Full Description
In 1935, the United States Congress began employing large numbers of American artists through the Works Progress Administration--fiction writers, photographers, poster artists, dramatists, painters, sculptors, muralists, wood carvers, composers and choreographers, as well as journalists, historians and researchers. Secretary of Commerce and supervisor of the WPA Harry Hopkins hailed it a "renascence of the arts, if we can call it a rebirth when it has no precedent in our history."
Women were eminently involved, creating a wide variety of art and craft, interweaving their own stories with those of other women whose lives might not otherwise have received attention. This book surveys the thousands of women artists who worked for the U.S. government, the historical and social worlds they described and the collaborative depiction of womanhood they created at a pivotal moment in American history.
Contents
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. New Deal Documentary
2. Women, Documentary, the Depression, and the New Deal: A Convergence Beyond Conventional Wisdom
3. The Individual Art Programs, the Women Involved
4. Portraits of Modern Women Alone and Together: Face Forward, Standing on New Ground
5. Beyond Portraits to Personification: Classical Imagery Transformed in Public Images of Women
6. Specific Themes Developed: Selling Beauty and Sexuality
7. Moving into Romantic Relationships: The Uncertainties of the New
8. American Marriage—and Divorce
9. Coping in a World of Violence: The Creation of the Modern Female Folk Hero
10. Reproductive Rights and Motherhood
11. Race and Class, and Gender
12. Women at Work
13. And the Subject of Age
In Conclusion: "A Blazing Sun against a Black Sky"
Chapter Notes
Bibliography
Index
