe Louis, a famous African-American boxer who was the world heavyweight champion in the 1930’s and 1940’s. The example that Roberts gave was the fight between Joe Louis and German boxer Max Schmeling on June 22nd 1938 in Yankee Stadium.
“FDR [Franklin D. Roosevelt] called the victory of Louis over Schmeling ‘the first blow to the Nazi regime’” Roberts said.
Another example of the heroism in pop culture were the first issues of the Superman and Captain America comic books in 1938 and 1941, respectively.
“We have in the late 30’s and early 40’s an emergence of superheroes that defined World War II,” Roberts said.
The positive impact felt by Americans from the release of these comics was due to both the promotion of American ideologies and the opposition of foreign ones.
A third example of the heroism expressed in pop culture was in the film industry. Hollywood found its hero and championed him as one of the greatest “American” heroes of all time: John Wayne.
“The most notable thing about the writers of the comic books, the composers of the music and the directors of the movies were that they were mostly Jewish. They knew the war before the war even started.” Roberts said.
The other presentations were similar to the first, but used different periods of history and specific mediums of pop culture to focus on more specific ideas. These presentations included “The Dark Side of the 1950s: The Kids are Not Alright” by Welky, “Popular Culture in Victorian Britain” by Pauly, “The American Way: Superman as a Metaphor for Twentieth-Century America” by Moses and “Graffiti in the Ancient World” by Craun.