VIDEO Section Caption Introduction Professor Blake introduces the seminar. Play Video |  Read Transcript The Postwar Ethos: Conservatism and Intolerance Hostility toward immigrants took many forms, including Prohibition, the National Origins Act of 1924, and the revival of the Ku Klux Klan. Play Video |  Read Transcript The Postwar Ethos: The New Economy Advertisers and businessmen chipped away at prejudices against debt and spending. Play Video |  Read Transcript The Postwar Ethos: Satirizing Conformity Lewis also feared that American culture was succumbing to mechanized sameness. Play Video |  Read Transcript Portrait of Middle America: The Lynds and Middletown The Lynds hoped their work would lead to political debate and cultural reflection. Play Video |  Read Transcript Portrait of Middle America: From Work to Leisure Hollywood movies sent the message that the old restraints on desire were gone. Play Video |  Read Transcript Portrait of Middle America: Uniformity and Fragmentation The Lynds described a culture of "moderate fear." Play Video |  Read Transcript Portrait of Middle America: Gains and Losses The new middle class was only a generation away from another kind of existence." Play Video |  Read Transcript The Search for Alternatives: Advocates of Asceticism These writers presented a forceful critique of the new culture but offered only renunciation as a solution. Play Video |  Read Transcript The Search for Alternatives: Conservative Modernism The conservative critique of modernist culture that emerged in the 1920s still echoes through the cultural debates. Play Video |  Read Transcript The Search for Alternatives: Studying Other Cultures Mead's work suggested that what determined whether adolescence was difficult for young women was not biology but cultural attitudes about sexuality. Play Video |  Read Transcript The Search for Alternatives: Bohemians and Expatriates Cultural radicals, argued Cowley, had merely been harbingers of consumerism. Play Video |  Read Transcript The Harlem Renaissance: Capital of Black America Black intellectuals believed that cultural renewal would pave the way for future political advances. Play Video |  Read Transcript The Harlem Renaissance: The Jazz Singer Black popular culture offered children of immigrants a new way to become assimilated. Play Video |  Read Transcript Conclusion From the 1920s through today, consumer culture has demonstrated a remarkable ability to absorb challenges. Play Video |  Read Transcript PHOTOGRAPHS Caption or Description Credit Introduction Advertisement for the Ford Motor Company, Good Housekeeping magazine (1924). Getty Images Advertisement for Frigidaire in the Saturday Evening Post (11 September 1926). Columbia University Libraries Advertisement (featuring Billie Burke) for Lucky Strike cigarettes, in Vogue magazine (1929). Columbia University Libraries The Postwar Ethos Two men empty whiskey bottles into a sewer (during the period 1909–1932). Library of Congress Members of the Ku Klux Klan parade in Washington, D.C. (13 September 1926). Library of Congress Ku Klux Klan members parade in Virginia (18 March 1922). Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [LC-USZ62-96308] African American troops from the 367th Infantry in front of the Union League Club (March 14, 1919). Records of the War Department General and Special Staffs 1860–1952, Record Group 165. National Archives at College Park, College Park, Md. [NWDNS-165-WW-127(98)]. A photo session with President Warren G. Harding and his pet dog Laddie in front of the White House (13 June 1922). Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [LC-USZ62-65041] A row of completed Model-T Fords come off the assembly line in Detroit (c. 1917). Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [LC-USZ62-63968] Cover of the Smart Set (November 1914). Courtesy of H. L. Mencken Collection, Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore Still from the movie Babbitt (1924). Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University Portrait of Middle America Robert Lynd (5 May 1948). Columbia University Archives–Columbiana Library Helen Merrell Lynd (undated photograph). Courtesy of Sarah Lawrence College Archives Movie poster for A Woman of Affairs (1928). Movie poster for White Shoulders (1931). RKO Radio Pictures Inc. Movie poster for Manhattan Cocktail (1928). Paramount Pictures A group, including Atwater Kent, gather around a large radio at the Hamilton Hotel, Washington, D.C. (1920s). Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [LC-USZ62-109738] A Ford sedan with passengers (c. 1923). Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [LC-USZ62-54096] The Search for Alternatives Walter Lippmann (c. 1939–41). Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [LC-USZ62-115610] Joseph Wood Krutch (undated photograph, probably from the 1940s). Columbia University Archives–Columbiana Library T. S. Eliot (undated photograph, probably from the late 1920s). Columbia University Archives–Columbiana Library Ruth Benedict at Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire (c. 1920s). Library of Congress, Manuscript Division Margaret Mead (undated photograph, probably from 1930s or 1940s). Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [LC-USZ62-120226] Margaret Mead stands between two Samoan girls (c. 1926). Library of Congress, Manuscript Division A street café in Paris (1929). Hulton Archive by Getty Images Malcolm Cowley (undated photograph). Courtesy of Robert Cowley and the Newberry Library, Chicago The Harlem Renaissance Detail of a photograph of a Harlem parade organized by the University Negro Improvement Association (1924). Photographs and Prints Division; Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; The New York Public Library; Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations "Maude Russel and Her Ebony Steppers," performers in "Just a Minute," a Cotton Club revue (1929). Photographs and Prints Division; Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; The New York Public Library; Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations An undated advertisement for Harlem's Cotton Club, in operation from 1922 to 1936. Photographs and Prints Division; Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; The New York Public Library; Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations Al Jolson, in blackface, in The Jazz Singer (1927). Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [LC-USZ62-127314] Poster for the film The Jazz Singer (1927), starring Al Jolson. Warner Brothers