Our class began by exploring narratives of Prohibition in various popular sources. We watched all three episodes of Ken Burns' Prohibition. The titles of each gave us our first narratives, a nation of drunkards, a nation of scofflaws, and a nation of hypocrites, in addition to those we picked out while watching: one big party, liberation for women, and failure. We then turned to sources about Prohibition in Philadelphia on the web, including the article How Prohibition played out in Philadelphia, the online exhibit Potable Power Delaware Valley Bootlegging During Prohibition, and the radiocast "I Remember When: Butler on the Beat" yielding narratives of lawlessness, organized crime, bootleggers, and immigrants.
Each student selected a narrative to follow as we read Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City chapters 4-6 and watched episodes of the HBO series including What Does the Bee Do?, Belle Femme, and The Age of Reason.
We created a collaborative narrative about Prohibition in Philadelphia that built on Charlene Mires' idea in Independence Hall in American Memory of “contested memory” as comprised of a building, a nation and a memory to apply to an EVENT (prohibition) a CITY (Philadelphia) and MEMORY (how are we currently “remembering” Prohibition?). How can we think about prohibition as a “public” memory, as Mires defined it, “a body of beliefs and ideas about the past that help a public or society understand both the past, present, and by implication, its future”?
Contested memories = existence of competing versions, explanations, or narratives about the same things in the past. Process relies on an interaction of collective remembering and forgetting. As individuals form their understandings of the past, they selectively remember and selectively forget.
Students visited the exhibit American Spirits: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition and prepared illustrated pages that traced their narrative through the their final examination.
Each student selected a narrative to follow as we read Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City chapters 4-6 and watched episodes of the HBO series including What Does the Bee Do?, Belle Femme, and The Age of Reason.
We created a collaborative narrative about Prohibition in Philadelphia that built on Charlene Mires' idea in Independence Hall in American Memory of “contested memory” as comprised of a building, a nation and a memory to apply to an EVENT (prohibition) a CITY (Philadelphia) and MEMORY (how are we currently “remembering” Prohibition?). How can we think about prohibition as a “public” memory, as Mires defined it, “a body of beliefs and ideas about the past that help a public or society understand both the past, present, and by implication, its future”?
Contested memories = existence of competing versions, explanations, or narratives about the same things in the past. Process relies on an interaction of collective remembering and forgetting. As individuals form their understandings of the past, they selectively remember and selectively forget.
Students visited the exhibit American Spirits: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition and prepared illustrated pages that traced their narrative through the their final examination.