Welcome to a webquest dedicated to the understanding of political events in particular decades and how they shaped popular culture.
Your goal is to use this website to help you better understand the politcal events and cultural events of a particular decade. You will be in a group up to four people. You can break the assignment into four categories.
First you will make a timeline of a specific decade including major political events, major fears of that time, and popular expectations for the future during that time.
Second you will use a film to from that period that illustrates particular cultural attitudes of that time. For example Dr. Stranglove would be a good film to show if you want to illustrate the fear of nuclear anilation during the cold war. You will give the class an analysis of how this film shows a a prevailing fear or attitude because of particular political events. You cannot show a film that was made decades later to illustrate an event, for example don’t show Saving Private Ryan to illustrate the events during WWII. You are not trying to give a history lesson on what happened, you are teaching the class how pop culture was influenced by political events.
Third you will use music from that time period to illustrate how pop culture was influenced by politca events. You will pick one or two song to illustrate this. The music must be made during that period. You will teach the class how this particular song was made, the artist goal in the music a lyrics, and how it was perceived by popular culture. For example a good choice in the 1980s would be Born in the USA by Bruce Springsteen, the feeling of the song focus’s on American trying to forget the Vietnam War and the outsourcing of jobs.
Forth you will use fashion from that period to illustrate how pop culture was influenced by political events. This can be challenging, you will present to the class various styles of the time. Your goal is not to just tell us the fashion styles but also give us analysis of how that fashion style was influenced by political events. For example if your decade was the 20’s and you spoke to the class about bob hair cuts you would also have to mention why that style became mor prevalent and how it was affected by political events like women getting the right to vote.
All presentations will be in PowerPoint form. They will be dropped in the assignment dropbox in school loop and they will be put on a USB drive. Late work is not accepted do not put one person in charge of doing all the PowerPoints. Each individual will do their own PowerPoint. You must do a time line no matter what the size of your group.
Evaluation: See rubric for complete analysis of grade breakdown, you will submit a rubric on the day of the presentation along, the rubric will be self graded by you so you can tell me what you think your grade should be given what you did within the breakdown of the rubric.